The History of the Words
"Palestine" and
"Palestinians"
Is Jordan Palestine? Here
are two Jordanian
State Stamps. On the left, one from 1949 with a picture of King
Abdullah
of the kingdom of Jordan and bears the label of Palestine in English
and
Arabic. On the right, a 1964 stamp bearing the likeness of King
Hussein
and pictures Mandated Palestine as an undivided territory including
both
present day Israel and Jordan.
WHAT DOES "PALESTINE" MEAN?
It has never been the name
of a nation
or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at
those
times in history when there is no nation or state there.
The word itself derives
from "Peleshet",
a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English
as
"Philistine". The Philistines were mediterranean people
originating
from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They reached the southern
coast
of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the
pre-patriarchal
period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into
conflict
with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete
after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III
in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five
settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the
Persian
and Greek periods, foreign settlers - chiefly from the Mediterranean
islands
- overran the Philistine districts. From the time of Herodotus,
Greeks
called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "Syria Palaestina".
The Philistines were not
Arabs nor even
Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks. They did not
speak
Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with
Arabia
or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is
not
an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman
"Palastina";
which is derived from the Plesheth, (root palash) was a general
term meaning rolling or migratory. This
referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from
the
sea.
The use of the term
"Palestinian" for
an Arab ethnic group is a modern political creation which has no basis
in fact - and had never had any international or academic credibility
before
1967.
This page was produced
by Joseph
E. Katz
Middle Eastern Political
and Religious
History Analyst
Brooklyn, New York
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