History of Palestine
The region of Palestine is part of the Levant, a land bridge between Africa and Eurasia that has traditionally served as the "crossroads of Western Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa". Lying to the west of the Jordan Rift Valley, Palestine is, in tectonic terms, located in the "northwest of the Arabian Plate".
A crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics, Palestine was among the earliest regions to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. In the Bronze Age, the Canaanites established city-states influenced by surrounding civilizations, among them Egypt, which ruled the area in the Late Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, emerged in the interior, while kingdoms belonging to Philistia and Phoenicia ruled the Palestinian coast. The Assyrians conquered the region in the 8th century BCE, then the Babylonians, followed by the Persian Achaemenid Empire that conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late 330s BCE, intensifying Hellenizing influences.
In the late 2nd-century BCE Maccabean Revolt, the Jewish Hasmonean Kingdom conquered most of Palestine; the kingdom subsequently became a vassal of Rome, which annexed it in 63 BCE. Roman Judea was troubled by Jewish revolts in 66 CE, so Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Jewish Temple in 70 CE. In the 4th century, as the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, Palestine became a center for the religion, attracting pilgrims, monks and scholars. Following Muslim conquest of the Levant in 636–641, ruling dynasties succeeded each other: the Rashiduns; Umayyads; Abbasids; the semi-independent Tulunids and Ikhshidids; Fatimids; and the Seljuks. In 1099, the First Crusade resulted in Crusaders establishing of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was reconquered by the Ayyubid Sultanate in 1187. Following the invasion of the Mongol Empire in the late 1250s, the Egyptian Mamluks reunified Palestine under its control, before the region was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1516, being ruled as Ottoman Syria until the 20th century largely without dispute.
During World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, favoring the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, and captured it from the Ottomans. The League of Nations gave Britain mandatory power over Palestine in 1922. British rule and Arab efforts to prevent Jewish migration led to growing violence between Arabs and Jews, causing the British to announce its intention to terminate the Mandate in 1947. The UN General Assembly recommended partitioning Palestine into two states: Arab and Jewish. However, the situation deteriorated into a civil war. The Arabs rejected the Partition Plan, the Jews ostensibly accepted it, declaring the independence of the State of Israel in May 1948 upon the end of the British mandate. Nearby Arab countries invaded Palestine, Israel not only prevailed, but conquered more territory than envisioned by the Partition Plan. During the war, 700,000, or about 80% of all Palestinians fled or were driven out of territory Israel conquered and were not allowed to return, an event known as the Nakba to Palestinians. Starting in the late 1940s and continuing for decades, about 850,000 Jews from the Arab world immigrated to Israel.
After the war, only two parts of Palestine remained in Arab control: the West Bank and East Jerusalem were annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, which were conquered by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Despite international objections, Israel started to establish settlements in these occupied territories. Meanwhile, the Palestinian national movement gained international recognition, thanks to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, under Yasser Arafat. In 1993, the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO established the Palestinian Authority, an interim body to run Gaza and the West Bank, pending a permanent solution. Further peace developments were not ratified and/or implemented, and relations between Israel and Palestinians has been marked by conflict, especially with Islamist Hamas, which rejects the PA. In 2007, Hamas won control of Gaza from the PA, now limited to the West Bank. In 2012, the State of Palestine became a non-member observer state in the UN, allowing it to take part in General Assembly debates and improving its chances of joining other UN agencies.
Prehistory
The earliest human remains in the region were found in Ubeidiya, south of the Sea of Galilee, in the Jordan Rift Valley. They date to the Pleistocene, c. 1.5 million years ago, traces of the earliest migration of Homo erectus out of Africa.Excavations in Skhul Cave revealed the first evidence of the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture, characterized by the presence of abundant microliths, human burials and ground stone tools. This also represents one area where Neanderthalspresent in the region between 200,000 and 45,000 years agolived alongside modern humans dating to 100,000 years ago. In the caves of Shuqba near Ramallah and Wadi Khareitun near Bethlehem, tools were found and attributed to the Natufian culture. Other remains from this era have been found at Tel Abu Hureura, Ein Mallaha, Beidha and Jericho.
Between 10,000 and 5000 BCE, agricultural communities were established. Evidence of such settlements were found at Tel es-Sultan in Jericho and consisted of a number of walls, a religious shrine, and a tower with an internal staircase Jericho is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with evidence of settlement dating back to 9000 BCE. Along the Jericho–Dead Sea–Bir es-Saba–Gaza–Sinai route, a culture originating in Syria, marked by the use of copper and stone tools, brought new migrant groups to the region contributing to an increasingly urban fabric.
Bronze and Iron Ages (3700–539 BCE)
Emergence of cities
In the Early Bronze Age period, the earliest formation of urban societies and cultures emerged in the region. The period is defined through archaeology, as it is absent from any historical record either from Palestine or contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources. It follows the demise of the Ghassulian village-culture of the late Chalcolithic period. It begins in a period of around 600 years of a stable rural society, economically based on a Mediterranean agriculture and with a slow growth in population.This period has been termed the Early Bronze Age I, parallel to the Late Uruk period of Mesopotamia and the pre-dynastic Naqada culture of Egypt. The construction of several temple-like structures in that period attests to the accumulation of social power. Evidence of contact and immigration to Lower Egypt is found in the abundance of pottery vessels of southern–Levantine type, found in sites across the Nile, such as Abydos. During the last two hundred years of that period and following the unification of Egypt and pharaoh Narmer, an Egyptian colony appeared in the southern Levantine coast, with its center at Tell es-Sakan. The overall nature of this colony as well as its relation with the hinterlands has been debated by archaeologists.
The archaeologists who led the excavations at Tell es-Sakan, Pierre de Miroschedji and Moain Sadeq, suggest that Egyptian activity in the southern Levant can be divided into three areas: a core of permanent settlement in the south, a periphery of seasonal settlement extending north along the coast, and an area beyond this extending north and east where Egyptian culture interacted with local culture. Located in the area of permanent Egyptian settlement, Tell es-Sakan was likely an administrative centre.
Around 3100 BCE, the region saw radical change, with the abandonment and destruction of many settlements, including the Egyptian colony. These were quickly replaced by new walled settlements in plains and coastal regions, surrounded by mud-brick fortifications and reliant on nearby agricultural hamlets for their food.
The Canaanite city-states held trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and Syria. Parts of the Canaanite urban civilization were destroyed around 2500 BCE, though there is no consensus as to why. Incursions by nomads from the east of the Jordan River who settled in the hills followed soon thereafter, as well as cultural influence from the ancient Syrian city of Ebla. This period, dubbed the Intermediate Bronze Age, was recently defined out of the tail of the Early Bronze Age and the head of the Middle Bronze Age. Others date the destruction to the end of Early Bronze Age III and attribute it to Syrian Amorites, Kurgans, southern nomads or internal conflicts within Canaan.
In the Middle Bronze Age, Canaan was influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoa Crete, and Syria. Diverse commercial ties and an agrarian based economy led to the development of new pottery forms, the cultivation of grapes, and the extensive use of bronze. Burial customs from this time seemed to be influenced by a belief in the afterlife. The Middle Kingdom Egyptian Execration Texts attest to Canaanite trade with Egypt during this period, while Minoan influence is apparent in paintings in a Canaanite palace at Tel Kabri.
A DNA analysis published in May 2020 showed that migrants from the Caucasus mixed with the local population to produce the Canaanite culture that existed during the Bronze Age.
Egyptian dominance
Between 1550 and 1400 BCE, the Canaanite city-states became vassals to the New Kingdom of Egypt. Political, commercial and military events towards the end of this period were recorded by Egyptian ambassadors and Canaanite officials in 379 cuneiform tablets known as the Amarna Letters. These refer to local chieftains, such as Addaya of Gaza, Biridiya of Megiddo, Lib'ayu of Shechem, and Abdi-Heba in Jerusalem. Abdi-Heba is a Hurrian name, and enough Hurrians lived in Canaan at that time to warrant contemporary Egyptian texts naming the locals as Ḫurru.In the first year of his reign, the pharaoh Seti I waged a campaign to re-subordinate Canaan to Egyptian rule, thrusting north as far as Beit She'an, and installing local vassals to administer the area in his name. The Egyptian Stelae in the Levant, most notably the Beisan steles, and a burial site yielding a scarab inscribed with Seti's name found within a Canaanite coffin excavated in the Jezreel Valley, attest to Egypt's presence in the area.