Mike Siroky, Doctoral degree from Boston University (Graduated 1970) Updated Jul 30
If Palestine does not exist, or has never existed, then who are those Arabs who have lived in that part of the world for centuries and beyond? Who lived on this land 100, 500, 1000, 2500+ years ago, the land that we today call ‘Israel’?
First of all, Palestine is a place name, like Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was never a country, state or nation. But it has always existed as a geographic location and has been inhabited by native people and then by Scandinavians, French and British.
The same applies to Palestine, a large piece of land encompassing parts of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. It was previously called Judea and before that it was called Canaan. The Canaanites were disparate tribes (Ammonites, Edomites, Moabites, etc) so Canaan was never a country or state either The only independent unified state on that land ever (before modern times) was Judea and Samaria, ruled by the Kings in the Bible (Saul, David, Solomon, etc). and the Hasmonean dynasty. This land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea is also called the Levant and the people are called Levantines.
The “Palestinians” speak Arabic due to the Mohammedan conquest from the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century that grafted both religion and language onto some of the population in the Levant. Although the “Palestinians” speak a dialect of Arabic, they are not Arabs. Genetic studies show Palestinians are more closely related to Jews (and other Levantines like Jordanians and Lebanese) than to the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula (Saudis, Yemenis, Qataris, etc). Dont take my word for it. According to Palestinian historian Nazmi Al-Ju’beh, the Arab identity of “Palestinians” is largely based on language, culture and religion. It does not necessarily mean that Palestinian Arabs are from the Arabian peninsula.
The phenomenon of Arabization in the Middle East is similar to Russification in the former Soviet Union, where many non- Russian peoples like Armenians, Georgians, Latvians, Uzbeks, etc were forced to learn the Russian language and Russian culture in order to get along within the Soviet state.
So to answer your question, who are the “Arabs” living in the Levant? They are Arabic speaking Levantine people, descended from Canaanites, and even from Jews who converted to Islam during Mohammeds wars of conquest. Some of the Arabized Levantine people live in Lebanon, some in Syria, some in Jordan and some in modern Israel. Others are still stateless living in the West Bank and Gaza.
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