Between Israel and Palestine, who are the original owners of the Holy Land?

Antonio Matteo

I have noticed for few years, Judaists, Christians and Muslims all laid claims on holy land of Jerusalem. And there also a tribal conflict between arab Palestinians and Jews of Israel all claiming the holy land. Again, question: Between Israel and Palestine, who are the original owners of the Holy Land?

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Chacha Jasari Amani

Antonio Matteo Forget about religious claims that will add more complications to the region. How would you expect over 5 billion adherers constituting Judaism, Christianity and Islam claiming a piece of land that couldn’t take a billion people. No religious adherer has the right to claim the holy land based on religious grounds!

Israel and Palestine have the right of ownership of the Holy Land. I would have said the tribes of Canaanite had been they existing, have the most right to the region. But unfortunately, the canaanite tribes were long been integrated into ancient Jews and Palestinians society as proved by recent DNA test.

The problem was that the ancient jews had lost significant rights on holy land when they were expelled by subsequent empires: Assyrians, Babylonians, Greek, Romans, subsequent Arabian and Ottoman empires and and were scattered throughout the said empires now middle east, North Europe, east Africa and down to south asia (India sub-continent). While the people of Palestinian had chosen to stayed and endured all policies made by those preceded empires. The reason why there were dominantly arabised palestinians in holy land in late 18 century Ottoman era documentry and were little to no Jews was because the arab imperialism was based on cultural and religious change. Until the inception of 19 century where all expelled tribes of Israelites decided to unite in a single banner of Zionism, in hope to return to holy land. And this was made possible during British mandate of Palestine after taking over from Ottomans.

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Antonio Matteo Between Israel and Palestine, who are the original owners of the Holy Land?
Both of us, since we are both, as DNA research proves, descended from the original Canaanite population, itself primarily a Levantine-Mesopotamian genetic hodgepodge, with a lot of other contributions (Egyptian, Persian, Greek-Roman, Arab, Crusader).

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is essentially a civil war, between the descendants of those Canaanites who prioritized remaining Jews, and were willing to go into exile to do so, and those who preferred to adopt the monotheistic faiths of subsequent conquerors (first Christianity than Islam) in order to remain on their ancestral lands.

The Hebrews/ Israelites were a Canaanite people who conquered the other Canaanite peoples after having developed a unique henotheistic religion (Mosaic Faith) based culture, which gave them a sense of nationhood no other Canaanite people had. That is why they were the only Canaanite people ever to create a strong centralized kingdom (1000–500 BCE). All the other Cananite political entities were city-states.

By 800 BCE the Israelite kingdom had conquered all the other Canaanite city states, and was able to exploit the temporary weakness of the neighboring traditional regional powers (Egypt, Hittites, Babylon, Assyria) to become a small empire itself (between 800–700 BCE). The conquered Canaanites assimilated into the dominant Israelite society, not difficult since Hebrew and Canaanite were basically different dialects of the same language.

This is where the Biblical narrative is a bit at odds with the available scientific evidence. The Biblical narrative claims the kingdom was founded by the Davidic line, and subsequently split intio Judah and Israel. Archeological evidence says something else, that Israel was the first and by far larger kingdom, Judah was its little sister. The short lived Israelite empire was ruled by the Omride dynasty (Omri, Ahab, Yehoram, Ahazia), which ruled both Israel and Judah (until then Judah had been ruled by the Davidic dynasty as a principlaity under the suzerainty of the Kingdom of Israel). Judah would only evolve into a kingdom after the destruction of Israel by by the Assyrians around 600 BCE). Because of its relative geographical insignificance, the Assyrians decided not to waste time and effort conquering Judah, just turned it into a vassal state.

Babylon, which succeeded Assyria as the regional empire conquered and destroyed Judah (500 BCE), and exiled its elite to Babylon. This where the Bible (Old Testament) was written, edited and codified. The aim was to create a narrative facilitating the gradual evolution of the Mosaic Faith into Judaism (took a few centuries - 500–200 BCE).

The key issue is no longer who has the better claim, but whether the Palestinians are entitled to a never ending free lunch. One of life’s immutable laws is that actions have consequences. Three times the Palestinians had an offer backed by the entire international community to establish a state. In 1936 - Peel Commission, 1947 - UN Partition resolution, and in 2000 Camp David, The best offer was 1936

They refused, instead opted to try and get everything via a massive terror campaign (1936–39 Arab Revolt). They lost. In 1947 they received another offer, almost as good.

Again they refused, opted for war to get it all. Despite being assisted by 5 Arab armies (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon), they lost.

In 2000 they had another chance

This offer was not as good as the previous ones, but as I said, there are no free lunches. Nations, just like people pay for there mistakes. They made bad decisions in 36 and 47, and must live with the consequences, namely that they will never get what they could have got then. Instead, they refused to accept this fact of life, and again opted for a war they lost (Second Intifada, suicide bomber terror campaign). Consequence, the Arab world got fed up with them, and is no longer willing to prioritize creation of a Palestinian state.

At what point does the western world wake up to reality, and tell the Palestinians “you made your bed, now lie on it, because the next step will be you will not have a bed to make. We get it, the Arab world gets it, almost half the Palestinians get it (prefer annexation to Israel to independent state, only the West doesn’t get it.

BTW, I supported Oslo, and was devastated when Rabin was assassinated. I also supported Sharon’s plan for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank).

Update - June 2024. The Israeli debacle of the 7th of October 2023 has changed the dynamics, and the possiblity of a Palestinian state looks more likely now, as I said, no free lunches. Israel may have to end up paying for its blunder.