Disclaimer, me and my girlfriend (99% my girlfriend) wrote this, my girlfriend is from the US and knows her stuff so dont bash me for being british and talking about US involved politics! Same goes for Middle Eastern politics
HUGE RANT ON ISRAEL V PALESTINE (PT 1)
Israel is older than palestine. Israeli's are the only natives of the middle east that are still alive to this day. Israeli's are the direct descendants of the Canaanites, the Canaanites are them. The Canaanites were a tribe, living in modern day Israel. The canaanites became an ethnographic in 4500 BC. Canaanites are descendants of the Natufians, who had been there during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. The canaanites became their own Ethnic group after mixing with the other tribes around them. The Canaanites did not have a state, and they did not decide with other tribes to make the middle east a country, because borders are purely a modern concept which creates more problems than it ever has solved. Before the newcomers and immigrants, Egyptians settled beside them in 3150 BC. And the rising population of Canaanites made them fear they would form an empire, so they decided to get the jump before the Canaanites to enslave them and rule over them for 350 very long years. Because the Canaanites had no state, north Africans began to migrate overtime and settle there through harsh force of their conquests from the 7th-8th century CE. The longer they lived there, they began to adopt the new ethnic term "Arab"s. However, romans, ever the assholes of the ancient world, invaded them in 64 CE in favor of finding their Greek brothers and sisters of the Aegean islands (The Philistines) a territory to expand upon. They pillaged the Canaanites capital village Judea, murdered and raped their women and children, and then became their kings. During their ruling they allowed the Greeks of the Aegean's to forcefully assimilate with the Canaanites, having mixed children as the end result. Then in 66-73 CE the first Jewish-Roman war started, and the native inhabitants saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple. The war of course was subdued, and the romans continued their harsh rulings. Jewish people began to flee Judea in large numbers after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Over time, this diaspora led to the formation of distinct Jewish communities, including Sephardic Jewish people, and Ashkenazi Jewish people. The offensive act of destroying Jerusalem later started an uprising known as the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132-136 CE, which ended with the Romans suppressing it and re-naming Judea to Syria Palaestina in an attempt to embarrass the native occupants after rebuilding it. The word Palaestina is the Romanized name of the word philistines, which was the name of the ethnic group that came from the Aegean islands. They went extinct in the late 5th century BCE. That makes modern inhabitants of what is known as Palestinians recognized nationality wise as Palestinians the same way you can be ethnically English but living in America so you call yourself American.
But, they are not ethnically Palestinian as again, the real Palestinians have been extinct for quite some time. When in 330 AD the byzantine empire started, and they inherited the early roman rule over Judea, they lessened their harsh treatment against Jewish people while still restricting them and murdering many. Under Byzantine rule, the province of Syria Palaestina was reorganized and subdivided into smaller provinces: Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Salutaris. This division occurred during the late 4th and 5th centuries, with Palaestina Prima encompassing the heartland, Palaestina Secunda including Galilee and the Golan, and Palaestina Salutaris covering the Negev and parts of Transjordan. The byzantine finally fell in 1453 when the Ottoman-Turks conquered Constantinople and took over from there. Jewish people were still treated like second class citizens, the only difference being instead of the romans killing them, the migrant Muslims/Arabic people's corrupt leaders mentioned from before did. During the Ottoman Empire's rule (1516-1918), the regions of Palestine were chopped and divided further into several districts within the larger province of Syria. Initially, it was part of the Damascus Eyalet, and later divided into sanjaks (districts) like Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre. The area stretched far over Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Judea, which is why "Palestinians" are not a real ethnic group, and ethnicity results come up as Jordanian, Syrian, Israeli, and Lebanese. Before the Ottoman empire, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish communities started leaving Europe primarily due to religious persecutions, pogroms, and general expulsions from the Conquests in the 13th century. Sephardic Jews faced expulsion from Spain and Portugal, leading to migration to North Africa, later the Ottoman Empire, and the Americas, and Ashkenazi Jewish people followed pursuit. Those who fled to north Africa later became Mizrahi Jewish people. The ottomans accepted them with open arms not because they liked them, but because they knew they had nowhere else to go, and they could use that against them for benefit gain. Over time the ottoman empire declined, and by WW1, it had finally made it's last stand and fell, forming the Turkish Republic in 1923. After it's fall, Britain, already sensing the tension between the now new Ethnic group of Arabic peoples and the natives (Canaanites/Israeli's) and wanting to prevent another war, Decided to create Israel and Palestine, two mandated states to keep both parties happy. The Canaanites, exhausted from being practically dealt hell for years, happily accepted, not caring if the rest of their land no longer belonged to them anymore because at the very least they would get apart of that history back. Unfortunately, the Muslims/Arabic peoples corrupt leaders believed the "Finders keepers"/"You conquer, It's yours" rule and rejected Britain's idea, marking the start of what we now call the Israeli and Palestine war.
