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The adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identitites. But, Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposes, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or, sometimes, locality. But, when they did it locally it was generally either the city and the immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or Syrians, identifying with the larger province of Syria
The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian were lasting innovations of the British Mandate [1922-1948]
The countries forming the western arm of the Fertile Crescent were called by the names of the various kingdoms and peoples that ruled and inhabited them. Of these, the most familiar, or at least the best documented, are the southern lands, known in the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible and some other ancient writings as Canaan. After the Israelite conquest and settlement, the area inhabited by them came to be described as "land of the children of Israel" or simply "land of Israel" After the breakup of the kingdom of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE, the southern part, with Jerusalem as its capital, was called Judah, while the north was called Israel
It is by now commonplace that the civilizations of the Middle East are oldest known to human history. They go back thousands of years, much older than the civilizations of India and China, not to speak of other upstart places. It is also interesting, though now often forgotten, that the ancient civilizations of the Middle East were almost totally obliterated and forgotten by their own people as well as by others. Their monuments were defaced or destroyed, their languages forgotten, their scripts forgotten, their history forgotten and even their identities forgotten.
All that was known about them came from one single source, and that is Israel, the only component of the ancient Middle East to have retained their identity, their memory, their language and their books. For a very long time, up to comparatively modern times, with rare exceptions all that was known about the ancient Middle East--the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the rest--was what the Jewish tradiiton has preserved.
Amazon.com: Political Words and Ideas in Islam (9781558764248): Bernard Lewis: Books
