The Official Discussion Thread for who is considered indiginous to Palestine?

[Coyote]

This thread is being set up to prevent our second most common thread derailment (after the Mandate) - please discuss the ancient history of the peoples in the Palestine area here.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Palestine has been attacked, conquered, and occupied many times. It was also a center for trade. Caravans went through to Asia, Africa, and Europe. Many people came and went.

In the middle of all this there was a core group of people who stayed and put down roots. Palestine was a multi racial, multi ethnic, multi cultural, multi religious place where there was little animosity between peoples.

These are the People who became Palestinians when Palestine was released from Turkish rule after WWI.

 

[Shusha]

Labelling Arab Muslim "Palestinians" an indigenous peoples stretches the definition of the term far past breaking point:

“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

“This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:

a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them;

b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands;

c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.);

d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language);

e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world;

f) Other relevant factors.

“On an individual basis, an indigenous person is one who belongs to these indigenous populations through self-identification as indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group).

“This preserves for these communities the sovereign right and power to decide who belongs to them, without external interference”

Source


A culture of the invading and colonizing peoples, by definition, can not be indigenous.

 

[montelatici]

Labelling Arab Muslim "Palestinians" an indigenous peoples stretches the definition of the term far past breaking point:

“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

“This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:

a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them;

b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands;

c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.);

d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language);

e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world;

f) Other relevant factors.

“On an individual basis, an indigenous person is one who belongs to these indigenous populations through self-identification as indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group).

“This preserves for these communities the sovereign right and power to decide who belongs to them, without external interference”

Source


A culture of the invading and colonizing peoples, by definition, can not be indigenous.

So the Jews the invading and colonizing people (Battle of Jericho and all that) cannot be indigenous by definition. Next.

In any case, people claiming to be indigenous must at least have lived in an area for some time. I don't think living in Europe for 2,000 years can make a people indigenous to a place on another continent.

The Palestinians who have ancestry back to the Canaanites, Philistines etc. (as well as to invading Israelites) are thus closest to being indigenous.

And, they were certainly the native inhabitants that the Covenant of the League of Nations referred to.

 

[Shusha]

So the Jews the invading and colonizing people (Battle of Jericho and all that) cannot be indigenous by definition. Next.

In any case, people claiming to be indigenous must at least have lived in an area for some time. I don't think living in Europe for 2,000 years can make a people indigenous to a place on another continent.

The Palestinians who have ancestry back to the Canaanites, Philistines etc. (as well as to invading Israelites) are thus closest to being indigenous.

And, they were certainly the native inhabitants that the Covenant of the League of Nations referred to.

1. The people who became the Jewish people were one of many warring tribes in the region who largely shared the same culture. The Canaanites became the Jewish people. All the other warring tribes were absorbed into competing cultures and did not survive.

2. There is absolutely no cultural connection between the Arab Muslim "Palestinians" and the Canaanites or the Israelites. None. Zero. The culture of the present day Arab Muslims is the culture of the invading and colonizing peoples. The definition of indigenous depends on pre-invasion cultures.

3. The Jewish people have lived continuously in the territory in question going back thousands of years.


And you don't really want to argue that the displacement or expulsion of part of a group renders the entire group as being non-indigenous and without rights, do you? Because that is going to cause you some serious problems in the discussions about the "Palestinian" RoR.

 

[P F Tinmore]

So the Jews the invading and colonizing people (Battle of Jericho and all that) cannot be indigenous by definition. Next.

In any case, people claiming to be indigenous must at least have lived in an area for some time. I don't think living in Europe for 2,000 years can make a people indigenous to a place on another continent.

The Palestinians who have ancestry back to the Canaanites, Philistines etc. (as well as to invading Israelites) are thus closest to being indigenous.

And, they were certainly the native inhabitants that the Covenant of the League of Nations referred to.

1. The people who became the Jewish people were one of many warring tribes in the region who largely shared the same culture. The Canaanites became the Jewish people. All the other warring tribes were absorbed into competing cultures and did not survive.

2. There is absolutely no cultural connection between the Arab Muslim "Palestinians" and the Canaanites or the Israelites. None. Zero. The culture of the present day Arab Muslims is the culture of the invading and colonizing peoples. The definition of indigenous depends on pre-invasion cultures.

3. The Jewish people have lived continuously in the territory in question going back thousands of years.


And you don't really want to argue that the displacement or expulsion of part of a group renders the entire group as being non-indigenous and without rights, do you? Because that is going to cause you some serious problems in the discussions about the "Palestinian" RoR.

3. The Jewish people have lived continuously in the territory in question going back thousands of years.​

Not the ones out of Europe.

 

[montelatici]

So the Jews the invading and colonizing people (Battle of Jericho and all that) cannot be indigenous by definition. Next.

In any case, people claiming to be indigenous must at least have lived in an area for some time. I don't think living in Europe for 2,000 years can make a people indigenous to a place on another continent.

The Palestinians who have ancestry back to the Canaanites, Philistines etc. (as well as to invading Israelites) are thus closest to being indigenous.

And, they were certainly the native inhabitants that the Covenant of the League of Nations referred to.

1. The people who became the Jewish people were one of many warring tribes in the region who largely shared the same culture. The Canaanites became the Jewish people. All the other warring tribes were absorbed into competing cultures and did not survive.

2. There is absolutely no cultural connection between the Arab Muslim "Palestinians" and the Canaanites or the Israelites. None. Zero. The culture of the present day Arab Muslims is the culture of the invading and colonizing peoples. The definition of indigenous depends on pre-invasion cultures.

3. The Jewish people have lived continuously in the territory in question going back thousands of years.


And you don't really want to argue that the displacement or expulsion of part of a group renders the entire group as being non-indigenous and without rights, do you? Because that is going to cause you some serious problems in the discussions about the "Palestinian" RoR.

1. No, the Jews, more properly called Hebrews, invaded Canaan from elsewhere. This is not only a secular archeological fact, it is what the bible states. Plus, these Hebrews fell later to the Neo-Assyrians in 900 BC or so.

2. Of course there is a cultural connection between the Palestinians and the Canaanites. Here are a few excerpts from secular historical treatises on the subject. Note: I have chosen a few in which the historian is Jewish.

‘Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture.’

Dowty, Alan (2008). Israel/Palestine. London, UK: Polity. p. 221.

‘Palestinians are an indigenous people who either live in, or originate from, historical Palestine. Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopte

d Arab culture.’ Bassam Abu-Libdeh, Peter D. Turnpenny, and Ahmed Teebi, ‘Genetic Disease in Palestine and Palestinians,’ in Dhavendra Kuma (ed.) Genomics and Health in the Developing World, OUP 2012 pp.700-711, p.700.

“[being of] Canaanite origin, Palestinians have priority; their descendants have continued to live there, which gives them continuity; and (except for the 800,000 dispossessed refugees of 1948 – as determined by Israeli officials at the time, not including the hundreds of thousands subsequently expelled), they are still living there, which gives them present possession. Thus we see that on purely statistical grounds they have a proven legal right to their land.”

Prof. Ilene Beatty, highly renowned historian/anthropologist and specialist on the “Holy Land” in Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan, 1957.

The Arab population of Palestine was native in all the senses of the word, and their roots in Palestine can be traced back at least 40 centuries.

Professor Maxime Rodinson, Professor of law at the Sorbonne University in Paris, Israel and the Arabs, 1968.

As neither the Byzantines nor the Muslims carried out any large-scale population resettlement projects, the Christians were the offspring of the Jewish and Samaritan farmers who converted to Christianity in the Byzantine period; while the Muslim fellaheen in Palestine in modern times are descendants of those Christians who were the descendants of Jews*, and had turned to Islam before the Crusaders’ conquest.

Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, Cambridge University Press. pp 634-1099.

3. The Palestinians have lived continuously in the area from before the arrival of the Jews. That they practiced the Canaanite or other religions does not change the people's DNA.

 

[Shusha]

Not the ones out of Europe.

But you seem to fail to grasp the concept that you are supporting here, and, worse, failing to apply it universally. You are, in effect, saying that if an invading and colonizing force successfully expels or displaces part of a people then that part of the people are excluded from rights to return, to self-determine and to be considered part of the same group which avoided expulsion.

And that puts some of your other arguments in serious jeopardy.

 

[montelatici]

Not the ones out of Europe.

But you seem to fail to grasp the concept that you are supporting here, and, worse, failing to apply it universally. You are, in effect, saying that if an invading and colonizing force successfully expels or displaces part of a people then that part of the people are excluded from rights to return, to self-determine and to be considered part of the same group which avoided expulsion.

And that puts some of your other arguments in serious jeopardy.

Especially if the allegedly expelled part of the people have little or no familial connection to the said expelled part of the people. Converting to a religion does not change one's DNA.

 

[Shusha]

Not the ones out of Europe.

But you seem to fail to grasp the concept that you are supporting here, and, worse, failing to apply it universally. You are, in effect, saying that if an invading and colonizing force successfully expels or displaces part of a people then that part of the people are excluded from rights to return, to self-determine and to be considered part of the same group which avoided expulsion.

And that puts some of your other arguments in serious jeopardy.

Especially if the allegedly expelled part of the people have little or no familial connection to the said expelled part of the people. Converting to a religion does not change one's DNA.

DNA is NOT the basis for being indigenous. Culture is. Invading and colonizing cultures are specifically excluded from the definition of indigenous.

 

[montelatici]

Not the ones out of Europe.

But you seem to fail to grasp the concept that you are supporting here, and, worse, failing to apply it universally. You are, in effect, saying that if an invading and colonizing force successfully expels or displaces part of a people then that part of the people are excluded from rights to return, to self-determine and to be considered part of the same group which avoided expulsion.

And that puts some of your other arguments in serious jeopardy.

Especially if the allegedly expelled part of the people have little or no familial connection to the said expelled part of the people. Converting to a religion does not change one's DNA.

DNA is NOT the basis for being indigenous. Culture is. Invading and colonizing cultures are specifically excluded from the definition of indigenous.

So, the Jews are not indigenous as by your definition invaders can't be indigenous. Since today's Christian and Muslim Palestinians passively adopted what was required of the various invaders, including religion, They are the indigenous people.

But, besides indigenous, they are the "inhabitants" Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations referred to. People living in Europe were not.

 

[xotoxi]

Not the ones out of Europe.

But you seem to fail to grasp the concept that you are supporting here, and, worse, failing to apply it universally. You are, in effect, saying that if an invading and colonizing force successfully expels or displaces part of a people then that part of the people are excluded from rights to return, to self-determine and to be considered part of the same group which avoided expulsion.

And that puts some of your other arguments in serious jeopardy.

That's what has happened everywhere throughtout the world throughout all of history.

And what should be done to rectify it?

 

[Coyote]

Labelling Arab Muslim "Palestinians" an indigenous peoples stretches the definition of the term far past breaking point:

I strongly disagree.

“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

“This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:

a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them;

b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands;

c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.);

d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language);

e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world;

f) Other relevant factors.

“On an individual basis, an indigenous person is one who belongs to these indigenous populations through self-identification as indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group).

“This preserves for these communities the sovereign right and power to decide who belongs to them, without external interference”

Source


A culture of the invading and colonizing peoples, by definition, can not be indigenous.

The Middle East, the Palestinian area in particular, is characterized by waves of invasions over milliniums - each succeeding wave brings with it changes in culture/religion/language even though the SAME people stay on.

Given the definition above - there would be no indiginous people. For example, prior to the recreation of Israel - Hebrew was essentially a dead language, like latin, reserved for religion only. The Jewish culture varied widely, including the languages spoken.

 

[Shusha]

Coyote,

How would you differentiate between resident and indigenous? And why do you think that differentiation might matter?

 

[Coyote]

Coyote,

How would you differentiate between resident and indigenous? And why do you think that differentiation might matter?

I don't actually think it matters. I think "resident" is as important if not more, than "indiginous". It's very difficult to define and determine who is "indiginous" because there is almost always someone there before and each succeeding wave of immigrants or invaders alters culture/language/religion of the current inhabitents.

 

[Shusha]

Coyote ,

Also, please keep in mind my purpose. My purpose is not to deny anyone their rights. But to illuminate the necessity for a consistent standard to be applied to all peoples.

 

[xotoxi]

Coyote,

How would you differentiate between resident and indigenous? And why do you think that differentiation might matter?

I don't actually think it matters. I think "resident" is as important if not more, than "indiginous". It's very difficult to define and determine who is "indiginous" because there is almost always someone there before and each succeeding wave of immigrants or invaders alters culture/language/religion of the current inhabitents.

The indiginous people of Georgia are Cherokees. They were conquered by the Europeans and displaced.

 

[Shusha]

I don't actually think it matters. I think "resident" is as important if not more, than "indiginous". It's very difficult to define and determine who is "indiginous" because there is almost always someone there before and each succeeding wave of immigrants or invaders alters culture/language/religion of the current inhabitents.

The oldest, surviving, recognizable, pre-invasion culture. Not so difficult after all.

But I have no problem with your understanding that residence (current possession) of the territory trumps everything else. As long as that is applied equally. The problem that I am having is with those who want special rules to apply to the Jewish people. ie Palestinians have RoR, but the Jewish people don't. Palestinians are indigenous, but the Jewish people are not. Arab Muslims invaders and Roman invaders confer rights, but Jewish "invaders" confer no rights.

 

[montelatici]

I don't actually think it matters. I think "resident" is as important if not more, than "indiginous". It's very difficult to define and determine who is "indiginous" because there is almost always someone there before and each succeeding wave of immigrants or invaders alters culture/language/religion of the current inhabitents.

The oldest, surviving, recognizable, pre-invasion culture. Not so difficult after all.

But I have no problem with your understanding that residence (current possession) of the territory trumps everything else. As long as that is applied equally. The problem that I am having is with those who want special rules to apply to the Jewish people. ie Palestinians have RoR, but the Jewish people don't. Palestinians are indigenous, but the Jewish people are not. Arab Muslims invaders and Roman invaders confer rights, but Jewish "invaders" confer no rights.

Europeans that converted to Judaism are not indigenous to Palestine. Full stop. They are Europeans. The native people that continued to live in Palestine and converted to different religions for convenience or faith over the centuries are as close as indigenous as you can get in such a busy place like Palestine.

 

[Shusha]

Coyote,

How would you differentiate between resident and indigenous? And why do you think that differentiation might matter?

I don't actually think it matters. I think "resident" is as important if not more, than "indiginous". It's very difficult to define and determine who is "indiginous" because there is almost always someone there before and each succeeding wave of immigrants or invaders alters culture/language/religion of the current inhabitents.

The indiginous people of Georgia are Cherokees. They were conquered by the Europeans and displaced.

And I would fully support their right to self-determination and sovereignty on their ancestral territory.