Where is Palestine?
- Uri Pilichowski
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
The Middle East conflict has raged for over 100 years. As a consequence of the current war in Gaza and the great deal of media coverage it has received, people with no ties to the region have Israel and Palestine at the forefront of their minds. While it is easy to find Israel on any map, Palestine isn’t shown. So, where is Palestine?
A Palestinian state has never existed
There has never been a nation that has existed with the name Palestine. The term “Palestine '' derives from the ancient Philistines. The source of the term as applying to the land of Israel is attributed to the Roman occupation of Israel in the year 132. After quelling the revolt led by the Jewish rebel Bar Kokhba, the Romans named the region of Judea (now the West Bank) as Syria Palaestina.
The History of the Palestinian Region
Judea was ruled by a Roman procurator who managed its political, military, and fiscal affairs. John Hyrcanus ruled the Hasmonean state from 134 B.C.E. through his death in 104 B.C.E. During his reign, the state vastly expanded, through conquest, to include Samaria, Transjordan, and Idumea (northern Negev).
After Constantine I converted to Christianity early in the 4th century, a new era of prosperity began for Palestine. Constantine added the southern half of Arabia to the province. At the end of the 4th century, an enlarged Palestine was divided into three provinces: Prima, with its capital at Caesarea; Secunda, with its capital at Scythopolis (Beit Sheʾan); and Salutaris, with its capital at Petra or possibly for a time at Elusa. It is clear that the province of Palaestina underwent several territorial changes in the 4th century CE, but the details and the chronology remain obscure.
In the early 600s CE, the Muslim armies began a conquest around the world, including Christian Palestine. The decisive battle that delivered Palestine to the Muslims took place on August 20, 636. Palestine, and indeed all of Syria, was then in Muslim hands. ʿUmar divided Palestine into two administrative districts, Jordan and Palestine. Jordan included Galilee and Acre and extended east to the desert; Palestine, with its capital first at Lydda and later at Ramla, covered the region south of the Jezreel Valley.
Palestine’s borders remained the same with little change until the end of the Ottoman Empire's control of Palestine (1516-1918).
Palestine Transitions from Ottoman to British Mandate Rule
After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War One, the British and the French, with America and Russia’s agreement, split the land mass of the Middle East, with England given the mandate over Palestine. To avoid war, the mandate included the land East of the Jordan River, spreading out until Mesopotamia.
Furthermore, Mesopotamia was given to Emir Faisal, and Iraq was established. Faisal’s brother Abdullah was given the land between the Jordan River and Iraq, now called Transjordan (soon to be shortened to Jordan).
After the establishment of Transjordan, the borders of British Mandate Palestine started at the Mediterranean Sea and stretched to the Jordan River. These would be the borders of the region called Palestine until the United Nations’ Partition Plan went into effect on May 14, 1948.
The land the UN partition plan designated to the Jewish state would be slightly larger than the Palestinian state (56 percent and 43 percent of Palestine, respectively), and the area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to become an international zone.
The Arabs of Palestine and surrounding Arab countries rejected the United Nations’ Partition Plan and went to war with the new State of Israel. The Arabs lost that war, and Israel’s borders expanded past the Partition Plan.
The territory of British Mandate Palestine was now divided into three parts, each under a different political regime. The boundaries between them were the 1949 armistice lines (the Green Line). The State of Israel encompassed over 77 percent of the territory. Jordan occupied East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine. (Once called Judea and Samaria, henceforth designated as the West Bank and annexed by Jordan in 1950.)
Egypt administered the coastal plain around the city of Gaza (the Gaza Strip) but did not annex it. The Palestinian Arab state envisioned by the UN plan was never established.
In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel won the territories of Gaza from Egypt, and East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. In 2005, Israel evicted all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and handed it over unilaterally to the Palestinian Authority.
Since 1967, the land mass from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River has been in conflict, but no Palestinian State has ever been established. Proponents of a Palestinian State advocate for its establishment on all or some of that area. Only direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians will ever lead to an end to the conflict.
Uri Pilichowski is an author, speaker, and senior educator at institutions around the world.