US Senates applauded the Israeli Prime Minister’s 40 minutes speech 30 times!
Could Israel possibly wish for more than that?
Well, there is no harm in following certain politics and stand strong with certain friends and political allies. However the harm is in trying to rewrite history in a tailor made version that makes the wrong right and the right wrong.
If Jewish people are not foreign occupiers of the land, Israel certainly is.
In his speech before the US Congress, the Prime Minister of Israel said to his listeners, “if you know Samaria; the Jewish people are not occupiers”. And Jerusalem to remain the Capital of United Israel!
Well I am not sure how well most of the Senates who stood and applauded Netanyahu speech know Samaria and or the history of Jerusalem. But Samaria and Jerusalem was occupied by the Jewish people in the past to establish the Kingdom of Israel and again in the present to establish the State of Israel.
Samaria is now Nablus Mountains, and it is located in the Northern part of the West Bank. And according to the Bible it stretched from the Mediterranean coast to Jordan Valley. Samaria City was once the Capital of the Kingdom of Israel.
How this happened? And how the Jews came to this Land?
If we go to the roots of history and according also to what was mentioned in the Old and New Testaments about the first inhabitants of the region that is named Canaan Land, there were always people living in the area long before Ibrahim decided to move from his native city in Mesopotamia to Canaan and make it his home.
Of-course Ibrahim is the Father of the three main religions.
The Jebusites were also offspring of Canaan, and were settling in Philistine where they built the city of Jebus (Now Jerusalem) till it was later conquered by King David.
Aprachid (son of Shem), was the father of Eber who is the main seed of Hebrews.
From Eber came Joktan who is the main seed of Arabs.
The other son of Eber whose name is Peleg (brother of Joktan), settled in Babel, and the Book of Genesis marked that in his days "the Earth was divided", which was politically translated to the start of a “feud” between the two brothers (Peleg and Joktan).
As a result Joktan fled Babel to settle in the Arabian Peninsula. His descendents were Adnan and Maad, from whom Mohammed was a descendent. Prophet Muhammed goes to his roots and stops at Adnan, saying he does not wish to go further back?
From Peleg’s descendents was Abraham who had a son from Lady Sara called Isaac and a son from Lady Hagar called Ismail. Ismail was raised by Arabs and Isaac was raised by Hebrews and from him came Jacob, the father of the Israelites.
Abraham left Babylon towards Canaan land, and settled in a place called Shechem (Biblical name) which is now known as Nablus in Palestine.
Later, following the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua assembled the Israelites in Shechem and encouraged them to reaffirm their adherence to the Torah, and take the Promised Land.
According to Book of Genesis, God promised this Land to Abraham’s descendants.
This is may be why all three religions claim the Land.
By the time when Moses was born (around 1300 BC), the Hittite Empire was extended to most of Anatolia and parts of Syria and Canaan.
Although the Mesopotamian region maintained its independence through this period, it was not a power in the Near East, and mostly sat out the large wars fought over the Levant between Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and Mitanni, as well as independent peoples in the region. Assyria participated in these wars toward the end of the period.
Following the Biblical times, Exodus from Egypt happened in a time between 1400 and 1300 BC. During that period Assyria became the most powerful kingdom on Earth and Egypt lost its grip over the Levant.
Sinai was the first stop of Moses, and the Israelites refused to enter the “Promised Land”, (Land of Canaan) because they were afraid of the Giants “The Amorites”.
Moses could not enter the Promised Land and died at the eastern shores of Jordan River.
First Occupation
After Moses death, Joshua invaded Canaan and destroyed Jericho and from there he was able to lead the Israelites to several victories, securing much of the Land of Canaan.
The Israelites settled there till the time when King David came and the Kingdom of Israel was established.
The Jews consider David as the King of Israel and the Jewish people, but he is also a prominent figure to the Christian and Islamic cultures.
The Kingdom of Israel was always mentioned in history as the Northern Kingdom which is different than the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
It was a union of all the twelve Israelite tribes living in the area that presently approximates today the land of occupied Palestine by Israel.
Shechem was the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel. Afterwards it was Tirzah, which is now a little town near Nablus called Tal Al Farah.
King Solomon was the third king of the United Monarchy and the final king before two kingdoms split.
On the succession of Solomon's son, Rehoboam, in c. 930 BCE the country split into two kingdoms: Israel (including the cities of Shechem and Samaria) in the north and Judah (containing Jerusalem) in the south.
Israel continued to exist within its reduced territory as an independent kingdom until around 720 BCE, when it was again invaded by Assyria and the rest of the population deported.
When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom.
The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as the Babylonians conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple.
In 538 BCE, after 50 years of Babylonian captivity, Persian King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple.
Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple.
In about 445 BCE, King Artaxerxes I of Persia issued a decree allowing the city and the walls to be rebuilt.
When Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, Jerusalem and Judea came under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III.
In 63 BCE, Pompey the Great of Rome captured Jerusalem, incorporating Judea into the Roman Republic.
As Rome became stronger it installed Herod as a Jewish client king.
In 4 BC Herod's son, Herod Archelaus was allotted by Caesar Augustus the greater part of the kingdom (Samaria, Judea, and Idumea) with the title of Ethnarch (Ruler) until 6 AD when Judaea province was brought under direct Roman rule at the time of the Census of Quirinius, which was the time when the Roman provinces of Syria and Lydia were enrolled by the Roman Empire for tax purposes.
Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was appointed governor of Syria, after the banishment of Herod Archelaus and the imposition of direct Roman rule on what became Iudaea Province (the conglomeration of Samaria, Judea proper, and Idumea).
In Christianity, the Gospel of Luke connects the birth of Jesus to a worldwide census in which individuals had to return to their ancestral cities.
Jesus' mother Mary and step father Joseph, travelled from their home in Nazareth, Galilee, to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
This census explains how Jesus, a Galilean, could have been born in Bethlehem, the city of King David.
When Romans conquered the Levant shortly before the time of Jesus, they took the name, 'Philistia' and applied it to the entire region that is south of Canaan Lands, including the land occupied by the Jews and their neighbors. It is from this word, 'Philistia,' that we get our modern English name 'Palestine.'
Palestine at time of Jesus was part of the Roman Empire, which controlled its various territories in a number of ways.
Jews were not the only ones to move west into this new area of influence. Native Mesopotamians also migrated on a large scale. In fact, the region of western Syria had become so racially "Babylonian" by the end of the Seleucid rule, that Strabo the geographer of the 1st century B.C.E. said the peoples of Mesopotamia and those of Syria were then a homogeneous group.
Mesopotamia by the 1st century BC, the Arabs had replaced the earlier people in the south and made up a third of the country (Strabo).
Christians refer to Palestine as the Holy Land because it was the scene of Jesus' life. It is also holy to Hebrews, and Muslims.
Ancient Palestine lay in both the geographic and cultural center of the known world, surrounded by such great ancient civilizations as the Hittite, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, and the Mediterranean civilizations to the west.
At the time when Jesus was born, the Jews understood the world to be divided into two types of people: Jewish and Gentile (non-Jew). The Jews worked hard to disassociate themselves from the Gentiles.
Jerusalem was center of the Christian Church in the 1st century, because it had the prestige of being the city of Christ's death and resurrection and the center of the Apostolic Age. But it became decentralized and the 2nd century witnessed fierce attacks on the Apostles.
Islam revived the term (Hanif) that refers to an era prior to the advent religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Islam it refers to the pre-Islamic people in the period of (Jahilyah) or the Age of Ignorance, who rejected polytheism (Shirk) and retained the tenets of the monotheist religion of Ibrahim.
In other words Islam considered Ibrahim neither Jew nor Christian, but referred to him and his son Ismail as the first Muslims.
Muslims believe that Ibrahim and Ismail built the Ka'aba in Mekkah, and they are the ancestors of Arabs.
The Sassanid and Byzantine Empires collapsed under Muslim conquests, which reacquired the lands of Egypt, Palestine and Syria.
Jews and Christians eventually lost their influence in these territories.
Romans re-named the Land of Canaan; Palaestina, and also re-named the area including Negef, Sinai and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III.
By 635, Palestine, Jordan and southern Syria with the exception of Jerusalem and Caesarea (Quisaryah) were in Muslim hands. Quisaryah shortly was lifted but resumed after the Battle of Yarmouk untill it fell in 640.
Muslims then decided to take Jerusalem, and the city rulers conditioned their surrender only to Caliph Omar bin Al Khattab in person, who came and took the keys of the city.
Syria was divided by the Muslims into four districts: 1- Jund Dimashq Al Sham(Damascus). 2- Jund Hims (Homs). 3- Jund Al Urdun (Jordan) and Jund Filastin (Palestine). A fifth district was later added to Palestine; Jund Qinnasrin.
In Arabic, the area approximating the Byzantine Diocese of Palaestina I in the south (roughly Judea, Philistia, and southern Jordan) was called Jund Filastin (meaning "the military district of Palestine", as a tax administrative area), and the Diocese of Palaestina II in the north (roughly Samaria, Galilee, Golan, and northern Jordan) Jund al-Urdunn. Land of Canaan
Muslims considerslims consider themselves the natural successors of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the other Prophets, and this is why Palestine was and still is of extreme significance.
The Jews and most of the Christians welcomed the Muslims after they had been severely oppressed in the aftermath of the wars with Persia.
Jews especially enjoyed more freedom under Muslim rule than anywhere else in the world. They were granted in Palestine considerable autonomy to make and enforce their own religious, judicial and social rules. Many Christians and Jews held important posts under various Muslim Caliphs.
Muslims removed the restrictions that Romans and Byzantines had placed on the right of Jews to visit and inhabit Jerusalem.
When Abd Al-MAlik Bin Marwan became Caliph, he ordered to build the Dome of Rock near Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Later Al Aqsa Mosque was rebuilt by orders of Caliph Walid Bin Abd Al-Malik.
The site where the Dome was built is also known in Judaism as the Foundation Stone, the spot where Jacob saw in his dreams a ladder to the sky that he climbed and God gave him the name Israel.
Muslims believe that this is also the spot from where Muhammad ascended to heaven in the course of a night journey.
By building the Dome of Rock, Muslims actually were expressing their reverence for Jerusalem, as city of the Prophets from Abraham to Muhammad who according to Islam is the "Seal of Prophets".
Christians and Jews under Umayyad rule were given the official title "People of the Book" with reference to the common roots they share with Muslims.
Jerusalem had been for centuries under Muslim rulings, and some Christians thought that it is time to get back the Holy City to Christian authorities.
The idea of Holy War came after many Western Christians cut out red crosses and sewed them on their tunics
The crusaders under Godfrey marched towards Jerusalem under Raymond St Gilles. They reached the Holy City by early 1099.
Godfrey ruled for one year and died. His brother Baldwin of Edessa succeeded him, and was the first person to take the title King of Jerusalem.
At the Battle of Hattin, Salah Eddin faced the combined forces of the Crusaders, he made his decisive victory against them and captured most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by July 1187. This battle was a turning point in the history of the Crusades. Muslim army captured every Crusade city and all Jerusalem fell to Salah Eddin by October 1187.
Upon the capture of Jerusalem, Salah Eddin summoned all Jews and sent them to resettle in the city.
In 1228 Fredrick tricked the Egyptian Sultan of Ayyubids, who was facing a fierce rebellion, in a treaty to cede Jerusalem to the Franks, along with a narrow corridor to the coast. In addition Frederick had Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa and Bethlehem. Muslims retained control over Temple Mount, Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. The Transjordan castles remained in the Ayyubids hands. The treaty made for 10 years.
However in the years to follow the City fell to the Khwarezman Turks, the Egyptians and the Tatars who handed it to the Mamluks.
The Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent took Jerusalem in 1517, and the city enjoyed prosperous period under his rule. Its huge walls around the Old City were rebuilt and it was also reckoned as the capital city of Palestine.
During the Ottoman Reign Palestine and Jerusalem enjoyed a religious and political peace. Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in harmony together.
The Second Occupation
After WWI, Samaria, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, was entrusted by the League of Nations to Britain as a British Mandate of Palestine. Palestine was under the British Rule.
In 1948, the UN adopted the Partition Plan of Palestine to two states Jewish and Arab, with Jerusalem-Bethlehem area being under special international protection. To resolve the plight of Jews displaced as a result of the Holocaust, the Palestinians had to be displaced. Flows of Jews came to Palestine to establish the State of Israel.
After 1948 Samaria and Judea were incorporated with Jordan, and the territory was renamed the West Bank.
The Third Occupation
In 1967 Israel took Samaria (West Bank) and Jerusalem, during the six day war along with other lands occupied from Egypt and Syria.
In 1988 Jordan ceded control of the West Bank to PLO and this was confirmed later by the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty of 1993. However Jordan recognized the Palestinian Authority as sovereign in the territory, and later in Oslo Accords the administration of "some" of the territory of Samaria was transferred to the Palestinian Authority.
It might be true that the Jewish people are not occupiers of the Samaria and the rest of the Palestinian lands because they were part of the inhabitants through out history, but Israel certainly is.
History witnessed Jews and Arabs living together at all times, and also witnessed many attempts by Jews to control the land politically using diplomatic and military methods.
What the American Lawmakers want to witness, after they have witnessed the elimination of Palestine in 1948, and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967, and the agony of the Palestinians in their homeland and outside?
What painful compromises Mr. PM is referring to, when he is allowing a “Palestinian State” with borders he alone draws, with people he alone chooses and with laws he only makes?
What does he mean that Jerusalem is the capital of United Israel?
Can the US Senates explain that?
And yet they hail and applaud….. Strange!
Sami Cherkaoui
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