During our 3500-year trek through time, we Jews metamorphosed from an upstart nation to a start-up nation. Our journey began with a promise, and today we are living the realization of that promise. Along the way there were obstacles, impediments and hurdles which we had to overcome. The following is a brief geopolitical chronology of where we came from and how we got to where we are today.

The Jews, after governing Israel for 1500 years, were  conquered and occupied by the Romans 2000 years ago. At the time, the Romans changed the name Judea to Palaestina in an effort to sever the Jewish people’s historical connection to the land. By using a name, derived from the Philistines, an ancient extinct enemy of the Jewish people, it revealed Rome’s desire to humiliate the Jews who had resisted Rome’s assault much more rigorously than expected.

However, it was not long before the Byzantines expelled the Romans in 395 CE.

Then the Ottomans expelled the Byzantines by 1453 CE.

The Ottomans ruled until 1920 when the League of Nations established the British Mandate for Palestine (1920–1948) following World War I to administer the former Ottoman territories.

During the British Mandate there were Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Muslims, Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Druze, and Palestinian Bahai, but there was never a Palestinian people or nation.

In 1948, the British Mandate ended and the UN established two areas, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. The Jews accepted the land apportionment and once again took governance over their allotted portion of their ancestral homeland, Israel.

The Arabs rejected the UN’s land apportionment and a coalition of five Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq launched a war against Israel. Badly under manned and under armed, Israel miraculously defeated those five Arab nations.

Take note, there was no Palestinian army taking part in the 1948 War of Independence because there was neither a Palestinian people nor a Palestinian nation.

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people, Judea and Samaria, was seized and occupied by Jordan and politically mislabeled as the West Bank. Then in 1967 Israel won back their lands during the 1967 Six-Day War. From time immemorial, Judea and Samaria, held and still holds deep religious significance for Jews as the site of ancient Jewish kingdoms and patriarchal sites. Israel has controlled Judea and Samaria since 1967, managing it alongside the Palestinian Authority amidst ongoing political disputes over sovereignty.

Today the State of Israel thrives while the Palestinian Arabs remain a nation-less group of perpetual refugees, the consequence of no Arab nation willing to have them as citizens, as well as their own refusal to negotiate over disputed territories which could result in the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Their intransigence is driven by their not wanting a Jewish State of Israel to exist, more than wanting a state of their own.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)