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The Historical Context Of Palestine

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As the depiction of certain historical facts serves the sole purpose of justifying the importance of the historical context to the conflict, and not the merit of the events themselves, the following are only a few, yet highly applicable ones to the matter discussed. Briefly going back to ancient history, the region known today as Palestine was first known as Canaan, which derived its name from a people who inhabited it between 3000 - 1500 B.C. They were conquered by a greek people known as Philistines and also Jews, one of the semitic peoples, in the years 1200-1100 B.C. A hundred years later Jews defeated both Philistines and Canaanites, establishing Kingdom of Israel (Smith). This is important, because the first temple in Jerusalem was …show more content…

As Islam expanded rampantly in the years 630-730 A.D., Jerusalem and Palestine were incorporated into Islamic rule, exposing Jews to the Arab rule as well as initiating the clash of religions that thrives to the present day. In A.D. 691, Dome of the Rock, a Muslim temple memorating Muhammad 's ascension to heaven was built upon the ruins of the Jewish Temple, thus provoking the latter on the religious grounds, and initiating an ongoing dispute, one of the most prominent in present-day Old City of Jerusalem (Smith).
Toward the end of the Ottoman rule (1516-1918) over Palestine, the situation there began to destabilize, most notably following the Ottoman land reform law passed in 1867, which granted foreigners the right to own land if they agreed to pay taxes to the Ottoman government. The aim of the law was to force foreigners to submit to Ottoman jurisdiction in return for their investment in land in the empire. The ruling is essential to the current ethnic plight in Palestine, as it was especially in that region, that those regulations were applicated inconsistently, which opened the way for extensive outside investment and led to numbers of Palestinians acquiring lands, while giving them claim to fight the immigrants of the Zionist Movement (Tessler). The modern Zionism dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century and emerged from the nationalist upheaval as well as anti-Jewish prejudice in both Western and

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