By Katie Dominy
Disclaimer: As was detailed in Part One of this series, the intricacies of Israel and Palestine (including the ancient history) are complicated, and sometimes even contested. Every effort has been made to ensure balance in this article, whilst simultaneously providing an overview of the ancient history of the region – which bears considerable importance in the current geopolitical struggle. In this article, we pay particular attention to the history of Jewish people. It is inevitable that, in this summary, certain periods of time have been omitted or only briefly referenced. However, The International has signposted further information via the links embedded into the article.
The previous article in this series began a tentative exploration of present-day demographics in Israel and Palestine. From the perspective of the international onlooker, it is striking how such a narrow strip of land is home to an array of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious groups. When we consider the ancient history of the region, the timeline is equally diverse.
Before we begin, it is important to note that what we presently refer to as the State of Israel and the State of Palestine (as formally declared by PLO leader Yasser Arafat) have only existed as official units since 1948 and 1988 respectively. However, to leave the analysis here would suggest that ‘existence’ only corresponds to the formation of a state unit. This would be a misleading claim, particularly as we are dealing with themes as fluid and historically-grounded as national and cultural identity – identities which ground themselves in the very abstract but important fabrics of social collective consciousness.
The Israel-Palestine geographical area of today – at the junction between the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, and Western Asia – roughly corresponds to the ancient Land of Israel in Judaism, as documented in the Jewish Old Testament. This ancient land (also known as the Promised Land or the Holy Land) was spread across part of modern-day Israel, Palestine (currently, the West Bank and Gaza Strip), western Jordan, western Syria, and southern Lebanon. The area also corresponds to the geographical region of Palestine, described by ancient Greek scholars as the land between Egypt, greater Arabia, and Syria.
The area was one of the earliest in the world to house human communities and agricultural cultivation. From these earliest roots until the present day, the region has been ruled by an extraordinary array of civilisations. This genealogy of rulers flowed from (but is not limited to) the Canaanites, the Ancient Egyptians, and Israelites and Judeans; to the Assyrians and the Babylonians; to the Ancient Greeks, the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the Romans; to the Byzantines, the Arab Rashidun, and the Umayyad Caliphate; to the Fatimid Caliphate, the Crusaders’ Kingdom of Jerusalem, and subsequently the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt; to the Ottoman Empire in 1516, whose rule of the region endured until the commencement of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1918 (more on this in subsequent articles).
Evidently, the history of this region is not a simple straight line chronicle of one people. This realisation is crucial if we are to adopt a nuanced, balanced understanding of the current Israel-Palestine conflict. The region’s history contains a hodgepodge of different civilisations, and a mixture of peoples with historical investment in the land. In short, we witness an ebb and flow of populations and regimes as the might of different geopolitical forces rose and fell throughout the ages.
This is not to suggest, however, that coexistence has always been harmonious between different groups. Indeed, when such a relatively small piece of land has been ruled and conquered countless times, inter-group friction is (unfortunately) unsurprising.
Moving Pieces
Significantly for our analysis, Jewish people (whose religious and cultural lineage can be linked to the region’s Semitic tribes four millennia ago) experienced bouts of forced migration as a result of these political animosities. Around 586 B.C.E., the Babylonian Captivity entailed the transfer of Jews by Babylonian decree, and constituted the first mass displacement of Jewish populations from the Middle East region. A section of the Jewish population was forced into slavery during this time, and whilst Cyrus the Great (the Persian king who later conquered Babylonia) gave Jews the option of returning to their land in 538 B.C.E., some chose to remain.
This began what is known as the Jewish Diaspora, or the location of Jewish populations outside of the Palestine region. These migrations were the result of both voluntary and forced movement. The Babylonian Captivity set the precedent for systematic Jewish displacement and targeted discrimination, which then resurfaced at numerous moments over the next two and a half millennia. From the initial spread of Jewish communities in more localised areas – including the Jewish population in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where 40% of the population was Jewish in the first century B.C.E. – around 5 million Jews lived outside of the Palestine region by the first century C.E. With both Greek and Roman rule of Palestine, Jewish populations moved into the Balkans and southern Europe. By the Middle Ages, Jewish populations were spread across Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia. Movements were often the result of anti-Semitism and persecution in host countries, and Jewish communities experienced differing levels of assimilation and integration within these settings.
In the present day, these migration patterns explain the multiple ethnic identities that fall under the umbrella of Jewish ethnicity, including: Ashkenazi Jews (with roots in eastern and central Europe); Ethiopian Jews (from the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia); Sephardic Jews (from the Iberian peninsula and later displaced to e.g. North Africa); and Mizrahi Jews (who remained in the Middle East and Arabia).
In the next article in this series, we will focus on the roots of non-Jewish populations in the region, especially those of Arab populations. We will explore Ottoman Rule, which will lead us to a discussion of nineteenth century geopolitics – the main catalyst of contemporary Israel-Palestine order.
Katie Dominy is The International’s Middle East correspondent.