For the past 3000 years, who were the majority living in Palestine/Israel?

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m i

The "race" would be semitic. There's some question whether that's an actual race. In fact, there's a question as to what race really means, as applied to human beings. Race usually refers to obvious features (skin color, facial shape), and it's difficult to tell the difference between the people who inhabited that region and nearby regions. Semite is more often meant as a language subgroup, however, there are certainly genetic markers that frequently accompany the semitic peoples who continuously inhabited the region for the last 3000 years. Distinct genetic grouping doesn't mean separate race, of course.

Of course the people of the region have held many different religions over the 3000 years. For the last 500 years, the majority have been Muslims. It's a little dubious whether Jews were ever a majority prior to 1948, according to the bible there was a Jewish or Hebrew kingdom some 3000 years ago, however it was a very different religion (God had a consort, so it wasn't even monotheistic). There were other groups than the Hebrews even then, by 400 CE most people including former "Jews" had adopted Christianity (it's false that the Romans, brutal though they were in crushing revolts, forced most Jews into exile). By the 20th century, most people had adopted Islam. Obviously their religion does not affect their race.

According to Wikipedia, "The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern people originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites." Don't take Wikipedia as the absolute truth of anything contraversial, in this case, it seems to be a definition most can agree on.

However you define race, the vast majority of the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel would today be considered Palestinians, who undoubtably are of that "race" or genetic grouping that inhabited the region continuously for the last 3000 as well as 500 years. Jews of European origin mostly aren't, they're mostly descendants of people who converted to Judaism maybe 1000-1200 years ago in e.g. Khazaria and arrived in the last 100 years. Neither do many, probably the majority of Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin originate in Palestine/Israel - Judaism was heavily proselytized throughout the region before 1000 CE,

Vegeta

Palestinians including arabs and jews

the Jews of today are actually from Khazaria with no right to come there. they basically kicked the Muslims and Christians from there land, property and Business.

αησηумσυѕ ωιтн тнє тяυтн فلسطين

Jews have lived in the middle east since ages ago...but so have the arabs. and it was always known that this land belongs to the arabs

and palestine belongs to palestine

my sources are the Quran and the ahadith

most of the jews there today came from europe after the holocaust

naserq22

That goes ups and downs
WE WERE 100 % of population
came who ever such as Romans Greeks then we went to suburbs fought ,then we went back came some established Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem so we again have some aid from Arabs and we again made the 100% then the many invaders came and we were there Ottoman Mamlooks English Albanians French ,who ever!!!
and now its as you know
we are at the borders but we are the majority ,
in side green line there is over 1 500 000 in Gaza 1 500 000 in west bank over 1 500 000 ,and 10 yards on the northern borders in lebanon over 600 000 few yards east of river Jordan over than 2 000 000 , is it because some fool that draw a border line would turn us to minority??
Sabres of Paradise
===============
Thats funny 8000 years ago .even Jews in OT they do not say that , do you know the Jewish year what does it say?
according to years I mean since creation

harper

What race? The human race - with all its foibles.

Rich N

The Palestinians were living there before and after Judaism , Christianity and Islam

Bosco

Ethic Palestinians,approximately 20% Christian,usually Greek Orthodox and the other 80% Sunni Muslims. Jews enjoyed a slight majority in Jerusalem around 1900 but that was a result of concentration; in Palestine as a whole they were less than 1% of the population.

Moustafa Hussien Obama

Jews were always a minority in Palestine ( less than 5 %)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/israel_palestine_pop.html

Local Machine

When the first real borders of palestine were drawn on the map there was no jews around.
Only Arab folks.
That's why there are 100's of Arab towns that were destroyed so the jews can claim they were there first.
Dig this:
http://www.palestine-net.com/geography/cleansed/byindex.html
No wonder why everyone is so angry with them lies the jew posters keep on writing here.

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Abil Qamh

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al-Zuq al-Fawqani

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al-Sanbariyya

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al-Shawka al-Tahta

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Khan al-Duwayr

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al-Mansiyhiyya

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al-Khisas

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al-Zuq al-Tahtani

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Hunin

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al-Khalisa

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al-Mansura

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Lazzaza

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Madahil

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al-'Abisiyya

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Qaytiyya

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al-Na'ima

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al-Dawwara

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al-Salihiyya

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al-Hamra'

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al-Muftakhira

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al-Zawiya

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al-Buwayziyya

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Khiyam al-Walid

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Jahula

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Ghuraba

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al-Nabi Yusha'

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Qadas

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al-Malikiyya

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al-'Urayfiyya

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al-Dirbashiyya

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Baysamun

Nomad

i am fed up with everyone going back 3000 years to settle the question of isreal and palestine. the only thing that matters is that when the state of isreal was made who were living there and got displaced?
And the people who were living there were Arab muslims and christains. Who cares about religion/mythology? Who even knows whether all that nonsense is correct or just bunkum? religion is the opium of the masses after all.

*dodo* Palestinian and PROUD!!

there was always jews in palestine.... there was no zionists!!! before israel ever came into this world a jew, muslim, and a christian in Palestine were neighbors and lived happy.... then when israel and it's zionist came it changed! now israel is kicking out arabs from their houses and giving it to a jewish family....

unforsakenme

60 years ago, Jews weren't there.
But, around 3000 years ago, all three religions lived there peacefully.
But eventually Some Jews converted and stayed, while the rest of them moved out of that land. The Jews that converted to Islam stayed on that land till this very day.
Just as how Native American Indians lived here in America in the past.

Israel wiped Palestine off the map.
And murdered hundred of thousands of innocent families.
This dam Zionism made them believe for some stupid "Promised Land".
And Palestinians have not given up yet, they are still struggling and resisting their oppressor and occupation for their freedom, family and country.

Joël

100% Arabic. Jews didn't move to that region till the 20th century.

Mobius

There was once (or twice) a time when a Jewish nation inhabited ancient Israel as a majority and as a sovereign nation. Since then, for the most part, non-Jews have been the majority.

It's irrelevant.

The rights to a land don't inherently belong to any race. Nations are formed by the circumstances of history. In this case, the circumstances were:

1. Arabs were the majority population in the whole Middle East.
2. Jews, after centuries of mostly European persecution, wanted to return to their ancient homeland and establish a safe haven where they could defend themselves by being the majority.
3. They tried to do this by buying large tracts of land in parts of ancient Israel, and settling there. Many landowners willingly and legally sold them land. The British, who were then in charge of the land, permitted this.
4. Arabs resented Jewish presence for a variety of reasons. One important one was that a lot of land was sold out from under their feet by absentee landlords. In many cases, they were allowed to stay; in others, they accepted payment to relocate; in some, they were evicted, usually by the landlords in advance of the sale. An equally important reason was that many Arabs simply hated Jews, and could not tolerate the idea of Jews being in a dominant position.
5. The Mufti of Jerusalem, who hated Jews, incited his followers to attack them, and riots and massacres ensued, starting in 1920.
6. In response, the Jews built a defense organization.
7. The conflict grew in violence into what was basically an ongoing war, until the UN voted to partition the land.
8. The Jews accepted the arrangement, but the Arabs didn't. The Arabs announced their intention to annihilate the Jews, and invaded from all the surrounding countries. Many Arabs fled from their homes.
9. Israel won the war, and kept the land, which made a second war of annihilation strategically more difficult for the Arabs. I think the basic argument is, "if you try to kill me, you put your house in the game".
10. The Arab world has been trying to annihilate Israel ever since.

Many Arabs suffered a great injustice: they lost their private property in the war. The Jews captured it in the course of fighting off the injustice of their own annihilation by establishing a sovereign nation with defensible borders. They continue to defend their survival to this day.

The people who lost their property should be compensated financially so that they can start new lives. This is the best that can be done to right the injustice, short of slaughtering the Jews.

History might have decided differently. The Jews could have lost and been annihilated, and a different sovereign state would exist where Israel is today: Syria. And it still might happen. That's why all Israelis serve in their army until they are too old.

But I digress....

What was the question?

Alps

seeing that it was an arab land, I would say that arabs lived there almost predominantly.

[ ím pàkt ]

I love the fact what ''local machine'' has provided.

Palestinians always been the majority and
will always be there to be a proof of that.

Palestine

the whole middle east to start with is an arabic land, arabs have lived there ever since the start, but jews also lived there, (very small minority) that region was known as belad al-sham (translated into land of syria)

Jeffrey

Depending on the time period, it could be

the Jews, the Christians or the Muslims.

The Christians and the Muslims murdered many innocents in order to take over the land that belonged to the Jews.

Ambivalent can haz Arc Light!

We don't have population censuses continuously for the last 3000 years. When you insist on restricting to the current borders of the state of Israel, life gets complicated, because there wasn't a recognisable entity of that (very small) size until 1948. The definition of 'race' is distinctly dodgy, so it might have helped if you'd defined what you were meaning.

We can assume the Bedouin have been in the area that long. We know there have been Jews in the area through that time, although of course Jews are not a race but the practitioners of a religion. Annt has given you some interesting figures for Jerusalem. One thing we DO know is that Arabs weren't there until the 7th century.

And if you think people are upset by the question, could it, just possibly, have to do with the fact that the answer to this seems to be of crucial importance to you and some others in the attempt to 'prove' that Jews have no right to be there?

There quite clearly has been no 'race' in the majority for the last 3000 years. Things have fluctuated over the last 500. And your point is?

EDIT: Well, funnily enough, I don’t disagree that the Arabs have a right to be there, though our difference may lie in where ‘there’ is understood to be. There are many Arabs who are Israeli citizens, and of course most of the mandate area became Transjordan/Jordan, where we all agree Arabs have a perfect right to be (even though, oddly, it seems to be difficult for Palestinians to settle there…..). Jews have also ‘always’ been there. I don’t have a religious or secular belief that anyone has “more” right. I just happen to believe that Jews, who have suffered persecution on virtually every continent, need somewhere to be safe and Israel is what we’ve got. I have many criticisms of Israel’s government’s policy especially the ‘fence’ and how it’s cut Palestinians off from their olive groves etc. If you DO believe Jews have a right to be there, I’d be really interested to hear how you feel things should develop from here. The whole thing is a horrid mess and I am keen to understand any views that are constructive.

___

The Jews are relatively new to the region.

They showed up only 8000 years ago.

Rev. Kip

Palestine has never existed . . . as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.

The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". Philistines was migrant people from the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands who settled on the southern coast of the land of Canaan. There they established five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land known as Philistia. The Greeks and Romans called it "Palastina".

The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina" derived from the Peleshet.

In the First Century CE, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. After the failed rebellion of Bar Kokhba in the Second Century CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea. Therefore, he took the name Palastina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel. At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.

After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".

During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . " It was specified both that this area be open to "close Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected.

During the period of the Mandate, it was the Jewish population that was known as "Palestinians" including those who served in the British Army in World War II.

The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in Palestine, until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine "displaced" the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugees".

God Bless!

Arieh

The Bedouin.

3000 years ago it was Jewish. Then 2000 years ago the Romans took over and either drove the Jews into the mountains or to slavery in Rome.
The People left to use the land were few in number and were Assyrian.

larry_lime

If pagan Arabs had been living in Israel during the time of Jesus, they'd have been the first ones to have converted to Christianity. However, there is no mention of them in the New Testament! The fact is that they were still in Saudi Arabia. Kevin S. and Rev. Kip make a good point by noting that the Philistines with whom the Jews under King David interacted 3,000 years ago were NOT Semites and did not originate in this region! By simple logic, if the Jews could overpower the Philistines, they must have been in the majority!

Annt Hu DeShalit

At the turn of the 20th century, the Arab population west of the Jordan River (today, Israel and the West Bank) was about half a million inhabitants and east of the Jordan River perhaps 200,000.

The collapse of the agricultural system with the influx of nomadic tribes after the Arab conquest that created malarial swamps and denuded the ancient terrace system eroding the soil, was coupled by a tyrannous regime, a crippling tax system and absentee landowners that further decimated the population. Much of the indigenous population had long since migrated or disappeared. Very few Jews or Arabs lived in the region before the arrival of the first Zionists in the 1880s and most of those that did lived in abject poverty.
Most Arabs living west of the Jordan River in Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza are newcomers who came from surrounding Arab lands after the turn of the 20th century because they were attracted to the relative economic prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British in the 1920s and 1930s.

This is substantiated by eyewitness reports of a deserted country -- including 18th-century reports from the British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, French author and historian Count Constantine Volney (Travels through Syria and Egypt, 1798); the mid-19th-century writings of Alphonse de Lamartine (Recollections of the East, 1835); Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867); and reports from the British Consul in Jerusalem (1857) that were sent back to London.

A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.

On the eve of Israel’s 60th Independence Day, the country’s population stood at 7,282,000, according to figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Some 5,499,000 of the population (75.5 percent) are Jews, 1,461,000 (20.1%) are Arabs and the remaining 322,000 (4.4%) are immigrants and their offspring who are not registered as Jews by the Interior Ministry.

Winston Churchill observed in 1939: "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population." This is the modern real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At no time did the Jews uproot Arab families from their homes. When there were title deeds to be purchased, they bought them at inflated prices. When there were not, they worked the land so they could have a place to live without the persecution they faced throughout the world.

It's a great big lie that the Israelis displaced anyone - one of a series of lies and myths that have the world on the verge of committing yet another great injustice to the Jews. And a pity that this myth gets promulgated here on Yahoo Answers, where the facts are indeed available, but people choose to ignore them just to act out their hated of Jews.

.

marky

In Biblical times the area was the kingdom of king david, But since this time it has been Arab/Palestinian land. In1948 the Land was handed to the Jews by the UN and the state of israel was founded.

Kevin S

Before Jesus and During Jesus it was the Jews not the hebrews. Throughout history the area of palestine included Judea and samaria not the coastal areas (it's a recent designation). During Christianity it was Jews, Greeks and italians. Between those two an exile occurred, which is a debate whether the exile was that extreme. Even during the times it was a jewish state, many jews not the majority but many lived in the roman empire because of economic opportunities and possibly relief from one's stringent religion. The only proof of there existence you will find is archaeological data. Stone-ridden parts of talmud were found near Al Aqsa. Herodian stones are found in many places in Jerusalem. Jewish coins written in Hebrew with greek gods are found plentiful over Judea. No arabic has ever been found in Israel. A mosque although has been uncovered under lower sedimentary layers in Jerusalem. This mosque was known. It is near Al Aqsa. Solomons Temple is right under Al Aqsa due to the herodian stones under AL Aqsa but WagF does not allow any diggin...............I wonder why? Synanogogues have been found on Matzada.......near the western wall. Sanhedrin rooms have recently been found under the tunnel tours. Full Jewish Streets with roman pillars have been found under the arabic layers that were created after the 7th century and dated to over 2000 years ago. All arabic layers are dated way past the 7th century. Two bridges have been found (based on arabic writing) near Al Aqsa. All bridges lead to the western wall and out the western wall. There is a bridge under the arabic bridge which is the Jewish bridge. Therefore Jews used to be the majority but haven't been for many years, but the case is different in Jerusalem, where Jews have almost been entirely the majority almost all the time. History tells us that arabs CONQUERED not lived but CONQUERED the area in 7th century. Genetic studies have confirmed this because Palestinians are related to Jews but are more related to Saudi arabians due to the european and sub-saharan DNA, while Jews have north african and middle eastern DNA with an 8%European (where palestinians have 15%) which basically means greece, turkey, lebanon, kurdistan or Palestine. DNA cannot link to a specific area only to a region. If you read alittle, one will find out that arabic, as a language is relatively new. The culture is relatively new. People like to be believe that Caananites were arabs, but from what I understand arabs do not speak hebrew whereas the caananites did. In fact the god of the jews what many call Yahweh was the god of the caananites. Another name for him is El, which is the same in Caananite hebrew. The only difference was that he was a pantheon god but not anymore.

Lupines supports GEERT WILDERS

Well Israel has always had a minority of her people in Israel even when majority was living in diaspora. When you count the millions in diaspora praying to the East three times a day and otherwise supporting Israel "back home" then the numbers increase substantially. We are commanded to return home 3 times a year while G-d said Abraham's seed would spread to the ends of the earth then back again. So that is what happened. Any modern sovereign nation gets to decide who they let into their country, and there was always considered a Jewish nation, 3 times daily, 3 times yearly that is what we did. We are up to 13 million now. There were much more, but the Holocaust and the Crusades and the Inquisition and those crazy Jihadists you know, it all took its toll.

Palestinians I cannot say they occupied Israel. There never was a Palestinian nation. They were all considered Syrians, based out of Damascus, not Israeli and not Palestinians. They migrated there when the modern state of Israel was in formation, or to fight her in war. Even Haniyeh admits they migrated there.

"We all know the Israeli aggression will not be without consequences.We all know our people have been oppressed by the Israeli occupation, but that doesn't mean we don't have a right to live in a land we migrated to and settled in." Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas PM, 03 Feb 2009 Al-Aqsa TV

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it." - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not."
- Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, 1946
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria." - Rep. of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956
Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated: "The only Arab domination since the Conquest in the year 635 hardly lasted, as such, 22 years."
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Edit: Hi. I generally say cousin because it's a hostile offspring issue. What brother of mine would want to kill me down to the very last one of my offspring? None. If he did, then he wouldn't be my brother. Let me ask this question back at you then. If the Jewish nation had so many hostiles against her that dwindled her numbers down, and 13 million survived. Well, what about Ishmael's children? Arabs kill each other violently all the time! Sunni, Shia war war war etc. Ishmael and descendants were also living among hostiles. So what makes you think that Ishmael had 1.5 billion children like all these people are his descendants? Maybe, just maybe, only the non-hostile ones are Ishmael's true offspring. And those non-hostile Ishmael's children, sure, I can consider them my brother, no problem, they can co-habitat with me and my home is open to them. In fact that is part of my dream:

The Jewish-Arab Peace Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0odb0ZCXQ

And once again I am telling you, we have always been considered a Jewish nation. It is not my fault that modern people can't think "outside the box" and beyond modern recognized borders. We were always a nation, and our capital was always Jerusalem!

Scott D

there were 0 arabs living in palestine.

there were 0 jews living in palestine.

Palestine is not a place, and never was.

Israel, however, is.

prove me wrong.

The angels have the Arc Light.

3000 years versus 1300 years. Do you really need to ask?

Oh yes, of course, it's you. We know how strong your bias is.

If you consider the 7/8ths of the Mandate of 'Palestine' that became Jordan, then you remove any numerical 'advantage' that Ottoman-era Arabs might have had.

V Y..

In the Wikipedia you can read too many interesting things about these. (Israel, jiddis language, arabic languages etc.)

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