What was Palestine before, if not a country?

Given the dispute of Palestine as a polity, or a geographical concept, it may be of interest to you that a term cognate with Palestine was used from a very early age:

Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of Hebrew Pelesheth. The term "Peleset" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c. 1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the temple at Medinet Habu which refers to the Peleset among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III's reign, and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue. Seven known Assyrian inscriptions refer to the region of "Palashtu" or "Pilistu", beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to a treaty made by Esarhaddon more than a century later. Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.

(The extract is from the wikipedia entry on Palestine).

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Before Mandatory Palestine under British stewardship, Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire for around 400 years.

It should be noted that the name, "Palestine" comes into historical existence around the 130's AD/CE. It was the Roman Emperor Hadrian who renamed the land of Israel to Palestine-(or "Philistia"...from the Greek translation).

There was a second Jewish Revolt against Rome that proved to be unsuccessful. The Jews were expelled from Israel and the Diaspora period began-(lasting nearly 2000 years). Shortly after the expulsion, Hadrian removed the name, Israel-(which was comprised of the Judean, Samarian, Canaanite and Galilean regions) and created a new name....Palestine.

From the time of Hadrian, until the arrival of the Arabian Muslims-(about a 500 year period), Palestine was primarily populated by Romans and Greeks....(more specifically, Byzantines). From the time of Constantine, until the arrival of the Arabian Muslims, Palestine was primarily, a Byzantine, Eastern rite Christian land, governed by the Emperor based in Constantinople. However, around the mid 600's AD/ CE, the Arabian Muslims arrived in Palestine and defeated the Byzantine Christians, thereby assuming political control. But, the political control assumed by the Arabian Muslims eventually came under the Syrian Arab Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus-(I don't remember how long the Umayyads ruled Palestine). Papal led Crusaders arrived in Palestine during the Late Middle Ages and had warrish power struggles with the Arab Muslims over a period of centuries. By the late Middle Ages/Early Modern period, (again, I don't have the exact date), the Ottoman Turks conquered Palestine and had occupied it for well over 400 years. By the early 1900's, the British assumed control over Palestine, until 1948. Beginning in 1948, the state of Israel was born-(or historically speaking....reborn).

Admittedly, I am not a Middle Eastern Historian and my exact memory of the history of Palestine is perhaps a bit incomplete and a bit unrefined. Nevertheless, it should be known that the name, Palestine, has existed for nearly 2000 years and the Arab presence in Palestine existed for approximately 1300 years.

But, it should also be known that there was a small Jewish population who never left the Israel-Palestine region during the above mentioned Diaspora years. The Jewish-Samarian population, while very small in numbers, still maintained a consecutive historical presence in Palestine during 1800 plus years of Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Crusader, Ottoman and British imperial occupation. This is a historical fact that tends to be largely overlooked.

Palestine was provisionally recognised as a Nation by the League of Nations in the Mandate process (all class A mandates were "provisional" states). Though what this means is pretty debatable, doubly so with the Palestinian Mandate with the insertion of the Balfour Declaration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations_mandate "The first group, or Class A mandates, were territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire that were deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

The other answers are too complicated.

Prior to 1947, the area we now call Palestine was a British colony.

However, because the British Empire was a little tricky and played games with legalism, they called it a mandate. What is a mandate you ask? If you look in a dictionary, it says:

an order or commission granted by the League of Nations to a member nation for the establishment of a responsible government over a former German colony or other conquered territory

Note above is says "other conquered territory". The British were able to strip this land from the Ottoman Empire. For a broad overview of how this happened, see the movie Lawrence of Arabia. While not very accurate, it gives a general idea of how things went.

Wikipedia has a nice article about the legalistic games of the mandate. In a nutshell,

The British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922 from here.

150 years ago, Palestine was a dominion of the Ottoman Empire who basically didn't demand much from her subjects and was mostly incompetent. Of those who became known as the Palestinians, there were a few wealthy clans (Husseni, Nashishbi, pardon my spelling) who lived in cities and owned a lot of land and a lot of peasants who worked on the land. There were also some middle class merchants, craftsmen and peasants who owned land. Arabs were either Moslem or Christian. There were also Jews who tended to be in the middle class and some very wealthy Jews in Syria, Egypt, and Iraq.

Various groups of Europeans also settled in Palestine and there was a lot of German investment to build a railroad from Cairo to Constantinople. Nationalism, of which Zionism is a form, was also really popular at the time so many European Jews came and settled on lands purchased by large benefactors such as the Montefiores and the Rothchilds. Jewish charities also collected money from small people and used it to buy land, from the wealthy landowners. When Jews bought land, they wanted Jewish immigrants to work on it so they often fired their Arab peasant laborers and hired Jewish laborers.

In 1947 something called the Arab Higher Council formed in an attempt to prevent the Jews from forming a state in the manner of the UN partition which they opposed. Had they been successful, the Arab Higher Council would have formed a state, but disunity among the wealthy Arab clans and the loss of some of their charismatic leaders in battle caused them to fall apart. In 1948, Jordan and Egypt took over what the Jews did not get. The original 1964 PLO charter affirms that they did not consider the Jordanians to be occupiers.

Actually the problem is that somebody with a contrived mind in 1947 decided that instead of creating one state of Israel, there should be two new states: one for Jews and another for Arabs.

This plan did not account for the fact that there were already 21 Arab states of which 2 bordered the territory of the "Palestinian Arab state" that was to be created.

Another problem was that the territory reserved for the new Arab state was divided into two parts, enclaves which could communicate with each other only via Israel territory.

The third problem was that this new Arab state to be created had no natural resources, fresh water, arable land so to supply itself.

A peaceful solution could have been, instead of creating one more Arab state, just annex the West Bank to Jordan and the Gaza strip to Egypt. This would have benefited the Arab population in those areas because they would live in successful states which have all necessary for popular prosperity. It seems that those Arab countries did not object to this idea initially.

Yet the UN voted for this defective "two new states" solution. It seems that those behind this plan intentionally did not want a prolonged peace in the region.

The dead-born design of the adopted resolution brought numerous misfortunes to both Israeli and Palestinian people.

• According the solution Jerusalem should be placed under UN administration, even though it is populated by the Jews and a religious center of Judaism and historical capitol of Judea from the times of Roman empire. Uncertain status of Jerusalem makes the conflict between Jews and Arabs eternal and irresolvable (they even formally cannot negotiate over Jerusalem, for example, divide it somehow) until a newer, better UN resolution is passed.

• Israel suffers from much of terrorism but cannot close the border of the Arab autonomy because the two enclaves have no other connection than through Israel territory. International pressure insists on the border to be open.

• Palestine has no natural resources and in all their supplies, including electricity and fresh water depends on Israel. Most Palestinians also work in Israel because the Autonomy cannot provide enough jobs.

• Palestinians deprived of the right to live in a healthy and prosperous Arab state like Egypt and Jordan and instead destined to be confined on a 5-cent area territory that hardly can include and supply all the population, which by the way, grows very fast. They have neither normal citizenship, nor jobs and directed by the "international community" into fight with Israel as the only possible pastime.

• The geographical disjunction of the Gaza and the West bank led to the inevitable consequence: the power in those respective enclaves was seized by different and hostile to each other parties: Hamas and Fatah. There is no possibility for each of them to restore the autonomy’s political unity.

If Gaza was initially assigned to Egypt, it would be a successful and prosperous resort, and we would spend our vacations there just like we do in Hurgada and Sharm el-Sheikh.

It's hard to answer this ("What was Palestine before, if not a country") in a format that's not encyclopaedic, but I'll try some snippets:

1. No there was never a country/nation called a "Palestine".

2. More specifically about the name: it was a name given by Roman Empire to the territory they occupied and conquered from the Israel in the first century AD (the name taken from an ancient tribe of Philistines who lived in the area (5 cities) and were one of the main enemies of Ancient Israelis), though the term was also used earlier by other invading powers (Greeks, Assyrians).

   Just to clarify, Philistines were - according to the best archaeological and historical information - NOT in any way, shape or form related to modern Arab Islamic residents of the area. Their language was Indo-European and not Semitic.

   The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined Iudaea Province with Galilee and other surrounding cities such as Ashkelon to form "Syria Palaestina" (Syria Palaestina), which some scholars state was in order to complete the dissociation with Judaea (Wikipedia)

3. Ever since the desruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Roman Empire, there was never a sovereign state in the area till 1948. The area was always under control of some outside power, to whit: Romans, Byzantines, the Sunni Arab Caliphates, the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, the British. I won't bother with the dates which Wikipedia can easily provide you.

4. As best as I can tell, the ancestors of modern Arab Palestinians only arrived in the area in 636 AD and on, as part of Islamic conquest of the area. Note that the area was still populated by Jews at the time, though there was no Jewish state.

5. To be crystal clear, the reason Israel now occupies the territories commonly referred to as "Gaza" and "West Bank", is because they have been conquered as a result of a war started by OTHER countries (see below for that).

Now, as for your second question: "Are there other examples of similar situations where the UN has provided recognition in a volatile region?"

• No, the UN has never provided a recognition to an area of a nation which wished to secede without agreement.

  For example, Kurdistani areas in Turkey, Iran and Iraq; Basques in Spain; Chechens in Russia; Abkhazia in Georgia etc. For that matter, as far as I know even Kosovo isn't recognized as a state by UN. Neither is Taiwan.

• Moreover, I am hard-pressed to find a single example of a country being forced by the UN to give back the territory it had conquered in a war that was started by their opponents (which is exactly what happened with West Bank and Gaza). USSR/Russia holds German (Koenisberg) and Japanese (4 islands) territory they took as a result of WW2.

  Hell, many countries invaded and stole land as a result of offensive war and UN never bothered to object (Tibet by China, as an example).

  For that matter, nobody at the UN was calling West Bank and Gaza "occupied territories" and calling for their statehood between 1948 and 1967 when they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.

To cover another aspect that TED's answer touched on: the term "settlements" everyone uses. One of the example of these so-called "Settlements" is Hebron.

• Hebron was a Jewish city. As a matter of fact it was one of the first and among the most important cities in Israel due to its biblical roots.

• Past Roman destruction around 135AD, the city was destroyed, and Jews were not permitted to reside there under Byzantine Empire

• After Islamic conquests, Jews returned back to the city. Ever since then, Jews held a continuous presence there until 1929 Hebron massacre forced most of them to flee and 1936 when British kicked all those who were left out.

So... according to UN and everyone else, Jews building houses in a city that they lived in for several thousand years with minor breaks is a greater threat for peace than ... I don't know, teaching every schoolchild in the territories that killing Jews is a Good Thing.