An indigenous view of the spiritual and cultural history of Palestine, from the Alternative Tourism Group.

Palestine:

Spiritual and Cultural Centre for Humanity

The first adventure of the human mind in its struggle with nature took place in Mesopotamia and Syria. Palestine was thus at the centre of this interaction since the dawn of history.

Man inhabited Palestine throughout history — from the Stone Age, 200,000 years ago, during the Copper Age in 4000 BC, until the Bronze Age, in 3200 BC. Since the dawn of history (3000 BC), Semitic migrations to Palestine from the Arabian Peninsula began: the Amorites and the Canaanites were the first to migrate to Palestine. Then came the Jebusites, the Aramites, the Moabites, the Ammorites and the Nabataeans. The Hebrews came around 1020 BC.

From 1800 BC on, Palestine was known as The Land of Canaan. In 800 BC, one of the Assyrian kings called it Philistia. In the third millennium BC, the Amorites built the city of Jerusalem and named it Ur Salem, that is, the city founded by Salem. In 1800 BC, it was inhabited by the Jebusites, who named it Yabus.

With the evolution of man from those stages of early society to more complex social formation, Palestine became the cradle of man’s civilization in its material and spiritual dimensions. It created a stage for the building of human history, for human vision, philosophy and values. In the hardship of the struggle for survival, there were born both the questions and the search for answers to those questions relating to birth, life and death; also, questions for understanding the movement of nature were born: the succession of the seasons, floods, earthquakes, movement of the planets, details about the sea, plants and animals.

Man attempted to understand all the above, to interpret that understanding, and to delineate his relationships to it. With the development of the economic-social-cultural reality, human awareness increased, as did beliefs and philosophies. Innumerable facts are found today in remains and excavations spread out in Palestine: stones, flint and metal tools, pottery, bones, sculpted objects, drawings, dwellings, caves, burial places, dolls, temples and cities. In the context of this historical process, the early myths and religious beliefs materialized. Hudad, the god of storms, Ano, the god Shemash (the god of the sun), the god Ba’al and the goddess Ba’ala appeared.

By virtue of the position occupied by Palestine on the geographical level, both linking East and West and as a cradle of civilization, it formed a vast basis for interaction on all levels with neighboring civilizations (including the Pharoanic, Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hellenistic and Roman civilizations): whether social, cultural, religious or economic. In the framework of this interaction, Palestine influenced other cultures and was influenced by many cultures. This explains the relationship and similarity manifested in the mythologies of the Creation, which appeared in Iraq, Persia, Greece and Palestine. They are all based on the same epistemological ground and civilization in man’s attempt to understand himself, to understand life and death, and to understand his relationship with nature.

As human society progressed economically and culturally, so did its epistemological view develop and mature. This maturity was crowned by the emergence of the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These religions, inasfar as they constituted a qualitative development in human thought and experience, were based at the same time on those experiences and that knowledge accumulated by man in the course of his historical-social existence. This presence was intensified in Palestine since it is a center for civilizations, cultures, philosophies and religious beliefs.

Judaism appeared in Palestine by the end of the second millennium BC. Then, Christ was born in Bethlehem. Thus, a modern history in the development of humanity began, whereby Christianity spread in Palestine and Syria during the first century AD. By the end of the ninth century AD, Islam was born, with the appearance of the Prophet Mohammad in the Arabian Peninsula. The Islamic conquest of Palestine took place in 636 AD, following the defeat of the Romans at the historic battle of Yarmouk. Since that date, Palestine has been under Islamic rule with the exception of the periods of the Crusader invasions at the beginning of the second millennium AD. These invasions continued for nearly 200 years. Despite this, the majority of the Arabs of Palestine are not descendants of the newcomers who came here with the Islamic conquest, although they intermingled and later became integrated with them. Rather, their relationship with the land goes back to the dawn of history.

With the establishment of the three heavenly religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Palestine — and especially Jerusalem — became a symbol and the address for the presence of these monotheistic religions. So religions and religious beliefs are interconnected in the chain of development of man’s awareness and experience; its roots extend to the depths of history. Each emerging religion was based on previous beliefs and was affected by the surrounding religions and nations. It is therefore more a process of communication and interruption, integration and extradition with other religions. This is emphasized by the basic principles common to most religions concerning the Creation and evolution and man’s relationship with others and with nature.

Because of all of this, it is natural that all heavenly religions attempt to maintain and reinforce their presence in Palestine to defend their holy places (the Temple for the Jews, the Nativity Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Christians and al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock for Muslims). This presence and competition in as much as they indicate the spiritual status of Palestine in human awareness and development, do, on the other hand, restrict the status of Palestine and its great experience of human civilization to religious dimensions alone. These dimensions were also exploited to achieve political, imperialistic goals, far from the interests and rights of the inhabitants of Palestine and the native builders of its civilization.

In fact, most sources of the history of Palestine derived from European and American archaeologists and scholars of ancient history. There has been emphasis on narrow starting points in studying the history of Palestine, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when most reports were written by fanatic, theological scholars. In the second half of the nineteenth century, excavation societies came to consider the Old Testament as the starting point for study.

This emphasis on the religious dimension, especially the Biblical dimension, in the study of the history of Palestine, led to the negligence and marginalization of archaeology, excavations and all evidence of civilization which indicates the depth, diversity and richness of the civilization of the native inhabitants of Palestine. This includes the contribution of Palestinian civilization in the areas of architecture, agriculture, industry, culture and the development of all social structures and their relations with surrounding civilizations.

The deliberate overlooking of this main dimension reflected a conscious process undertaken in order to justify imperialist claims to control Palestine and to use it as a bridgehead to the Middle East, especially latterly by the Zionist enterprise. There has been an intentional, deliberate merger between the Jewish religion as a natural element in the development of Palestine’s culture and civilization, indeed much like all other religions and beliefs, and the Zionist project, which merger has sought to justify the colonization of Palestine. It is as if the history of Palestine began only with the emergence of Judaism. This is absolutely at odds with all religious and cultural facts in Palestine.

Nobody argues about the status of Palestine with its holy places and symbols for all three religions and their various denominations (whether for Jews, Christians or Muslims). However, the defect lies in the attempt to connect the history of this land, the existence of its people, its civilization and history with this or that religion, and transforming all of this into political manipulation which contradicts the interests, rights and history of the native Arab inhabitants of Palestine regardless of their religious or sectarian affiliations.

Palestine throughout the different ages of history has developed a civilization incubator for all civilizations and religions. The three monotheistic religions came at very late stages compared to the history of Palestine and its people, who continued cultivating the land, inhabiting it, hewing rocks, and decorating caves with drawings which reflected their early dreams and beliefs.

We hope that there will be an end to the suffering of Palestine and its people, which is ongoing as a result of the Israeli Occupation. We hope that Palestine continues its progress, and that it remains a symbol and a guiding light to the world, with its holy places, archaeological sites, and history which extends to the depths of human experience. Every person in this world will find in Palestine some intrinsic part of himself, because this land was an open cradle for the early adventures of humankind.