Arab Muslims, including Palestinian Muslims, like all Muslims in general, are typically ignorant of many things concerning not only their own religion but also their own roots.
For instance, they are ignorant of the fact that Islam was founded on bloodshed and armed conquest initiated by their very own prophet, Mohammad, Islam's first Caliph, who converted the whole of the Arabian Peninsula from the various pagan religions its people practised to Islam by means of the sword, an endeavor known as Islamic Jihad, or holy war, an ancient, primitive, barbaric and bloodthirsty ritual passed down from generation to generation since the times of the first seventh century A.D. Rashidun Islamic Caliphate (632 - 661 A.D.) to the sixteenth to twentieth century A.D. Ottoman Caliphate (1517 - 1924 A.D.) and even until this very day [Boko Haram (northern Africa)|, Abu Sayyaf (South-East Asia), Al Qaeda (Pakistan), Al Shabaab (Africa & Yemen), the Taliban (Afghanistan), ISIS (the Middle East) and many, many more].
Yet, they like to refer to it, Islam, this religion founded on bloodshed and armed conquest, as a religion of peace. But that, this blind ignorance of theirs, is another story.
Now, consider the land of Canaan, or what is now southern Lebanon, western Syria, Israel including the West Bank and Gaza, western Jordan and the northern tip of Egypt today, and the Canaanites, the original and native inhabitants of Canaan comprising various tribes or peoples known as the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Hittites, the Medianites, the Edomites, the Arameans, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivittes and the Jebusites.
[map of Canaan today] [see link below]
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AUzAFNqeljwIQIGpEuTW-7YGbTq9RBPxTen3EPMRF9J36vvYOpI4ZMI/
According to historical records generally accepted by scholars, academicians and historians, Canaan was occupied by the Jews, or Israelis, from approximately 1000 B.C. onwards. According to biblical accounts, however, it was given to them in the form of a divine inheritance, which they gladly accepted and took by force I might add, and which might also explain why they will fight tooth and nail to keep it, but that, like their claims to being the original landowners of Israel, alas, is another story too.
The first appearance of Arab Muslims followed the birth of the Islamic caliphates from the time of Mohmmad, the first Caliph, in the seventh century A.D. (629 - 632 A.D.) onwards, when what was then Israel was eventually conquered and occupied by the armies of the expanding Arab Muslim Empire.|
However, it was only after the Crusades (1099 - 1291 A.D.) when was then Israel became predominantly Arab Muslim, a trend which continued until it eventually became part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 A.D. onwards and lasted until the British conquest in 1918 A.D.
Interestingly, Gaza itself, center stage of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has a very diverse and complex history.
Spanning some 4,000 years, Gaza was ruled, destroyed and repopulated by various dynasties, empires, and peoples.
Originally a Canaanite settlement, it came under the control of the ancient Egyptians for roughly 350 years in 3300 B.C. before its subsequent conquest by the Philistines followed by the Assyrians followed by the Romans followed by the Bedouins followed by the Greeks (first the Syrian-based Seleucids, then the Egyptian-based Ptolemaics) followed by the Hasmoneans (a ruling dynasty of Judea) followed by the Romans again followed by the Arab Muslims followed by the Crusaders followed by the Arab Muslims again under Saladin followed by the Mamluks followed by the Ottoman Turks and finally by the Brits in 1918 A.D.
Last but not least, let's not forget about the Arabs and where they fit into all of this.
The history of the Arabs begins in the mid-ninth century B.C., which is the earliest known attestation of the Old Arabic language. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; they went from the Arabian Peninsula to Mauritania (north-west Africa). Original Arabic tribes originated in what is now Hejaz, Najd (both in Saudi Arabia) and Yemen and then spread to the Levant (present-day Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey) to establish what is known the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms, in which they began to appear in the southern Syrian Desert from the mid-third century A.D. onward, during the mid-to-later stages of the Roman and Sasanian empires. Tradition holds that Arabs descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham. The Syrian Desert is the home of the first attested "Arab" groups, as well other Arab groups that spread in the land and existed for millennia.
Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic and settled Semitic people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, North and Lower Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Kuwait, and parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey). Today, "Arab" refers to a large number of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to the spread of Arabs and the Arabic language throughout the region during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. The Arabs forged the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750) and the Abbasid (750–1258) caliphates, whose borders reached southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history. In the early 20th century, the First World War signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled much of the Arab world since conquering the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517. This resulted in the defeat and dissolution of the empire and the partition of its territories, forming the modern Arab states. Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.
Origins
Arabs are first mentioned in Biblical and Assyrian texts of the ninth to fifth centuries B.C. where they appear as nomadic pastoralists inhabiting the Syrian Desert. Proto-Arabs are presumed to have originated from what is now modern-day Hejaz and Najd in Saudi Arabia. Arabs spread from there to the central and southern parts of the Levant, sometimes replacing previously spoken Semitic languages.
The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam. Some of the settled communities in the Arabian Peninsula developed into distinctive civilizations. Sources for these civilizations are not extensive, and are limited to archaeological evidence, accounts written outside of Arabia, and Arab oral traditions later recorded by Islamic scholars. Among the most prominent civilizations was Dilmun, which arose around the 4th millennium B.C. and lasted to 538 B.C., and Thamud, which arose around the 1st millennium B.C. and lasted to about 300 C.E.. Additionally, from the beginning of the first millennium B.C., Southern Arabia was the home to a number of kingdoms, such as the Sabaean kingdom, and the coastal areas of Eastern Arabia were controlled by the Parthians and Sassanians from 300 B.C.
[Source of Info: Wikipedia]
