[War & Business] The Etymology of Palestine

Debris of urban buildings in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, destroyed by an airstrike from the Israeli military. Gaza Strip = Reuters·Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] The word 'Palestine' originally comes from the term ‘Philistines,’ a people who appear in the Old Testament as the arch-enemies of the Israelite nation. Until the establishment of Israel after World War II, the term referred to the area encompassing present-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.

This place name began to be used after the Roman Empire suppressed the anti-Roman Jewish rebellion in 70 AD, abolished the Jewish Kingdom?which had existed in form only?and turned the entire region into a colony. After seven years of fierce fighting, the Roman army took control of Jerusalem, thoroughly destroyed the city, dispersed the Jews throughout the empire, and used the name of the Philistines?whom the Jews considered their enemies?as the place name, symbolizing that the Jews should never return to this land.

Originally, the term meant ‘people from across the sea’ in Hebrew. In short, it meant foreigners or outsiders. Archaeologists currently cannot determine whether the Philistines or the Jews arrived and settled in this land first, but they are presumed to have come from Phoenicia or Greek city-states, which were actively engaged in maritime trade at the time. In fact, the term does not refer to a single ethnic group; most peoples who had diplomatic conflicts with the Jews were recorded as Philistines.

Over the next 2,000 years, the rulers of Palestine changed countless times, and the current Palestinian residents have no blood relation to the inhabitants of Palestine during the Roman Empire. However, modern Israel again refers to them as ‘Palestinians.’ Jews who lived outside Israel for 2,000 years are considered indigenous, while the original inhabitants who had lived there for generations suddenly became outsiders overnight.

Originally, in the holy city of Jerusalem, the distinction between outsiders and natives was not strict. Even during the Crusades in the medieval period, visits, access, and mutual discussions among the three religions?Islam, Judaism, and Christianity?were free in Jerusalem, a shared holy site. Islam strictly forbids carrying weapons and fighting in the holy sites and allows people of other faiths to visit these places.

The reason why the conflict at the ‘Temple Mount,’ which triggered the recent clashes between Israel and Palestine, has drawn more international condemnation is because it could have been avoided if the Israeli authorities had not permitted extremist Jewish sects to hold the ‘Jerusalem Day’ event at the Temple Mount, commemorating the capture of Jerusalem during the Middle East wars.

The Dome of the Rock, with its golden roof located at the top of the Temple Mount, was built to commemorate the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s ascension, according to tradition. Historians speculate that Muhammad learned monotheism from Jewish rabbis while passing through this area during his childhood. If the rabbis who taught him had rejected him as a Philistine, one of the world’s three major religions might never have been born.