Inspiration: invoking of the phrase”They are my people”.

Okay.

Every person on the planet has some ethnic, family, and religious identification.

I was thinking about the Druze — I think they are their own people, not yours, Mohammad Muneer Dandan. I know the ancient Samaritans are on the land too, but . . . they’re not your people either, are they? I don’t know the ethnography of the Palestinian Territories — in Israel for its citizens, it just doesn’t matter so much as the state maintains its Jewish ethnic majority (as North American and Europe maintain their Christian majority and atmosphere).

The idea that you would find the Jews at once mixed in Israel as well as reprehensible as a group sounds awfully, well, racist these days. You seem to be promoting some version of ethnic Palestinian purity as the standard for residence on land conquered and administered by many distinct parties over . . . centuries.

Were the Canaanites your people? The Phoenicians? Romans? The Crusaders from the west?

The history of Palestine is the study of the past in the region of Palestine, generally defined as a geographic region in the Southern Levant between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (where Israel and Palestine are today), and various adjoining lands. Situated at a strategic point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity,[1] the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The Palestine region or parts of it have been controlled by numerous different peoples and regional powers, including the Canaanites, Amorites,[2] Ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Tjeker, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, different dynasties of the Early Muslim period (Umayads, Abbasids, Seljuqs, Fatimids), Crusaders, Late Muslim dynasties (Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks), the British, Jordanians (1948–1967, on the “West Bank”) and Egyptians (in Gaza), and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Other terms for approximate geographic area include Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Southern Syria, Outremer and the Holy Land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine

Jews are Hebrews and the Hebrews are of the Land of Israel.

Any question about that should seem to the whole world — and the entire Muslim world that relates to the Moses mentioned by the Qur’an — surreal.

As regards Palestinian purity, go over the listings.  Your people — which ones from which period?

For the record, BackChannels believes the refugee generations of Gaza and the West Bank may well comprise a “Palestinian People” on the basis of more than 70 years of separation in the Arab Apartheid Palestinian camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.  For administration, the camps — they’re built these days — need to be integrated into the states that host them, and the refugees accepted and free to learn, live, and work like any other Arab citizen.  The more restive of Gaza and the West Bank are welcomed here to know their true history and their being a part of the world fought, traded, and traveled across the land from every other corner of the world.  Now THAT would be something to be — multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-national.

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