posted
I have seen and been engaged in discussions of the relationship between the Palestinians and their ancestral claims to the region that was once Canaan.
Since the Isaeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the largest issues in the Middle East this discussion has been incredibly politically charged.
On one hand their are claims of the Palestinians that they are descendants of the Philistines who once had soveignty over the region.
On the other hand some Zionists deny any claims to the existence of a soverign Palestinian state at any time in history, that there is no connection between the Palestinians and the Philistines and they sometimes even go as far as to say that the Modern Palestinians are more so the descendants of Arab invaders than anything. The belief is that the Palestinian population is a product of full scale replacement of the region and population genetics are often cited to say that the Palastinians are not signiicantly different from other Arabs and that Jews are closely related to them therefore they don't have a special connection to the land.
What I want to know if there has been any anthropological research on the relationship between the Ancient people and the Modern. Keita's research seems to conclude that the Arabs did not replace the original Egyptians but rather mixed with them. Is the same true for the Palestinians or are the Zionist claims more accurate?
Here are two webpages one discussing the history of Palestine from a Palestinian perspective and the other discussing the significance of the Palestinian identity from an Israeli perspective.
posted
Interesting, also what percentage of the Palestinians are actually Egyptians?
I understand that many people in Gaza are related or have relatives on the Egyptian side of the border and a good number do look like Egyptians.
Posts: 230 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Modern day Palestineans are an amalganation of many different people. I heard arguments also that Palestineans are mostly Syrians or Jordanians. Well, this is not exactly correct either. Before the establishment of Israel you had fellahin[regular Palestinean farmers] and you also had Bedouin Arabs. Some of the Palestinean fellahin were simply pre-Islamic populations;while others were imported there from Egypt. Since the establishment of Israel many fellahin fled their fields to live in Jordan or other areas surrounding like Syria and Lebanon.
Most of the bedouins are of recent origins,but you also had Bedouin Arabs that lived in this area at least during the Roman era under the Nabteans.
Palestineans=pre-Islamic populations[possibly Caanites/Philistines[even Upper Egyptians/Nubians] that amlaganted with Egyptians,Bedouin Arabs,Crusaders,Armenians,Greeks,and etc..
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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