“God then said to Abram, ‘I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.’”
(Genesis 15:7)
The prophet Abraham’s story is found in the Torah of the Hebrew bible, the Tanahk; in the Arabic Muslim Q’uran; and in the Christian Bible, in its Old Testament. Abraham is known as the patriarch of the Israelite people through Isaac1, the son born to him and Sarah in their old age, and the patriarch of Arabs through his son Ishmael2, born to Abraham and Hagar, Sara’s Egyptian servant.
Within Islam, Ishmael is regarded as a prophet and the ancestor of the Ishmaelites (Hagarenes or Arabs) and patriarch of Qaydār (Qedar, now Qatar). The Qatar peninsula is on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East, sharing its sole land border with Saudi Arabia.
Inhabitants of Qaydar are cited in the Hebrew and Christian Bible, and the Quran as the Qedarites, eponymous descendants of Qedar, second son of Ishmael, in turn son of Abraham. Some Muslim scholars claim that the Islamic prophet Muhammad was descended from Ishmael through Qedar.
The land known as Canaan was situated in the territory of the southern Levant, which today encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon. Palestine (then controlled by Israel and Judah) is situated in the southern Levant, as are parts of northwestern Jordan.
Historians trace Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel to the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, two Israelite kingdoms occupied the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (circa 722 BCE), and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE).
Note that the name “Jews” originates from the Biblical Hebrew word Yehudi, and in its original meaning refers to the people of the Tribe of Judah or the people of the Kingdom of Judah. The name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob.
A succession of conquerors of Judah exiled the indigenous Jews out of their land and despotically controlled those remaining in the country whose services and talents could be put to use by the autocratic regimes. Historical timelines show that under the various empires and the influx of a variety of ethnicities, the area of ancient Israel was predominantly Jewish until the Jewish–Roman wars of 66-136 CE. It was a long period of violence, enslavement, expulsion, displacement, forced conversion, and forced migration against the local Jewish population by the Roman Empire (and successor Byzantine State), and the beginning the Jewish diaspora.
By the time of the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 638 CE Jews still constituted the majority of the population until the Crusader forces came to capture, lose, and recapture Jerusalem, until their final ouster from Acre in 1291. In 1517, the Muslim Ottoman Empire conquered the region, ruling it until the British conquered it in 1917. The region was ruled under the British Mandate for Palestine until 1948, when the Jewish State of Israel was proclaimed in part of the ancient land of Israel. This was made possible by the Zionist movement and its promotion of mass Jewish immigration.
The Zionism movement was started in the late 19th century by Jews in the Russian Empire who called for the establishment of a territorial Jewish state after enduring persecution. In 1896, Jewish-Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl published an influential political pamphlet called The Jewish State, which argued that the establishment of a Jewish state was the only way of protecting Jews from anti-Semitism. Ottoman-controlled Palestine, the original home of the Jews, was chosen as the most desirable location for a Jewish state.
History.com relates the events:
In 1917, Britain issued the “Balfour Declaration,” which declared its intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Although protested by the Arab states, the Balfour Declaration was included in the British mandate over Palestine, which was authorized by the League of Nations in 1922. Because of Arab opposition to the establishment of any Jewish state in Palestine, British rule continued throughout the 1920s and ’30s.
Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews fought openly in Palestine, and Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means of appeasing the Arabs. As a result of the Holocaust in Europe, many Jews entered Palestine illegally during World War II. Jewish groups employed terrorism against British forces in Palestine, as they thought it had betrayed the Zionist cause. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution, referred the problem to the United Nations, which in November 1947 voted to partition Palestine.
The Jews were to possess more than half of Palestine, although they made up less than half of the population. The Palestinian Arabs, aided by volunteers from other countries, fought the Zionist forces, but by May 14, 1948, the Jews had secured full control of their UN-allocated share of Palestine and also some Arab territory. On May 14, Britain withdrew with the expiration of its mandate, and the State of Israel was proclaimed. The next day, forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded.
The Israelis, though less well equipped, managed to fight off the Arabs and then seized key territory, such as Galilee, the Palestinian coast, and a strip of territory connecting the coastal region to the western section of Jerusalem. In 1949, UN-brokered cease-fires left the State of Israel in permanent control of this conquered territory. The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war left the country with a substantial Jewish majority.
During the third Arab-Israeli conflict — the Six-Day War of 1967 — Israel again greatly increased its borders, capturing from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace agreement in which Israel returned the Sinai in exchange for Egyptian recognition and peace. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a major peace accord in 1993, which envisioned the gradual implementation of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process moved slowly, however, and throughout the 21st century, fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has resumed in Israel and the occupied territories.
On Oct. 7, 2023, militants from Gaza fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns, before breaking through the heavily fortified border fence with Israel and sending fighters deep into Israeli territory. There, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli authorities, in what has been described as the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (cnn.com, Oct. 16, 2023).
Following the attack Israel declared war and launched “Operation Swords of Iron,” striking what it says are Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. It also blocked supply lines of basic necessities to the Gaza population, including fuel and water. Thousands of both Palestinians and Israelis, military and civilians, have been killed in the Israeli counterattack.
How will this to-the-death fight between the sons of Abraham ever end? It is an ugly fight for identity and territory, a continuing re-enactment of a sibling claim for a stolen birthright, like Jacob cheating his older brother Esau of priority inheritance. The tragic irony of Jacob’s sons Ishmael and Isaac fighting for the Promised Land lives to today.
The Promised Land is in the mind and spirit, and the Chosen People are of a heart and soul that lives in peace and harmony with the world. For the sake of world peace, and in fairness to the other citizens of the world who have suffered direct and collateral damage by the centuries-old fight for “identity” and territory between brother-nations, there must be a cease-fire and truce brokered by power-nations — as in the 1948 settlement.
And it must be in the conscience of the warring nations to keep their promises to God and Man. n
1Isaac was the son of Abraham and Sarah, the father of Jacob (whose name was later changed to “Ïsrael”) and Esau, and the grandfather of the 12 tribes of Israel. He is the only patriarch whose name was not changed, and the only one who did not move out of Canaan, where he lived out his life of 180 years.
2Ishmael was the first son of Abraham through his wife Sara’s handmaiden Hagar (Genesis 16:3). It was an aging and childless Sara who had suggested, and the 86-year-old Abram agreed, that a practical way to have a child was through her young servant girl Hagar. Of course, when Ishmael was born, it caused enmity between the two women, until Hagar was ousted by Abram for the sake of peace. God saw Hagar’s suffering and promised that although this was not the child promised to Abram, He would nevertheless make Ishmael’s descendants into a great nation also.
Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.