by Amb. Alan Baker
Vol. 14, No.
8 March 23, 2014
- Palestinian leaders are manipulating the history of geographic Palestine/Land of Israel. They have manufactured a curious claim, expressed recently by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, that they are descended from Canaanites and are therefore the indigenous people of the area, present before the emergence of the Jewish people around the year 1500 BCE.
- Saeb Erekat’s family is Bedouin. According to Bedouin genealogy, the family is part of the Huweitat clan which originated in the Hejaz area of Saudi Arabia, arrived in Palestine from the south of Jordan, and settled in the village of Abu Dis in the early twentieth century.
- Several leading scholars of Middle Eastern studies and Islamic history have confirmed that the Palestinians do not have ancient roots in the area and are trying to invent origins for themselves that predate the Jewish people’s presence.
- They explain that most of the Palestinians arrived as part of the waves of immigration that began in the nineteenth century at the time of the emergence of Zionism, attracted by employment opportunities and economic benefits.
- The historical presence of the
Jewish people in the “Holy Land” is well-documented, not only in the
scriptures of all three monotheistic religions, and visible in extensive
archeological remains, but also in historic writings by early Greek,
Roman, pagan, and other visitors to the area. The fact that Christianity
emanated from Judaism is further proof of the presence of a thriving
Jewish community in the area.
Manipulating History for Political Purposes
Aside from the
topical and pragmatic issues on the negotiating table between Israel and the
Palestinians – borders, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem, water, and security
arrangements – there is a far deeper discussion that is not taking place in the
negotiating room but in the international arena. This discussion involves the
issue of historical narratives and the basic question of historic rights to
geographic and historic Palestine.
Palestinian leaders
are manipulating their history in the land for political purposes. They have
manufactured a curious claim, expressed recently by Saeb Erekat, the chief
Palestinian negotiator, that they are descended from Canaanites and are
therefore the indigenous people of the area, present before the emergence of
the Jewish people around the year 1500 BCE.
Erekat, the
chief Palestinian negotiator, has already established an international
reputation for stretching the truth. Many Israelis recall during Operation Defensive
Shield in 2002 when Erekat went on CNN to assert that Israel had killed “more
than 500 people” in Jenin in a “real massacre,”1 adding that 300
Palestinians were being buried in mass graves. It soon became clear that in
combat operations at the time, the Palestinian death toll in Jenin was 52: 34
of whom (65 percent) were known military operatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or
Fatah-Tanzim. Now Erekat’s wild assertions have moved into the field of history
as part of a Palestinian battle over the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
The Palestinian
leadership relies on the thirst of the international media to seriously take up
any wild and baseless Palestinian claim; on the pressures of the ongoing
negotiating process with the high-level involvement of senior U.S. and European
politicians who are keen to show achievements; and, above all, on the wide and
almost automatic inclination of the international community to criticize Israel
and to buy into any artificial claim uttered by the Palestinian leadership.
Saeb Erekat’s Curious Claim
While one might
assume that as the chief Palestinian negotiator and long-term participant in
negotiations with Israel since the Madrid Conference of 1991, Saeb Erekat
would, and indeed should, be deeply ensconced in the ongoing negotiating
process – a process that needs to be conducted in a confidential, serious, and
civil manner – this regrettably does not seem to be the case.
In fact, in
direct contrast to what any serious chief negotiator should be doing vis-a-vis
the other negotiating party, Erekat prefers to indulge on a daily basis in
blatant demagogy, hostile outbursts, wild accusations, and attacks against
Israel, its leaders and negotiators, and above all, in simply misleading the
international community and media.2
A recent
fabrication, vented at an international security conference in Munich on
February 1, 2014, and which received considerable prominence in international
political and media circles, has generated considerable criticism and even
ridicule. According to Erekat’s curious claim, he is a direct descendant of the
Canaanite tribes who lived in Israel some 9,000 years ago:
I am the
proud son of the Canaanites who were there 5,500 years before Joshua bin
Nun burned down the town of Jericho.3
No less amazing
is the recent statement by a member of the Jordanian Parliament, Sheikh Mousa
Abu Sweilam, on February 3, 2014, according to which:
The
Palestinians are the original owners of Palestine, who lived on its land when
they moved from the western Mediterranean basin to its east in 7000 BC.4
Ahmed Tibi, a
member of Israel’s Knesset, is quoted in the Ha’aretz newspaper from
January 19, 2014, stating:
….the Arab
citizens of Israel are an indigenous population.5
The Erekat
claim was immediately controverted by several authoritative sources who cited,
among other things, Erekat’s own Facebook entry describing the origin of the
Erekat clan to be from the Huweitat clan in the northwestern Arabian Peninsula.6
The Erekat Family History
Erekat’s
family, presently residing in Jericho, previously lived in the village of Abu
Dis near Jerusalem. In fact, the Erekat family was never part of the Jericho
tribal system. It is a Bedouin family which, according to Bedouin genealogy,
came to the area from the south of Jordan, an area called Husseyniya and
Rashaida, at an undisclosed time.7
According to
genealogical research of the Bedouin families in Israel, the Erekat family
belongs to the extensive Huweitat clan, which originated in the area between
the Liya valley, near Taif, in the vicinity of Mecca in the northern Hejaz
region, close to the town of Hekl in the Sarawat Mountains, 350 km. from the
Jordanian border, and northern Aqaba.8 Bedouin genealogical
literature claims that the Huweitat clan is a Sharifi clan allied with their
cousins the Hashemites.9 The Huweitat clan settled not only in
Israel but also in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Sinai Peninsula by Ras Seeder.10
A branch of
this clan settled in geographic Palestine in several waves of immigration that
started some 200 years ago, ending during the period of the Arab Revolt and
First World War. Apparently, the family to which Erekat belongs settled in Abu
Dis near Jerusalem during the last of these waves, which occurred in the early
twentieth century, after the Jewish immigration to the area.
The first wave
of this immigration brought the Fahum and Hanun branches of the clan to settle
in Nazareth and Tul-Karem. They were followed by another branch of the well-known
Shuman family, which settled in Nablus (owners of the Amman-based Arab Bank,
one of the biggest banks in the Arab world).
According to
Bedouin genealogy, the branches of the Huweitat clan that had already settled
in Jordan welcomed the clan’s newcomers, who came with the Hashemite Sharifi
army during the Arab Revolt at the beginning of the last century and helped
found the Kingdom of Jordan. This branch came from southern Jordan, from the
center of the Huweitat clans’ area, and is considered entirely Jordanian rather
than Palestinian.
Scholars on Islam Question Palestinian Claims
The claims by
Erekat and his colleagues of their Canaanite provenance, if they were
considered serious, could in fact give rise to some difficult questions as to
the very character and identity of the Palestinian people as a part of the Arab
peoples. Taking Erekat’s claim to its logical and sequential conclusion, is he
claiming that Palestine should be recognized as the nation-state of the
Canaanite people?
In a similar
vein, his declaration raises serious questions regarding the very roots of
Islam and the origins of the Hashemite dynasty (connected with the Huweitat
clan11), and as such regarding the ethnic origin of the Imam Ali,
cousin of the Prophet Mohammad, to whom the Shi’a denomination of
Islam relates. If the Huweitat are Canaanites, as claimed by Erekat, this would
logically lead to the absurd conclusion that the descendants of the Imam
Hussein Ibn Ali are not Arabs but Canaanites.
The general
claim to Palestinian indigenous status has been questioned by a number of
scholars of the Middle East and experts on Islam:
- Professor Rafi Israeli from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem notes the absurdity in the link that the Palestinians have tried
to create with the ancient Canaanites.12
“The early
origins of the Arabs who came to this country are in the Arabian peninsula….The
first ones came from there. Now they are standing on their heads. Instead of
saying that they are Arabs who immigrated to Canaan and turned it into a Muslim
country, they have rendered themselves indigenous Canaanites.”
“Even their
Arab surnames give clear clues that they immigrated here. In Umm al-Fahm, there
are four large clans who originated in Egypt. In the Old City of Jerusalem, one
can find the Moroccan Quarter, which was home to Muslims who came from North
Africa, the Maghreb, and settled in the Land of Israel.”
“Furthermore,
the Ottoman Empire transferred populations from place to place in order to
tighten its control over those areas….[T]ake, for example, the Circassians,
Muslims who were brought here from the Caucasus.”
“The
Palestinians don’t really have roots here. They know this very well, so they
are trying to invent origins for themselves. Whenever you offer historic or
archaeological criticism of this nonsense, learned scholars the world over
immediately insist that you ‘respect the narrative.’ It doesn’t matter one bit
to them whether there is historical truth there. If we do not debunk this, it
will be accepted as fact. If you repeat a lie thousands of times, it eventually
becomes accepted as true, so we mustn’t keep quiet.”13
- Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak, in her book Responding to
Palestinian Rewriting of History – How and When the Jewish Majority in the
Land of Israel Was Eliminated and the Jewish Diaspora Was Created,14
states:
“Historically,
no national Arab entity ever has established a national state in this country.
The Land of Israel was conquered in 640 A.D. and occupied by Muslim-Arabs until
1071. A large percent of the Palestinians are descendants of Arabs and Muslims
who immigrated to the Land of Israel a few generations ago illegally from Arab
and Muslim countries.”
On the general
question of the Arab conquest, Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak summarizes the chain of
developments as follows:
“The Arab
occupation of the Land of Israel lasted from 640 to 1071, roughly 400 years.
The Seljuks, Muslim Turks, conquered the land from the Arabs, but on the eve of
the First Crusade, they lost it to the Fatimid who ruled it until 1099, when
the Crusaders took over. Saladin, who was not an Arab, but a Muslim Kurd from
Iraq, defeated the Crusaders in 1187 and ruled until his death (1192).
Following the Battle of Hattin and the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in
1187, he took over other parts of the country while the Crusaders maintained
their hold over the rest. An agreement signed by his successors with the
Crusaders returned the Galilee to them and they moved their capital to Acre.
The Mamelukes, Muslim Turks, conquered the Land of Israel from the Crusaders in
1260 and ruled it until 1516, when it was taken over by the Ottoman Turks who
ruled the Land of Israel for 400 years. The Muslim rule in the Land of Israel
ended in 1918 and a Mandate over the country was given to the British.”15
- Dr. Shaul Bartal, a Middle Eastern scholar from
Bar-Ilan University, says16 that while in many Palestinian
history books, heavy emphasis is placed on “the Arab conquest of
Palestine” in 638, “a conquest that for 1,300 years made Palestine into
Islamic territory,” in fact, the waves of immigration from the Arabian
Peninsula and the subsequent arrivals of Arabs from Transjordan and Syria
are what led to the continued settlement of Arabs in this country.
“Even in
Ramallah, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority, the origins
of Arab families are traced back to those who came here from Jordan in the late
15th century.”
A research
study that Bartal co-authored with Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak shows that the four
main clans that make up the population of Umm el-Fahm – Makhagna, Jabrin,
Mahamid, and Aghbariya – trace their roots back to families who immigrated to
Palestine in the seventeenth century onward from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and
Syria. It was only afterward, during the nineteenth century, when many families
from Egypt and Transjordan joined them.
“The
Palestinians are not the farmers who have lived in Palestine for generations,
but rather immigrants who only arrived recently. It was only toward the latter
stages of the nineteenth century that the country began to blossom thanks to
the emergence of a new presence – Zionism – and the amazing results. In 1878,
the population of the country numbered 141,000 Muslims who lived here
permanently, with at least 25 percent of them considered to be newly arrived
immigrants who came mostly from Egypt.”
“Various
studies done over a span of years by Moshe Brawer, Gideon Kressel, and other
scholars clearly show that most Arab families who settled in the villages along
the coastal plain and the area that would later become the State of Israel
originated from Sudan, Libya, Egypt, and Jordan….Other studies show that the
waves of immigrants came here in droves from Arab countries during the period
of the British Mandate.”
The Arab
immigrants were drawn to the land because Jewish settlement there brought on
development of economic opportunities as well as improvement in sanitation and
medicine.
Attesting to
the huge Muslim immigration into the area, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
remarked in 1939 that the immigration of Arabs to Palestine since 1921 was
outpacing the immigration of Jews during that same period. Winston Churchill
commented on the massive waves of Arab immigration into the country during that
time. “Despite the fact that they were never persecuted, masses of Arabs poured
into the country and multiplied until the Arab population grew more than what
all of world Jewry could add to the Jewish population,” he said.
- Dr. Arieh Perlman, in his book The Origin of
Palestinian Arabs,17 records the entry into and conquest of
the “Holy Land” since the seventh century CE (636 to be exact) by various
Arab, Muslim, and Christian elements, dynasties and tribes, including,
among others, the Abbasid dynasty (750), the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty in
969, the Turks and Seleucids in the eleventh century, the Crusaders (1099)
and then back to the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty, and then to the Muslims of
Sallah-a-Din, Turks, Tatars (1260), Egyptian kingdom, Mongols, and
Ottomans (1517), the occupation of Galilee by Shiekh Daher el-Omar in the
mid-eighteenth century, and the occupation of the area by the Egyptian
Ibrahim Pasha in the mid-nineteenth century.
To the above
may be added raids and movement by Bedouin tribes from the western desert since
the late nineteenth and up to the mid-twentieth centuries, and the above-noted
influx of Arab populations from Syria, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, Sudan, Morocco,
Cyprus, Yemen, Spain, Albania and Australia and other North African countries,
seeking to benefit from the relatively advanced development and modernization
in the area instituted by the Jewish population, and concomitant chances of
increased income.
- Prof. Gideon M. Kressel, Professor Emeritus of
Cultural-Social Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and Dr. Reuven
Aharoni, Dept. of Middle Eastern History at Haifa University, in their
study Egyptian Emigres in the Levant of the 19th and 20th
Centuries,18 recall a statement on March 23, 2012, by Hamas
Interior and National Security Minister Fathi Hammad that “half of the
Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half Saudis.”19
- Prof. Solomon Zeitlin of Dropsie College, in his
monograph Jewish Rights in Palestine,20 observes:
“The
Palestinian Arabs or the Arabs of Trans-Jordania never ruled Palestine.
Palestine had been conquered by the Arabs who came from the South….The
dynasties of the Omayyads and the Abbasids were not natives of Palestine.
Certainly the Mamelukes and later the Turks not only were not Palestinian
Arabs, but were an entirely different race; they were not even Semitic.
“Palestine up
to 734 C.E. was never an Arabic country and was never so considered by
geographers and historians. Josephus as well as the Roman geographer Strabo
placed Arabia beyond the boundaries of Palestine, or as it was then called, Judaea.”
- Dr. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and other experts view the forced
conversion of Jews to Christianity and then to Islam as a contributing
factor to the extensive rise in the Muslim population in the area in the
early nineteenth century.21 They trace a not insignificant
percentage of Palestinian residents of the area to their Jewish forbears.
Conclusion
No one should
take Saeb Erekat’s claims about Canaanite ancestry seriously. His attempt to
inject a false narrative into Israeli-Palestinian relations undermines
negotiations between the parties and is a diversion from the substantive issues
that must be discussed.
The historical
presence and existence of the Jewish people in the Middle East generally, and
the area of Palestine or “the Holy Land,” in particular, has continued from
time immemorial up to the present day. It is well-documented and proven, not
only in the scriptures of all three monotheistic religions, and visible in
extensive archeological remains, but is also borne-out by empirical historic
writings and records by early Greek, Roman, pagan and other visitors to the
area.
The fact that
the sources of Christianity evolved and emanated from Judaism is, in and of
itself, further proof of the presence of a thriving Jewish community in the
area generally, and in the specific areas in which the Jews existed from
biblical times, including Judea (from which the term “Jew” stems), Samaria, and
the other neighboring tribal areas.
Of all extant
peoples, the Jewish people have the strongest claim to be indigenous to the
“Holy Land,” where Judaism, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish people were
born around 3,000 years ago. No one, Saeb Erekat included, can cast any doubt
on this fact.
* *
*
Notes
* The views expressed in this paper are solely
those of the author.
1. See Erekat on CNN making claims about the Jenin
“massacre” in the video “Who Else Is Being Injured by the Vilification of
Israel?” (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2013),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im7lVj9AE7M&list=PL1uUSrjSnB01hMKCu6TZnq-pamjhX8UHl
2. Recent examples of Erekat’s threats, accusations and
attacks include:
rejection of Israel as a Jewish state – http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-set-to-accept-kerrys-framework-proposals/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=2149ae0f1a-2014_02_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-2149ae0f1a-54502869;
threats to petition the international criminal court against Israel -
rejection of Israelis living in a Palestinian state – http://www.timesofisrael.com/sources-in-pmo-slam-pa-for-saying-no-settlers-can-stay-in-palestine/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-threatens-to-rally-un-against-settlement-cancer/;
http://www.aawsat.net/2014/01/article55326673; http://www.aawsat.net/2014/01/article55326673;
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=662366;
glorifying and praising terrorist leaders Al-Ayyam,
Jan. 6 2014; threats to call for a global economic boycott of Israel – http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4490386,00.html;
threat regarding the 1967 borders http://www.commentarymagazine.com/topic/saeb-erekat/;
accusation that Israel propping up the Hamas
administration in Gaza – http://www.timesofisrael.com/erekat-israel-is-keeping-hamas-in-power/
3. http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-set-to-accept-kerrys-framework-proposals/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter.
See also http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/02/pa-negotiator-saeb-erekat-claims-family-was-canaanite-in-israel-for-9000-years/.
See also http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2014/02/erekats-latest-lie-my-family-was-in.html#.Uws_DjjNuM-,
and see the Palestinian press at http://www.palpress.co.uk/arabic/?Action=Details&ID=106519.
6. See the Erekat family Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/notes/arekat-family/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%AA/255831057552
8. Ibid., based on several genealogy books of the
Arab tribes in the Levant. See also “The Huweitat Clans,” http://alahaywat.blogspot.ca/2013/12/blog-post_2522.html
9. https://www.facebook.com/hewitat.masr/posts/311737358840143
The close relationship between the Huweitat Sharifi clan and the Hashemite
Sharifi clan explains the importance of the Huweitat clan as one of the pillars
of the Arab revolt.
10. http://www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=70192#.Uw23r8tWHhx
11. Ibid.
12. Reported by Nadav Shragai, in “The Fabricated
Palestinian History,” Israel Hayom, February 7, 2014, based inter
alia on an interview with Professor Israeli, http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=15323
13. Ibid.
15. Lissak, op. cit., at chapter 5.
16. Shragai, “The Fabricated Palestinian History.”
17. Arie Perlman, “The Origin of Palestinian Arabs,”
(Hebrew), http://www.faz.co.il/story_2469.
See also http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/The-lost-Palestinian-Jews,
describing the research of historian Zvi Misinai.
18. http://jcpa.org/article/egyptian-emigres-in-the-levant-of-the-19th-and-20th-centuries/
February 11, 2013
19. Al-Hekma TV (Egypt) http://www.memritv.org/clipen/3389.htm
20. Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 38,
No. 2 (Oct. 1947), pp. 119-134, published by the University of Pennsylvania
Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/1453037
21. See Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, “The Populations of our Land”
(1932) (Hebrew) – “Yesodot” Library No. 14. See also Zvi Misinai, quoted in “The
Lost Palestinian Jews” Jerusalem Post, August 20, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/The-lost-Palestinian-Jews.
In a separate interview Misinai refers to the fact that the Erekat family from
Abu Dis is well aware of its own Jewish roots – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs0-RGJ_CFA.
Publication: Jerusalem Issue Briefs
Amb. Alan Baker
Source: http://jcpa.org/article/changing-historical-narrative-saeb-erekats-new-spin/#sthash.kGdGmk2x.dpuf
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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