Is Palestine a country?

Answer 1

DENNIS MILLER ON ISRAEL

For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who has a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. Although he is not Jewish, he recently had the following to say about the Middle East situation

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by! Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians."

As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."

I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.

That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel.

Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves?

Of course not.

Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Jews baking their bread with the blood of children?

Disgusting.

No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

Mr.. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away.

However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan.
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Answer 2

It really is not a country, but a geographical term.

It was first introduced by the Romans, after invading Israel, in the fist century CE.

The Romans put that name to the land to make mockery of the Jews, who had the Philistines as sworn enemies during several decades in the times of the Judges, in the XIII century BCE. The Philistines were foreign invaders of the Jewish land, probably arrived from Hellenic lands. The Judge Ehud delivered the Jews from Philistine oppression.

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Modernly, the term "Palestinian" has been applied to two different peoples in the last century: Jews and Arabs. It was first officially given (by the British Empire) to the Jewish Zionists who were settling the lands ruled by the British, named "Mandate of Palestine".

After the Six Days War (June 1967), the name Palestinian has been increasingly given to the Arabs living in the "disputed territories" of Judea, Samaria (the so-called West Bank), Gaza and the Golan Heights, or in the refugee camps in the countries around Israel (mainly, Lebanon and Syria).

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At the end of the road, "Palestine" is a bogus term invented by the Romans and now being used by Arabs for their own benefit and goal of destroying the state of Israel. Thank G-d, they won't succeed.

Answer 3

Anyone who thinks so has been hoodwinked.

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist that acknowledged the lie he was fighting for and the truth he was fighting against:

“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”
“We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag”.
“When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out”.

This declaration by a true "Palestinian" should have some significance for a sincerely neutral observer. Indeed, there is no such a thing like a Palestinian people, or a Palestinian culture, or a Palestinian language, or a Palestinian history. There has never been any Palestinian state, neither any Palestinian archaeological find nor coinage. The present-day "Palestinians" are an Arab people, with Arab culture, Arabic language and Arab history. They have their own Arab states from where they came into the Land of Israel about one century ago to benefit from the Jewish immigration. That is the historical truth. They were Jordanians (another recent British invention, as there has never been any people known as "Jordanians"), and after the Six-Day War in which Israel utterly defeated the coalition of nine Arab states and took legitimate possession of Judea and Samaria, the Arab dwellers in those regions underwent a kind of anthropological miracle and discovered that they were Palestinians - something they did not know the day before.


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Answer 4

Not at this time. The "peace plan", if it ever can be implemented, calls for Palestinian statehood (meaning it is its own country). Currently, the West Bank and Gaza Strip are self-governing but not quite a country.

Answer 5

Not yet, but soon enough.
Saying the Jews have the Biblical right to have Israel because they used to live there and it was their homeland thousands of years ago is rubbish.
would be like Americans going back to their European roots of England, Ireland and Germany and demanding land saying it used to be their land centuries ago.

There has been a continous non-Hebrew population in what is Palestine/Israel since before the time of Abraham and Moses. They've been called Philistines, Canaanites, Moabs, and other things- they are the non-Hebrew Semites.

Answer 6

no, it is a group of people that live in land under Israeli jurisdiction. They are currently led by militant party called Hamas, but they do not have their own country.

Answer 7

No, and here's why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority.

The plan is that it one day *will* be. Currently, the "Palestinian territories" are under Israeli jurisdiction.

Answer 8

yes

Answer 9

It was until the jews grabbed most of it and destroyed the rest.

Answer 10

Nope. Maybe one day, when they stop blowing people up, they will have one.