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Tiberias, 1870
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Why isn’t there any evidence of today’s Palestinians people before
1880? First I think we should make clear by what we mean by Palestinian
people. Yasser Arafat leads a group of Arabs that call themselves Palestinian. You
could also say all those that have lived in Palestine are Palestinians the Turks
the British the Jews the Bedouin. When we mention Palestine here we are talking
of the former, the Arabs that are making political demands now in the 21 century.
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Tiberias, 1928
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Something else I should point out I am an Australian I am not married to, association
with or am I myself a member of the Jewish, Muslim or Arab communities.
Where did the Palestinians come from?
Many people believe that the Palestinians have always been there, that is why it’s
called Palestine. Nothing could be further from the truth. Palestine was named after
the Philistines.
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Jews at the wailing wall 1870
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Yasser Arafat himself talks of a Palestinian homeland and is willing to kill women
and children in cold blood for it. So when in 1997 two French Journalists were in
the University where Arafat was reported to have studied, asked for Yasser Arafat’s
registration details under his full name not recognized by the clerk, they were
surprised to see his place of birth given as Cairo Egypt. This inspired the two
Frenchmen to try to see if they could find his birth certificate, and sure enough
they did. Yasser
Arafat was born in Cairo Egypt to wealthy parents.
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Moslems 1858
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After the Jews arrived the area started to blossom, and immigrants were attracted
from the areas near by. The Moslems seen before 1880 are wearing turbans as worn
in Central Asia and not the headdress worn by Arabs in the Middle East and the Palestinians
but that of the Ottoman Turks. Palestinians have said that they dressed as Turks
during the time of the Ottoman Empire and this is why no photographs can be found
of them. But this does not explain the sudden appearance of the Middle Eastern Arab
headdress after 1880. Prior to 1880 when Jewish migration started, the area called
Israel or Palestine today was barren and virtually deserted. Bedouin nomads were
loosely scattered, there were various groups including Jews, Moslems, Greeks and
others were living in Jerusalem and photos show some activity in Jaffa the closest
port to Jerusalem. But none of the photos of Palestine before 1880 show Palestinian
people. There is plenty of pictures of them after 1880, but none before. There is
no books written by them no one can tell you who their leader was or give any evidence
at all of them existing before 1880.
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Well At Beer-Sheva, 1869
Rope marks show that this well was an important source of water
and would of been a centre for activity
Yet not a man, camel, goat nor a crop can be seen
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Among the many descriptions of Palestine's desolation prior to the Zionist immigration:
". . . a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly
to weeds - a silent mournful expanse . . . A desolation is here that not even imagination
can grace with the pomp of life and action . . . We never saw a human being on the
whole route . . . There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and
the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country:"
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress
(1869).
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Nazareth, 1877, not a soul in sight, all streets are empty
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Nazareth, 1894
the Arab headdress is seen after 1880.
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Nazareth, 1925
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The main mosque at Gaza, deserted. 1862
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source of pictures
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