Introduction
For most of the modern era, Palestinians were treated as if they appeared out of thin air. Western governments, schools, museums, and media pushed the idea that Palestine was “empty,” “undefined,” or “waiting for settlement.” This wasn’t ignorance. It was a deliberate political project — first built by Britain, then adopted across the Western world.
But when you go back to the actual historical record — the ancient texts, the archaeology, the DNA studies, the imperial archives — the truth is straightforward: Palestinians are one of the oldest continuously documented peoples in the region. Their history is not complex, contested and it's not definitely not unclear. It’s just been buried.
This article lays out the documented history of Palestine and its people, from the Bronze Age to the present, and explains how Western institutions spent a century erasing that history to justify a settler-colonial project. It also includes a section on Jesus — because the historical Jesus was a native of Roman Palestine, and that fact is important when discussing continuity of the people.
The Earliest Records: 1483 BCE
The first known reference to the people of Palestine appears in Egyptian records from 1483 BCE, under Pharaoh Thutmose III. The Egyptians referred to a coastal people called the Peleset. This is the earliest written form of the name that eventually becomes “Philistia” and “Palestine.”
Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, refers to the region as Syria Palestina. This is centuries before Christianity, Islam, or modern nation-states. The name “Palestine” is older than “Britain,” “France,” or “Germany.”
The land was inhabited. It had agriculture, trade networks, cities, and cultural continuity. There is no historical basis for the claim that it was “empty.”
Archaeology: Continuous Presence, Continuous Life
Archaeology across the region shows uninterrupted habitation for thousands of years. Villages like:
Isdud (Ashdod)
Yibna
Majdal
Jaffa
Lydda
Gaza City
These places existed long before the Roman Empire, long before Islam, long before the Crusades, long before Britain.
There is no archaeological break where “new Arabs” suddenly appear and replace the population. The material culture shows continuity — pottery styles, burial practices, architecture, agricultural systems — all evolving but rooted in the same communities.
When Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages in 1948, it wasn’t clearing “new settlements.” It was erasing towns that had existed for millennia.
DNA Research: The People Never Left
Modern genetic studies show that Palestinians share deep ancestry with ancient Levantine populations. This includes:
Bronze Age Canaanites
Iron Age coastal populations
Roman-era Levantines
Byzantine-era communities
The DNA continuity shows the people of the land stayed on the land.
Dalrymple points out that many Israeli Jews also share this ancestry — because they descend from the same ancient Levantine populations. The difference is that Palestinians never left. They lived continuously through every empire that passed through the region.
The idea that Palestinians “arrived in the 7th century” is historically false. A small Arab ruling elite arrived, just like the Normans arrived in England. They didn’t replace the population. They governed it.
The Name “Palestine”: A Constant Through Empires
The name “Palestine” appears in:
Egyptian records
Greek texts
Roman administrative documents
Byzantine maps
Early Islamic records
Ottoman tax registers
British Mandate documents
It is one of the oldest continuously used geographic names in the world.
The people living there were farmers, fishermen, traders, craftsmen, scholars, urban families, and rural clans. They were not “nomads.” They were not “new.” They were not “undefined.” They were a society with deep roots.
Jesus Was a Native of Palestine
This is simple historical fact.
Jesus was born, lived, and died in Roman Palestine. The Roman administrative term for the region during his lifetime was Provincia Judaea, but the broader geographic term Palestina was already in use by Greek and Roman writers.
He was a Semitic man from a Levantine population that modern Palestinians descend from. The people living in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and the surrounding villages were the ancestors of today’s Palestinians.
This isn’t a political claim. It’s historical continuity.
If you place Jesus in his actual geographic and cultural context, he was a native of Palestine. The people living there today share ancestry with the communities he came from. The attempt to detach Jesus from Palestine is part of the same Western erasure that tried to detach Palestinians from their own land.
Ottoman Palestine: A Documented Society
Under the Ottomans, Palestine was divided into administrative districts:
Sanjak of Jerusalem
Sanjak of Nablus
Sanjak of Gaza
Ottoman tax records list Palestinian families, land ownership, crops, livestock, and trade. These records run for centuries.
Palestine had schools, courts, markets, agricultural systems, ports, religious institutions, and urban centers. This was a functioning society with its own identity long before Britain arrived.
Britain Arrives — and Begins the Erasure
When Britain took control after World War I, it didn’t just govern Palestine. It rewrote it.
Britain’s education system erased Palestinians on purpose.
British textbooks described Palestine as:
“Underdeveloped”
“Sparse”
“Waiting for modernization”
“A land without a people”
Maps removed Palestinian towns. Lessons focused on biblical geography, not the actual people living there.
Britain needed this erasure to justify its political project: partitioning the land and installing a settler-colonial state.
Britain exported this erasure to the entire Western world.
American, Canadian, Australian, and European textbooks copied British frameworks. Middle East departments in Western universities adopted British colonial language. Museums followed suit.
Palestinians were reduced to:
“Arabs”
“Nomads”
“Late arrivals”
“A population without national identity”
This is the same colonial playbook used in Australia, the U.S., Canada, and South Africa.
Western Museums: Political Erasure Disguised as “Neutrality”
Dalrymple points out that the British Museum quietly removed the word “Palestine” from its historical displays, a decision that had nothing to do with academic accuracy and everything to do with politics.
Museums across Europe did the same:
Artifacts labeled “Ancient Near East” instead of “Palestine”
Maps showing biblical kingdoms but not Palestinian towns
Exhibits skipping from “Canaanites” to “Israelites” to “Ottomans,” leaving Palestinians out entirely
This is how you erase a people without ever saying their name.
Western Media: Hasbara as “Neutral Language”
For decades, Western media adopted Israeli government language as “objective reporting.”
Terms like:
“Clashes”
“Disputed territory”
“Security concerns”
“Cycle of violence”
“Two sides”
“Complicated conflict”
All of that language was engineered to dodge the simple reality that a settler‑colonial state was built on top of an indigenous population that never left, on top of the blood and bones of Palestinians.
The Modern Narrative: Manufactured Ignorance
By the 1990s and early 2000s, most Westerners genuinely believed:
Palestinians “came from somewhere else”
The land was “empty”
Israel was “defending itself”
The conflict was “complex”
Palestinians were “new”
The issue was “two equal sides”
This wasn’t ignorance. It was the result of a century of propaganda.
Israel’s Hasbara machine and Western governments worked together to frame the conflict as “nuanced” instead of what it is: apartheid, murder and land theft.
The Present: The Truth Re-emerges
Dalrymple’s work — and the work of Palestinian scholars, archaeologists, and historians — is finally breaking through the Western narrative.
People are finally starting to understand that Palestinians are an indigenous people with an ancient history, a continuous presence on their land, and an erasure that was carried out for political reasons — and that what’s happening isn’t a “complex conflict” at all, but a violent settler‑colonial project.
The world is waking up because Palestinians themselves forced the truth into the public eye, and they paid a brutal price for it — a price measured in staggering amounts of blood spilled, in bodies and lives shown across our screens in 4K for the last three years.
Conclusion
The history of Palestine is not vague. It is not disputed. It is not by any means unclear. It is one of the best-documented histories in the region. The people of Palestine have lived on that land for thousands of years. They survived every empire. They built cities, farms, markets, and communities that lasted millennia.
Jesus himself was a native of Palestine, part of the same Levantine population that modern Palestinians descend from. The attempt to detach him from Palestine is part of the same Western erasure that tried to detach Palestinians from their own land.
