Shalom my sisters and brothers,
Among people in the West, especially those who are anti-Israel, there is the general perception that after Roman times, Jews were always a tiny minority of the population of the Holy Land, and that Arabs were always in the majority – even before the rise of Islam. Among Arabs of the Levant – and particularly amongst Palestinian Arabs – there is a similar perception. There is even a growing number of Palestinians who believe that Jews were completely absent from the Land, and that Canaanites formed the main population of Palestine after Roman times. In this article, I wish to address these dangerous misconceptions.
I recently watched an interesting video on YouTube, where Palestinians were asked the question, “Are you descended from the Canaanites?” A good number of them actually believed that they were.
Now, I personally do not agree with those who propose that Arabs be expelled from Eretz Israel (the historical land of Israel) – or to give it its original name, Canaan. Citizens of a country – whoever they are – should be allowed to remain wherever they feel is their home.
However, when we are examining any question or debate, it is vitally important for us to get all our facts correct. With regards to the question, ‘Are the Palestinians descended from the ancient Canaanites?’ the definitive answer is a very emphatic, ‘No.’
There are pro-Palestinian videos which highlight analyses of Palestinian DNA, claiming that they show a proportion of Canaanite DNA. However, this DNA actually comes through the Samaritan and Jewish ancestors of Palestinians, who have the same proportion of Canaanite DNA (which in turn came from extremely ancient peoples in Canaan, such as the indigenous Natufians from 12,000 years ago, and immigrant Anatolian hunter-gatherers from as much as 8,000 years ago).
When the Babylonians deported the Jewish people from Judea, they also deported all the Philistines, as well as all the remaining Canaanites – those who had not converted to the Israelite faith. Then, as per their policy everywhere else – the one which dictated that ethnic groups be removed from their native lands and mixed up, so that they couldn’t revolt against their Babylonian overlords – the Babylonians brought in a mixture of other Middle Eastern peoples to populate the Land.
This is why, when the Jewish people were allowed to return, there were no more Philistines, and more pertinent to our current debate, there were no more Canaanites; both these peoples had become assimilated into all the peoples in the rest of the empire that the Babylonians had mixed them up with. Any genetic descendants of the Philistines and Canaanites are now completely scattered, and mixed in with the modern populations of the Middle East (mostly what is now NW Syria and Iraq).
Fast forward to the Second Temple era: In Yeshua’s time, most Jews lived in the Galilee and Judea. The coastal areas, on the other hand, were occupied by Greek-speaking, pagan Gentiles. After the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE, Judea was emptied of its Jewish inhabitants; they fled north, so that most Jews after the Revolt lived in the Galilee.
Up until the 4th century CE, Jews were still a majority in the Land, while most Gentiles had by then converted to Christianity, and formed a significant minority. Then, from the 5th to the 11th century, Gentile, Greek-speaking Christians were in a majority, and Jews were in a minority. Arabs – even pagan Arabs – were a tiny, insignificant minority (see the Wikipedia links/references at the end of this article).
Before the rise of Islam, there was a significant minority of Samaritans, who mostly lived in Samaria. In population counts, they are not included in the Jewish count; they are usually counted amongst the non-Jewish population. By the 8th century, there were about 200,000 Samaritans; after the Muslim conquest, within a couple of generations that number was reduced to a few hundred (in 1786, there were only 100 Samaritans left).
In the 8th century CE, the main Muslim conquest of the Holy Land began. Without a native army to defend themselves, those areas that were occupied by Jews and Samaritans were quickly taken over. Through a range of Quran-sanctioned policies designed to pressure them into converting – such as severe restrictions placed on the religious and economic activities of non-Muslims, along with the jizya tax (a penalty which the Quran imposes on non-Muslims) – within only a couple of generations, most Jews and Samaritans in the Land had been converted to Islam; it just made life easier to do so, and so avoid oppressive Quranic sanctions against non-Muslims. This population of Muslim Jews and Samaritans was greatly enlarged by many Muslims from elsewhere immigrating into the Land.
After the Crusades, by the end of the 12th century CE, Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox and Catholic) became the minority. Again, this minority-status was achieved because many were pressured or forced into converting to Islam.
It should also be pointed out that, during the 1930s and 40s, hundreds of thousands of Arabs immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, in order to work for the British. They came from Egypt, Syria and and other Arab countries, and about half of the population of Gaza is descended from them. The world tends to see these Arab immigrants as ‘indigenous Palestinians’, while, for example, Jews who immigrated to Palestine from earlier periods are classified as ‘colonialists’.
From the above history, we can now say from whom modern Palestinians are descended:
1. Hebrew-speaking Samaritans who were living in Samaria (this video shows that many Palestinians in central and northern areas have significant amounts of Samaritan Israelite DNA, from 8:35 onwards);
2. Aramaic-speaking Jews in the Galilee and Judea,
3. Greek-speaking Gentile Christians who were living in the Land;
4. Arabic-speaking Muslims who entered the Land from many different places alongside the Muslim conquerors of the Land;
5. Arabs who immigrated to Palestine during the British Mandate period in the middle of the 20th century.
Recent genetic studies of Palestinians (eg a 2013 study by Haber et al) show that most of their gene pool comes from all over the Islamic empire, and that Palestinian Christians are genetically distinct from Palestinian Muslims. Palestinian Christians are more European, and Palestinian Muslims are more North African & Arabian. However, a 2010 study by Atzmon and Harry Ostrer also found that Palestinians and Jews share a significant minority of their gene pool. These two studies confirm what history tells us.
If you had asked Muslims in the Holy Land up until when Jewish migration into the Land took off in the 19th century, “What is your ethnicity?” they would have answered “Arab” (i.e. not Palestinian). Those in what is now the Gaza Strip would have answered “Egyptian”. No one would have answered “Palestinian”, because ‘Palestine’ was only a province of the Ottoman Empire, not an ethnicity (just as ‘Californian’ and ‘Oregonian’ are not ethnicities).
Thanks to the book-keeping of the Ottoman Empire, from 1533 onwards we have approximate figures of the religious makeup of the population in the Holy Land:
Date………..Jews………..Christians……..Muslims…….Total Population
14th C………c. 4,700……..c. 5,800……….c. 139,500…..150,000
1533-1539…5,000………..6,000………….145,000………157,000
1690-1691…2,000………11,000…………..219,000………232,000
1800………..7,000………22,000…………,,246,000………275,000
1890………..43,000…….57,000…………..432,000………532,000
1914………..94,000…….70,000…………..525,000………689,000
1922………..84,000…….71,000…………..589,000………752,000
1931………175,000…….89,000…………..760,000……1,033,000
1947………630,000…….143,000……….1,181,000……1,970,000
From this table, you can see that right up until the formation of the State of Israel, there was never an absence of Jews in the Holy Land – Jews have always lived there.
I strongly believe that Israel should be a homeland that Jewish people can take refuge in. However, I also believe that, because of all the above history, Israeli Arabs should not be deported from Israel, and that Palestinians have a right to live in a Palestinian state. The Jewish population has its historical origin in the Land, but the Palestinians – with a significant portion of their ancestry being from Jews, Samaritans and Christians who were living in the Land at the time of the Muslim Conquest – also have a right to live in the Holy Land.
Until the State of Israel was created, and before widespread trouble between Israel and Palestinians, a significant number of Arabs in the Holy Land were fully aware of their Jewish and Samaritan ancestry, and even practised some Israelite customs. However, since 1948, Palestinians with Jewish ancestry do not talk about it.
So, are Palestinians descended from the original Canaanites? No. This can be shown both historically and genetically.
But it is important to remember where they do come from – from whom they are descended.
Blessings
Shmuliq (from an article I originally wrote on 10th Feb 2022)
Wikipedia links