Is the Israeli Palestinian conflict ancient in nature ?

A common phenomenon surrounding the question of Palestine is that many seem to be under the impression that the “conflict” is ancient, and has been raging on for thousands of years. This is quite far from the truth, as the Palestinian question is quite modern, relatively speaking. There is virtually unanimous scholarly consensus that it certainly doesn’t extend thousands of years into the past. The roots and causes of the Palestinian question can be traced quite clearly, should you be interested in learning about them in detail, check the article below.
Palestine throughout the history:Palestine has a long and vast history. First documented in ancient Egyptian tablets as Peleset over 3000 years ago, the region between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan has come to mean many different things to many different peoples.Throughout the ages, Palestine has been home to dozens of cultures, kingdoms and empires. From Assyrian and Nabataean, to Persian and Roman -and many more- each influencing as well as being influenced by the rich cultural and civilizational mélange that defined the area. These ancient influences can still be felt today in the idioms, vocabulary and toponymy used by its native Palestinian population. Even Palestinian agricultural practices can be traced back to the Natufians -one of the peoples credited with inventing agriculture- who called Palestine and the fertile crescent their home, as far back as 9,000 BCE.Before we continue, it is important to stress that when we talk about Palestine, we are not talking about a Palestinian nation state. For the vast majority of history, the concept of a nation state did not exist. Today the nation state is so ubiquitous that many have come to internalize it as natural. This is not the case, and we should be especially wary of imposing our modern conceptions on a context where they would be nonsensical. For example, the impulse to imagine our ancestors as some closed-off, well-defined, unchanging homogeneous group having exclusive ownership over a territory that somehow corresponds to modern day borders has no basis in history. Unfortunately, this is the foundational myth of many reactionary ethno-nationalist ideologies.As elsewhere, over the millennia kingdoms rose and fell, religions were founded, wars both holy and unholy were waged, and peoples lived, mixed, moved and died out. In other words, history happened.This article does not aim to delve into the minutiae of this Palestinian history, indeed entire books could be -and have been- written on the subject. Rather the goal of this introduction is to describe the political context that lead up to the modern Palestinian question.Palestine under the ottoman empire:Following the decisive defeat of the Mamluks in the battle of Marj Dabiq (1516), the Levant laid open for the conquering Ottoman armies. A few months later they would enter Jerusalem and usher in one of the longest chapters of Palestinian history, lasting over 400 years.Jerusalem held an important place in Ottoman eyes due to its religious and historic significance. From the onset of their rule, sweeping and majestic construction projects were carried out which would become staples of Jerusalemite architecture and topography, such as the striking walls of Jerusalem erected by Suleiman the magnificent.Over its history, the Ottomans divided Palestine into various political configurations and divisions. The last of which came in 1887, where Palestine was divided into 3 districts (Sanjaks): Jerusalem, Nablus and Acr
To briefly recap, the beginning of the question of Palestine is rooted in the Zionist movement, and its goal of colonizing Palestine colonizing Palestine to establish a Zionist settler ethno-state there. The first Zionist conference took place at the very end of the 19th century (1897), hardly ancient history. However, while it’s true that this conference marked a turning point in the organization of Zionist settlement in Palestine, there were earlier attempts by Zionist “pioneers” to settle in Palestine, such as Haim Chisin, but none of these attempts predated the Zionist movement by more than a few decades. It is also worth noting that at the time, the entire concept of nation states was a relatively novel idea, especially so in the Middle East.
In some of the more extreme versions of this misconception, some even go further to say that the whole region has been at war since time immemorial, and the question of Palestine is just an extension of that. This is the result of an Orientalist understanding of the Middle East which coalesces various political actors with diverse ideologies, contexts, motivations and goals into one chaotic mass at war with itself, where no differentiations can be discerned. Consequently, the Middle East becomes an exceptional arena for bloodshed and barbarity. Naturally, this same standard is never applied to Europe, for example, which was responsible for some of the most bloody and destructive wars in human history, neither is it applied to the various settler colonies around the globe which built their wealth and power on slavery and genocide.
When viewed in this manner, all grievances and conflicts in the area become ancient, petty, with no logic or context behind them. All actors become irrational; it flattens over struggles and equalizes all parties. Suddenly, there are no oppressors or oppressed, no colonists or colonized. Resistance becomes identical to domination, and everything is dismissed as illogical and undifferentiated violence typical of the backwards peoples inhabiting the region.
This shallow analysis of the question of Palestine serves multiple functions; First, it is an attractive and easy way to comment on the situation without actually saying anything or taking a side. It is convenient, because it spares you the need to do any research or take a stance while simultaneously morally elevating yourself over the backwards, eternally warring people in an attempt to project an image of understanding or nuance.
However, more nefariously, this talking point can serve to justify brutal Israeli practices by appealing to a false historicism; since Israel is in such a “bad neighborhood” which has always been governed by exceptional barbaric violence, Israel is forced to return in kind even if it didn’t want to. After all, Israel must be tough to survive in such a region, and any measure it takes is justified. Indeed, how could we condemn Israel for its domination of Palestinians when Arabs also kill other Arabs on the daily? It’s just how things work in the Middle East, they reason.
The parallels to the racist “Black on Black violence” arguments on Turtle Island are quite apparent. They both rely on a false, decontextualized, shallow and reductive understanding of the struggles at hand to shift blame onto the victims.
Regardless of how and when this “perpetual ancient warfare” talking point is used, it is a sure sign that the person practicing it is either -at best- misinformed or ignorant to the facts, or purposefully being intellectually dishonest in an attempt to absolve Israel of its atrocious human rights record. In either case, it is not a claim that can withstand any scrutiny, especially when it is retroactively employed to analyze a struggle against settler colonialism in an era before these concepts were even invented.
So no, the question of Palestine is not some ancient blood-feud between eternally warring peoples, it is a recent struggle resulting from settler colonialism infused with reactionary ethno-nationalism, both relatively new concepts originating in the last couple of centuries. The analysis of the question of Palestine through any other lens will produce a flawed and misleading understanding of the facts on the ground, and will result in shallow and ahistorical interpretations of the region as the one discussed above.