What defines Jewish indigenousness is the consistency of modern Jews with their ancestors of thousands of years ago. They live in a country with the same name as that which existed in 1312 BCE. Today’s Israelis speak the same language that was spoken by Jews in that land more than 3,000 years ago. They chant from the same biblical texts that their ancestors did millennia past. Their Jewish law is derived from that found in the Talmud, a set of oral laws that was written down about 2,500 years ago. Their Temple, which was destroyed by invaders twice, can be archaeologically located in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was founded by their biblical King David; the city stands as the centre of Jewish sovereignty, as it did when King David ruled the Jews. The Jewish people established a distinct civilization in their ancient homeland approximately 3,500 years ago, and the roots of that civilization are still much of the source of Jewish life in Israel.

There were no Muslims in the land until almost 2,000 years after Jews had already settled in Israel. Arabs, who are the ethnic peoples from the Arabian peninsula, didn’t come to the region through their conquests until after Muhammad’s death. It is important to understand that no independent Arab or Palestinian state has ever existed in the region

“Well, never mind about ancient history,” some might say, “what rights have modern Jews to land that was owned and settled by Arabs who were expelled by Jewish conquest?”

Here we have a set of falsehoods emanating out of a number of misguided assumptions. First, it is not true that Jewish life was abolished by a series of conquerors – Roman, Arab, Crusaders – over the centuries. Jews retained and rebuilt communities in Jerusalem, Tiberius, Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa, Caesarea, Safed and elsewhere. Before the Zionist migrations began in the 1870s, Jews lived continuously over time throughout the land of Israel.

Secondly, when Jews began to immigrate to the region in large numbers in 1882, there were fewer than 250,000 Arabs living there, and the majority of these had arrived in recent decades. According to many observers and authorities, the vast majority of the Arab population in Palestine in the early decades of the 20th century were comparative newcomers – either late immigrants or descendants of persons who had immigrated into the territory in the previous 70 years. The name Palestine, a throwback to Roman usage, was adopted by the British during their period of mandated authority in an attempt to blunt the connection of Jews with the land that was historical Israel.

Thirdly, the lands that are usually characterized by the media and other observers as “occupied” – that is, those in the West Bank and Gaza – are in no legal sense occupied by Israelis. For example, those residents of the new Palestinian cities (in no sense are they camps) that now house four generations of so-called Palestinian refugees, could be branded as occupiers on the same basis that new Jewish settlements in the West Bank are so designated. The reality is that the West Bank and Gaza are unassigned lands – they were never awarded to anyone by the British.

Fourth, let’s examine how these territories came under Israeli control. It is the direct result of Arab attacks on Israel in 1967. Israel not only repulsed these attacks, but managed to overtake areas from which the attacks emanated. To make a comparison, Germany lost a large territory to Poland after the Germans were defeated in the Second World War II yet no one now claims that Poland is occupying German land.

If one wants to look at the “root cause” of a conflict that is by now three-quarters of a century old, it is the refusal by Palestinians, and Arabs generally, to accept not only the reality of the existence of a Jewish state, but to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as the Jewish homeland.

If, and only if, the Arabs finally come to recognize Jewish peoplehood, which includes Jews’ right to live as a people among the nations of peoples, will peace be possible between Jews and Arabs.

– Sally F. Zerker is professor emeritus and senior scholar at York University