History OF Palestine Series

638 AD : The Arab conquest began 1300 years of Muslim presence in what then became known as Filastin. Eager to be rid of their Byzantine overlords and aware of their shared heritage with the Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael, as well as the Muslims reputation for mercy and compassion in victory, the people of Jerusalem handed over the city after a brief siege. They made only one condition, That the terms of their surrender be negotiated directly with the Khalif 'Umar in person. 'Umar entered Jerusalem on foot. There was no bloodshed. There were no massacres. Those who wanted to leave were allowed to, with all their goods. Those who wanted to stay were guarantee protection for their lives, their property and places of worship.

Palestine was holy to Muslims because the Prophet Muhammad had designated Jerusalem as the first qibla (the direction Muslims face when praying) and because he was believed to have ascended on a night journey to heaven from the the old city of Jerusalem (al-Aqsa Mosque today) , where the Dome of the Rock was later built. Jerusalem became the third holiest city of Islam. The Muslim rulers did not force their religion on the Palestinians, and more than a century passed before the majority converted to Islam. The remaining Christians and Jews were considered People of the Book. They were allowed autonomous control in their communities and guaranteed security and freedom of worship. Such tolerance was rare in the history of religion . Most Palestinians also adopted Arabic and Islamic culture. Palestine benefited from the empires trade and from its religious significance during the first Muslim dynasty, the Umayyads of Damascus.

750 AD : The power shifted to Baghdad with the Abbasids, Palestine became neglected. It suffered unrest and successive domination by Seljuks, Fatimids, and European Crusaders. It shared, however, in the glory of Muslim civilization, when the Muslim world enjoyed a golden age of science, art, philosophy, and literature. Muslims preserved Greek learning and broke new ground in several fields, all of which later contributed to the Renaissance in Europe. Like the rest of the empire, however, Palestine under the Mamelukes gradually stagnated and declined.

1904 the Fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.

1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

1914 With the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.

1916 Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, Jordan and Iraq to Britain and Palestine was to be internationalized.

1917 The British government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour prmissing him the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1917-1918 Aided by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them, in correspondence with Shareef Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews a Jewish "national home" in Palestine .

1918 After WW I ended, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set a side as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922. Large-scale Jewish settlement and extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948.

1919 The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.

1920 The San Remo Conference granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. and two years later Palestine was effectively under British administration. Sir Herbert Samuel, a declared Zionist, was sent as Britain's first High Commissioner to Palestine.

1922 The Council of the League of Nations issued a Mandate for Palestine.

1929 Large-scale attacks on Jews by Arabs rocked Jerusalem. Palestinians killed 133 Jews and suffered 116 deaths. Sparked by a dispute over use of the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque ( this site is sacred to Muslims, but Jews claimed it is the remaining of jews temple all studies shows clearly that the wall is from the Islamic ages and it is part of al-Aqsa Mosque). But the roots of the conflict lay deeper in Arab fears of the Zionist movement which aimed to make at least part of British-administered Palestine a Jewish state.

1936 The Palestinians held a six-month General Strike to protest against the confiscation of land and Jewish immigration.

1937 Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, issued a report. Basically, the commission concluded, the mandate in Palestine was unworkable There was no hope of any cooperative national entity there that included both Arabs and Jews. The commission went on to recommend the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral sacred-site state to be administered by Britain.