Identifying the Indigenous Peoples of Israel/Palestine: Contradictory Historical Claims and Contemporary Polemics

Claims rooted in historical interpretation are integral to the arguments made by Jews and Arabs in claiming the same land.  Since the emergence of the concept of “indigenous” rights in the 1960s, historical claims may be strengthened when accompanied by assertions of indigeneity in the court of public opinion and some international tribunals. In this vein, the legitimacy of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, recognized by the Balfour Declaration in 1917, is being challenged by declarations of even greater antiquity by Palestinian Arabs.  Palestinian texts that maintain they are descended from the Canaanites, particularly the Jebusites of Jerusalem, emerge with increasing frequency and detail beginning in the 1970s.  They are used to buttress the charge that Jews are a foreign, European element, and Israel is a colonial-settler society that has imposed Apartheid on the indigenous.  Palestinian Jews, who considered themselves “Canaanites,” had during the Mandate created texts asserting similar lineage.  Earlier Jewish interpretations attempted to affirm kinship between Arabs and Jews.  Contemporary Palestinian interpretations delegitimate the other. While both Jewish and Arab interpretations may be interrogated by modern methods of proof, that is not the subject of this paper.  The focus here is to demonstrate how different political agendas employ similar historical materials for contrary purposes.