July 26, 2024: Palestinians, either as Hamas or various other Islamic terrorists or armed Palestinian nationalists, have long been fighting for a Palestinian state. There has never been a Palestinian state in the region, although 2,500 years ago Greek historian Herodotus described Palestine as part of Syria and located between modern Lebanon and Egypt. The term Palestinian is not an Arab word but is derived from Philistines, who were Greek seagoing merchants that settled on the coastal areas between Lebanon and Egypt.

The Ottoman Turks defeated a Mamluk army from Egypt in 1516 and occupied the Palestinian region until 1918. During that occupation the Ottomans maintained peace in Palestine and allowed Arab and Jews to settle there and do business. This brought more Arabs and Jews. The Ottoman Turks did not tolerate any ethnic violence and severely punished groups that disobeyed this rule. As a result Arabs and Jews lived together in an area the Turks called Palestine and the Turks referred to both groups as Palestinians.

The Ottoman Turks were on the losing side during the 1914-1918 World War I. The Ottoman Empire collapsed and its provinces became independent or were taken over by the victorious European armies, France took Lebanon and Britain had Egypt and Palestine. During the 1939-45 World War II there was more violence between Moslem Arabs and local Jews who had lived in the region for centuries, plus recent Jewish arrivals who arrived as Zionists before and after World War One, and some who had survived the Nazi effort to kill all Jews in Europe. During the war some local Arabs were pro-Nazi and the British took care of these rebellious Arabs while also recruiting and training a Jewish Brigade in 1944 that fought for the British against the Germans in Italy.

After the war ended in 1945 the Jewish Brigade veterans returned to what was still called Palestine and provided trained soldiers for Jewish efforts, usually non-violent, to establish the Jewish state of Israel and facilitate the movement of surviving European Jews to Israel. When Israel was established, the surrounding Arab states told Arabs in Israel to flee and return after the Arab armies had defeated the Jews. That never happened and the Arabs fought and lost three more wars in 1956, 1967 and 1972. After that Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel and the only fighting Israeli troops encountered was with armed secular Palestinians and Islamic terrorists. Hamas was and still is one of the terrorist groups. There are still millions of Palestinians adjacent to Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. The government in these two regions have been notoriously corrupt and ineffective at governing effectively. Israel treats Hamas in Gaza, and Palestinian militants in the West Bank, as more of a police matter than a military threat.

The Palestinians call for the creation of a Palestinian State in a region where a Palestinian State never existed. The Israeli state has been around for 75 years. Israel is democratic, prosperous and has a citizen army determined to protect what they have. Israel is the most prosperous nation in the region and the only one with nuclear weapons and Israeli-designed and built rockets to deliver the nuclear warheads on any significant threat in the region. Currently that threat is Iran, and Israel recently defeated a massive Iranian ballistic and cruise missile attack. The 1979 revolution against the Shah of Iran was hijacked by Islamic Shia religious leaders who declared Israel and the United States enemies of Iran. Before the revolution Israel and the United States had good diplomatic and trading relations with Iran. Many Iranians would like to see a return of that relationship.

With everything else that is going on in the region, the plight of the Palestinians is seen as a minor matter not worth a lot of attention. The Palestinians cannot form efficient governments and tend to seek violent solutions.