This land of Israel is the Promised Land that the Hebrews entered after Moses led them out of Egyptian captivity. Abraham lived in this land even before that time. In fact, the only reason they ended up in Egypt was because of the famine, during which time Pharaoh allowed Joseph to bring his family to Egypt to live. The Hebrew people have been reestablished in this land since the days of Joshua, Moses' successor. The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed a constitutional monarchy in this land around 1000 BC, and it was King David who made Jerusalem the nation's capital. Eventually the nation was split into two kingdoms—Samaria in the north and Judea in the south. (This is the land that is today referred to as the West Bank.)

The Jews were forced out of their land after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, and then returned in 1948 to demand their land back. In fact, the Jews have kept ties to their land for over 3,700 years. By the 9th to 11th centuries, Jewish communities were flourishing in Jerusalem, Tiberius, Rafa, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa, and Caesarea. Many were massacred by the Crusaders in the 12th century, but within the next two centuries they rebounded.

It is thought by some that the land of Palestine was always an Arab country. This is not so. The term Palestine is believed to come from the Philistines who settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain and the Gaza Strip in the 12th century. This group of people came to the southern coastline from the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea. It was the Romans who first gave the name Palastina to Judea (the southern part of the land that is now referred to as the West Bank). The Arabic language became the language of much of the Muslim population after the Muslims invaded the land in the 7th century. When the Jews began to immigrate to the land in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and most were relative newcomers.

There was no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nationalism movement until after the Six-Day War in 1967. Prior to that, Arabs and historians knew that this land was never historically known as Palestine. In fact, if there was indeed a Palestine, they said that it was actually part of southern Syria.

Before the Jews began to immigrate back to the land in the 1880s, history shows that for centuries the land had been in decline. It was neglected, poorly cultivated, and sparsely populated. Villages were deserted because of outbreaks of malaria. Houses were made of mud, sanitary conditions were horrible, and there were no schools. Many people were cattle thieves, and if they weren't, they harbored those who were. These people often were pillaged and blackmailed by the Bedouins.

Conditions were so wretched that many Arabs and Muslims from surrounding countries thought it would be a great improvement to have the Jews immigrate to the land. They were considered necessary for the country because they would bring money, knowledge, intelligence, and industriousness. According to an Arab named Sherif Hussein, the Jewish immigrants coming from Germany, Austria, Spain, Russia, and America knew that they were returning to their sacred and beloved homeland, while the Arab Palestinians would wander over the high seas in every direction, not caring about the land, even though their ancestors might have lived there for 1,000 years.

Many of the Jews who returned to the land from Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 19th century came because of a rise of anti-Semitism. Some who came from areas such as Yemen, Morocco, Turkey, and Iraq came because of a dream to return to Zion. They knew that their roots were in the land. It is the site of Jerusalem and of the Temple. Their religion, culture, language, history, and holidays originated in this land. In 1897, Jewish leaders formally organized the Zionist movement, calling for a restoration of a Jewish national home in the land.

The Jewish claim to the land is based on four things: (1) God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants; (2) the Jews settled and developed the land, with Jews having been in the land for thousands of years; (3) the international community granted political sovereignty to them in this land; and (4) some of the territory was captured in defensive wars.