Palestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands. It may also refer to the State of Palestine, a state in the Middle East with limited recognition that was proclaimed on 15 November 1988 in Algiers by the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Palestinian National Council (PNC). The declaration designated Jerusalem the capital of Palestine, despite Israel's control of the city.
In most of Harry Turtledove's works, Palestine refers to the broad region, which is invariably occupied by a foreign power. The Palestinian state is featured in only a few Turtledove works.
Palestine was the only country not to convert to Judaism in the year after the time-viewer revealed the Jews were God's chosen people.
In the home timeline, Palestine was a very troubled place, where conflict and bloodshed had been going on for some 150 years by the late 21st Century.
Crosstime Traffic imported high quality fruit from a Palestine in an alternate where it was a sleepy Turkish province where nothing much happened.
Britain fiercely protected its mandate in Palestine, and was fairly alarmed by the substantial number of Jewish refugees coming out of Europe after World War II, especially as the idea of turning Palestine into a Jewish homeland took hold.
Shmuel Birnbaum announced plans to emigrate to Palestine with his reward money from information which led to the death of Reinhard Heydrich in 1947.
After roughly a century, the State of Israel was defeated by its neighbors, and Palestine fell under Arab domination again. In the 22nd Century, a group of Second Irgun members snuck into Palestine and began a series of terrorist attacks in the hope of inspiring the millions of Jews still in the region to rise up and rebuild Israel. A series of killings, concluding with the murder of community leader Chaim Perelman, failed in this purpose by, instead, horrifying Palestine's Jews and turning them against the Irgun. The group fled, having completely failed in their mission.
Around AD 30, a Jewish religious fanatic from one of the Roman provinces in Palestine led a band of guerrillas in rebellion against the Empire. After a bloody campaign, General Pontius' legion suppressed the rebels' mischief, crucified the ringleaders, and put Palestine under the Roman thumb once again.
Palestine was one of the areas under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, one of the victors of the Great War. It was perceived as a sleepy little backwater, with Jerusalem as a town where not much ever happened.
Palestine was one of the areas under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, a British Protectorate. It was perceived as a sleepy little backwater, with a British resident watching over the Turkish governor to make sure it would remain so.
Sofia, the Polish barmaid who caught Hans-Ulrich Rudel's fancy, had a Jewish mother. Some years before the outbreak of the war, Sofia's mother became a Zionist and went to live in Palestine. After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1938, when Poland became Germany's ally while Britain fought against Germany, postal links between Palestine and Poland were cut off. They were resumed briefly after the Hess Agreement in 1940, and Sofia got a letter from her mother. Then, when Britian reversed alliances again in 1941, a side effect was that Sofia was again cut off from her mother.
After the 1941 coup, the head of Scotland Yard, who had closely cooperated with the defeated Wilson government, was packed off to head the British police in Jerusalem. Ronald Cartland (who shared this information with Alistair Walsh) said that if the police chief avoided being killed either by the Arabs or by the Zionists, and "he might actually do some good to the Empire".
Between 1936 and 1939, just prior to the landing of the Race's Conquest Fleet, Palestine was convulsed in bitter conflict. The Arabs waged a large-scale rebellion against British imperial rule. The British crushed it, using harsh punitive measures and getting the help of Jewish militias. However, when the Arab rebellion was crushed militarily, the British government turned around and politically granted the Arabs' main demand, setting strict limitations on further Jewish immigration into the country and thus frustrating the Zionist plan of making Jews the majority and eventually creating a Jewish state.
The net result was that Jews and Arabs alike were left with a grudge and reason to rebel against the British, which influenced their behaviour in the following years.
In 1942, at the time of landing of the Race, German and British forces were fighting in North Africa; a German victory might have opened the way for rabidly anti-Semitic Nazi forces to conquer Palestine, a mortal danger for Jews there. The strategic situation was changed when the Race engulfed Egypt and the whole of North Africa, disarming British and German forces alike. Now it was the Race - which had no prejudice against Jews and in fact saved the Jews of Poland from certain extinction - which was poised to advance northward into Palestine.
The Jews were divided between those seeking to ally with the Race in order to overthrow British rule, and those feeling that Jews should stick with other humans - specifically with the British - against alien invaders of Earth. During this tense time, Moishe Russie was sent to Palestine by the British to appeal to anti-British Jewish rebels to lay down their arms by contrasting Britain's then-relatively benevolent treatment of Jews to Germany's horrific persecution, and also to describe the injustices which had led him to denounce the Race in Poland.
Russie's mission failed, however. Many Jews did rebel, as did the Arabs for their own reasons. A great number of politically suspected people were herded by the British into an improvised detention camps, but the Race soon captured Palestine and released the detainees. Without much public support from either community of the country's inhabitants, British forces were unable to defend the Mandate, and under the Peace of Cairo it was ceded to the Race's Empire.[1]
The Jews were content to live under the Race's relatively benevolent rule, especially when they realized it was better than what their co-religionists were experiencing in Britain - now falling into Germany's orbit and enacting anti-Jewish legislation. Moreover, the Race was the main force defending the Polish Jews - among whom the ones in Palestine had many close relatives - from a renewed Nazi attack. The Germans launched two nuclear missiles at Jerusalem during the Race-German War of 1965, but both were destroyed by the Race's anti-missile system.
The Arabs in Palestine were more resistant to the Race, and frequently rebelled in the 1950s and 1960s, motivated primarily by their Muslim beliefs. This was another strong reason for the Jews to regard rule by the Race as the lesser evil.
Despite his claims of preferring Britain to the Race, Moishe Russie remained with his family in Race-ruled Jerusalem periodically traveling to Cairo to consult with Fleetlord Atvar. In later years he established the international hospital for comparing human medical practices with those of the Race, which gained international renown.
1 Partially in Europe. 2 Most of the nation lies in Africa. 3 Nation also lies in Europe and Africa.
3=denotes a character who was a POV for The Great War and all or part of the American Empire trilogy
4=denotes a character who was a POV for the The Great War trilogy, the American Empire trilogy, and part of the Settling Accounts series
5=denotes a character who was a POV for the American Empire trilogy and the Settling Accounts series
Spanish Civil War • World War II • Generals' Plot • October 1939 Plot • Hess Agreement • 1941 British Military Coup • 1944 German Civil War