If two or three centuries ago any prophet had foretold that the Holy Land would become the epicenter of fierce religious and political disputes, he would have been considered crazy.
In 1695-1696, the Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi), wrote reports about visits to the Holy Land. (There are those who claim that he did not personally visit the Holy land but collected reports from other visitors.). He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims.