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. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people - all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people - half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families - all Christians. The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites.
The term "Palestinian people" did not exist and the word "Palestine" appeared as a derivative from the Roman name of this country after the suppression of the uprising in Judea in the1st century AD.
Mark Twain wrote in the "The Innocents Abroad" in 1867: "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. ... For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn ... Jericho lies a moldering ruin ... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country ... Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely ... ".
In 1857 the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, told his government that Palestine "is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population."
In 1881 British cartographer Arthur Penrhyn Stanley observed: "In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there is no appearance of life…".
Today there is a prosperous democratic state of Israel on this "naked, gloomy and abandoned" land. Jews and Arabs have equal rights here. The whole world admires Israel's technological success.
Those who participate in the solution of the Middle East conflict should ask several key questions.
When and how the "Palestinian people" appeared? Why the Arabs' passionate love of the Holy Land and Jerusalem arose only when Jewish immigrants arrived here? Why, having support of the enormous Arabian world, Palestinians constantly complain and stand with their caps in hands? Why do they repeatedly reject every chance of establishing their own state, preferring war and sufferings to peace and prosperity? Why have Christians left their sacred places in Bethlehem and Nazareth? Why the only state in all the Middle East where the unique humanistic Muslim Movement Ahmadia found its shelter is Israel?
Why do the Arab leaders refuse to recognize history, depriving Jews of right to their relics and destroying their heritage on the Temple Mount? Where millions of dollars invested by the world community to the Palestinian economy and social projects disappeared?

Without answers to these questions all attempts to achieve peace will be doomed to the inevitable failure regardless of how good the wishes of the world leaders are.

PHOTO: A fanciful 1759 map entitled The Holy Land or Palestine. It supposes the depiction in the Holy Scriptures of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel and the locations of the 12 tribes as per Tobias Conrad Lotter, a geographer from Augsburg (Wikipedia)