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After the revolt of Bar Kokhba against the Roman Empire (132-135 C.E.), the Judea province was renamed Syria Palaestina by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to detach the Judean province from Jewish identity. In recent history, the area called Palestine includes the territories of the present-day Israel and Jordan (see the map). From 1517 to 1917 most of this area remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, in 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. On November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration for "the establishment in Palestine of a...

The Zionist Freedom Alliance of California has been circulating a video on the internet this past week exposing former Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara denying the existence of a “Palestinian” nation. The video was recorded years prior to Bishara entering Israel's parliament in 1996 as head of the Arab Balad party. Bishara, who resigned from the Knesset and fled the country in 2007 just when Israeli Security Services were ready to arrest him on charges of treason and espionage, is shown in the video reiterating his Arab nationalist position that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” people. Yehuda...

Palestinian and other Arab commentators are blasting Egypt's cease-fire offer this week in the Israeli-Gazan fighting, saying it was a gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted it, and a trap for Hamas, which rejected it. Azmi Bishara, the fugitive former Knesset member who now heads the Arab Center for Research and Policy in Doha, Qatar, wrote in the pan-Arab alaraby.co.uk that the offer gave no relief to Gaza, nor freedom for the Hamas members recently returned to Israeli prisons. "This Egyptian declaration represents a stab in the back to the resistance and the people of Gaza. … [T]his...

(IsraelNN.com) Security services suspect that former MK Azmi Bishara, a fugitive living abroad accused of providing aid to Hizbullah, is intent on recruiting agents for the Lebanese terrorist group among Israeli Arabs. In recent days, agents of the General Security Services (GSS) invited activist members of the Balad party from Wadi Ara to the agency's offices and warned them against contact with Bishara. Balad was led by Bishara until his flight from the country in 2007. A member of the Arab Coordinating Committee, Ashraf Kortam, was also questioned by security services about his relationship with Bishara. He was asked to...

Feb. 12, 2003 Court cleans the slate for Israeli-Arab lawmaker By DAN IZENBERG Advertisement The High Court of Justice on Wednesday told MK Azmi Bishara that it would issue a ruling making it clear that a previous Supreme Court decision that was sharply critical of him could not be used against him. The ruling by a panel of three justices including Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, Ayala Procaccia and Dalia Dorner came in response to a petition by the Israeli-Arab human rights organization Adalah on Bishara's behalf, asking the court to repeal the previous decision altogether. But Barak told Adalah...