Posted 6/24/2002 12:02:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Here's a little nugget with an interesting twist.

... The Arab world does not even have a name for the land. Think about it — it is an amazing lacuna. "Palestine" is a name that the now-vanished Romans gave the land of Israel after destroying the last breaths of Jewish freedom in the Holy Land. The Romans renamed the cities and land to excise all memory of the stubborn Jewish patriots who had defied the empire. So, Jerusalem became Aelonia Capitolina. Shechem became Naples. (Naples later became Nablus.) And the country itself was renamed "Palestine" for the previous inhabitants — the Philistines...
...The Arabs have names for countries like Syria, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait and two Yemens. But through all recorded time they never have had a name for the land of Judea and Samaria. "The West Bank"? Such a name describes Jersey City...
...Yasser Arafat uses names from the Hebrew Bible for the cities he covets in Samaria and Judea. He claims Hebron (Genesis 23). He claims Bethlehem (Genesis 35). He claims Jericho (Joshua 5). His people burned down the Tomb of Joseph (Joshua 24). But he cannot use the Hebrew Bible’s names for the land that the Christian Scriptures (Matthew 1), no less than the Tanakh, calls Judea — because it would sound ridiculous complaining that "the Jews have stolen Judea from the Arabs." Almost as silly as suicide bombers in Hamas calling themselves "Samaritans."

Go read all of it.