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History of Palestine

The Persians had no sooner crushed the Palestinian uprising, when Alexander the Great of Macedonia came plundering through the land. Alexander defeated the Persian army in Asia Minor (333 BC), and upon reaching Phoenicia found its kings were absent with the Persian fleet in the Aegean. The cities of Aradus, Byblos and Sidon welcomed him, the latter showing special zeal against the Persians. But the Tyrians refused to surrender, and history's most memorable and ferocious siege followed. The siege lasted seven months.

Tyre was a walled island and made a formidable target. With tremendous labor, Alexander built a mole from the mainland to the island, enabling him to bring up his stone-throwing catapults and his battering rams. Ships from the other Phoenician seaports and from Cyprus lent Alexander a hand. The Tyrians retaliated with arrow-firing catapults, anti-personnel harpoons, whirling marble wheels, which deflected the blows of missiles, and armored ships to cut cables. They also poured down loads of red-hot sand on the besiegers.

At night, they sent their underwater divers to harass the besieging ships and to destroy the mole being built towards their island. The island was at length breached in July 332 BC, and Alexander took a savage revenge on the fallen city by slaughtering 8,000 Tyrians. He also crucified 2,000 inhabitants and sold 30,000 into slavery. For a while, Tyre lost its political existence, and the newly founded city of Alexandria began its place.

When Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 32, his generals grabbed parts of the conquered territories. Ptolmy took Egypt and Palestine, and Seleucus took Syria. Feeling overconfident, the Syrians overran first Palestine, then Greece in 198 BC. The Romans, however, drove them back with such heavy losses that the Seleucid Empire began to collapse.

The Jews in Judaea now took advantage of Syria's weakness. When the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes, forced the Greek gods on his Seleucid subjects, one Jewish rebel called Judas- nicknamed 'Maccabean', or the 'hammerer'- led a rebellion which was able to cleanse the Temple in Jerusalem of the Greek idols.

This act has from that time been commemorated annually by Jews as the feast of Hanukkah.

Although the Syrians killed Judas in 161 BC, his brothers continued the fight until Syria granted them autonomy, and the district of Judaea was then ruled by priest-kings, who were known as the 'Hasmonaean kings'.

An Arab kingdom in southern Palestine, called Nabataea, was never conquered by the Greeks and the Kingdom of Nabataea became the most powerful indigenous force in Palestine.

This kingdom eventually extended its sway over territories reaching Damascus; its capital, Petra, was hidden behind a range of mountains accessible only through a long and narrow gorge. Petra was a breath taking rose-colored city, having magnificent Greek style palaces carved into the surrounding rose-red mountains.