“How about defining Israel as: the nation of Israel.”
I agree. That’s what ‘Israel’ means. But, the Romans thought that ‘Palestine’ was first settled by Philistines, who were, by the way, an offshoot of Phoenecians. Baal, throw your firstborn into the fire, etc. So if there are any Baal worshipping Phoenecians, they could argue to the UN that they settled there first. Not that I believe it.
But one thing is CLEAR — no used camel salelsman [named Muhammad] was born before the formation of that land. ‘Holy’ or not, first claim goes to Israel by several centuries over any of these ‘Johnny-come-latelys’. They only had claim by conquest, the same claim the US has over claiming Native American land. But I don’t see the UN announcing that Salt Lake City should be the ‘Vatican’ for Mormons.
Phoenicians and Canaanites are basically the same group—”Phoenician” is just the Greek name for that population. The Philistines were immigrants (ca. 1200 BC/BCE/vuZ/pne), apparently from somewhere in the Aegean (they are one of the so-called “Sea Peoples” mentioned in a couple of Egyptian texts from about that time) but assimilated and lost their language. Herodotus mentions a “Syria Palaistine” in what seems to be the area of the Philistine city-states. Somehow the memory of the Philistines had continued to be associated with that region or else the Romans probably wouldn’t have used the name “Palaestina.”