With reference to Joe's post, I believe he is rehashing Palestinian propaganda when he says that Palestine existed 2000 years before Israel. At various times, I have read Palestinian claims that they are the descendants of the pre-Hebrew indigenous peoples of Palestine/Israel--Philistines, from whom the name Palestine may be derived, and Canaanites--whereas the Jews are merely usurpers. There is no legitimate scholarship that supports this propaganda. In fact, at least two genetic studies indicate a close relationship between Palestinian Arabs and Jews based on non-recombinant Y-Chromosome haplotypes (i.e. paternal inheritance). The likelihood is that the current-day Palestinians are largely descendants of those Jews who had not already formed communities outside of Judea between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD and who did not leave Judea after either the conquest of Vespasian and Titus or the Bar Kokhba rebellion. They converted to Islam (and absorbed some new population elements represented by specific southern Arab Y-chromosome haplotypes not found in Jewish populations) with the Arab conquest of the Levant.