Matt Baker’s Gaza Timeline Gets the Question of Indigeneity Wrong

Five thousand years of conquest, migration and intermarriage do not prove that nobody belongs. Yet that is the extraordinary conclusion Matt Baker draws from his history of Gaza.

In his June 28, 2024, UsefulCharts video, Timeline of Gaza | 3500 BCE to October 7th, 2023, Baker takes viewers from ancient Egyptian settlements through Philistine rule, the Roman Empire, Islamic conquests, the British Mandate and the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Much of this history is worth learning. Baker explains the emergence of the Israelites from Canaanite populations, distinguishes ancient Philistines from modern Palestinians, and traces the succession of rulers who controlled Gaza.

Then he makes a claim that his evidence cannot sustain.

Baker argues that the region's extraordinary history of migration and intermarriage means no population, ancient or modern, can properly be described as indigenous in the same sense as Native Americans or Aboriginal Australians.

He arrives at this conclusion without establishing what indigeneity means, without examining the relevant international standards, and without testing the evidence of historical and genetic continuity among the populations concerned.

The distinction matters. A complicated ancestry does not erase an ancestral connection to a place.

And the historical record is more substantial than Baker's conclusion allows.

1. Baker Invents a Test That Indigeneity Does Not Require

Baker's central argument rests on a seemingly reasonable observation: the southern Levant has experienced thousands of years of migration, conquest, displacement and intermarriage.

Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Philistines, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and numerous other populations lived in or controlled the region.

From this history, he concludes that no group can claim to be the undisputed original inhabitants.

That limited conclusion is defensible. The problem begins when he treats it as sufficient reason to reject the application of indigeneity.

The International Labour Organization's Convention No. 169 does not require a population to be genetically unmixed or to establish that its ancestors were the first humans ever to occupy a territory.

Instead, Article 1 considers descent from populations inhabiting a region at the time of conquest, colonization or the establishment of modern state boundaries. It also considers the continuation of cultural, social, economic and political institutions, with self-identification as a fundamental criterion.

UNESCO similarly emphasizes historical continuity, cultural distinctiveness, attachment to territory and collective identity. It explicitly recognizes that no universally accepted legal definition of Indigenous peoples exists.

These standards do not automatically establish that either Jews or Palestinians qualify as Indigenous peoples for every legal purpose. The question remains historically and politically contested.

But they expose the weakness in Baker's reasoning.

He substitutes an impossible requirement for exclusive, uncontested first occupation for the considerably more sophisticated criteria actually used to examine indigenous identity.

Consider the implications of his argument.

If migration and intermarriage disqualified a population from indigeneity, the same standard would threaten the status of Indigenous communities elsewhere whose histories include migration, cultural transformation and relationships with neighboring populations.

That is not how these identities are understood.

Human communities change. Languages change. Religions change. Families intermarry.

A population does not necessarily lose its historical connection to a territory because its ancestors encountered, absorbed or married outsiders.

Baker is right to challenge simplistic claims of exclusive ownership based on ancient ancestry.

He is wrong to suggest that the absence of an undisputed first population settles the question of indigeneity.

2. The Genetic Evidence Complicates His Conclusion

In May 2020, researchers published a major study in Cell examining the genetic history of the Bronze Age southern Levant.

Led by Lily Agranat-Tamir and colleagues, the research analyzed genome-wide data from 73 ancient individuals across five archaeological sites.

The researchers found that populations associated with Canaanite material culture already possessed mixed ancestry.

Their genetic profiles reflected contributions from earlier Levantine populations and populations related to those living around the Zagros Mountains or Caucasus.

In other words, population mixing was already part of the history Baker describes.

But the study's most important finding for the modern debate concerned population continuity.

The researchers found that numerous present-day Jewish and Levantine Arabic-speaking populations possessed substantial ancestry related to ancient Middle Eastern populations.

Their models were consistent with more than half of the ancestry of many sampled populations deriving from groups related to those of the Bronze Age Levant and Chalcolithic Zagros.

The researchers explicitly warned that these results do not establish direct descent from particular ancient individuals or prove an uninterrupted genealogy connecting modern populations with specific archaeological communities.

That qualification is essential.

The study does not establish that modern Palestinians are simply ancient Canaanites who changed languages and religions.

Nor does it prove that contemporary Jews possess an exclusive biological claim to the territory.

It does establish something that Baker's formulation neglects: substantial ancient regional ancestry and substantial later population mixing can coexist.

Indeed, this is precisely what the evidence indicates.

Baker presents centuries of mixture as the reason modern identities cannot be understood through indigenous continuity.

The genetic evidence instead requires investigators to examine continuity and mixture together.

His own narrative contains the beginnings of this argument.

He describes Israelites emerging from Canaanite populations rather than replacing them entirely. He describes Jewish communities maintaining connections with the territory after Roman conquest. He describes the gradual conversion of Gaza's population to Christianity and later Islam.

These are accounts of cultural transformation, not evidence that every earlier population disappeared and was replaced.

A change in religion does not automatically signify a change in ancestry.

An Arabic-speaking population may include descendants of people who lived in the region before Arabic became dominant.

A Jewish population dispersed across different countries may preserve historical ancestry and cultural ties to the Levant while acquiring substantial ancestry elsewhere.

Neither observation establishes exclusive ownership.

Both undermine the idea that intermarriage makes ancestral continuity meaningless.

3. The Philistines Are Not Modern Palestinians. Baker Is Right About That.

One of Baker's strongest arguments concerns the relationship between ancient Philistines and modern Palestinians.

He explains that the Philistines emerged as a distinct population during the upheavals surrounding the Bronze Age collapse and established a confederation that included Gaza.

Their identity eventually disappeared as a separate political and cultural category.

The modern name Palestine is historically connected to the Philistine name, but that does not mean today's Palestinians constitute an unchanged Philistine population.

Baker is correct to reject that simplistic identification.

The problem is what he does with the larger history of the name.

He explains that the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina after suppressing a Jewish revolt in 135 CE, presenting the choice as a deliberate effort to humiliate Jews by associating their homeland with their ancient enemies.

That interpretation has historical support as a possibility, but Baker presents the motive with excessive certainty.

More importantly, the geographical name Palestine existed centuries before Hadrian's administrative reorganization.

Historian David M. Jacobson, writing in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, identifies references to Palestine in Herodotus during the fifth century BCE.

Historian Benjamin Isaac likewise documents the geographical name's use in Greek and Latin literature long before the second-century Roman provincial designation.

Hadrian's government adopted an existing geographical name for an official Roman province. It did not invent the name Palestine.

The distinction matters because the history of a geographical name is not the same as the history of a modern national identity.

The ancient Philistines, the geographical term Palestine, the Roman province of Syria Palaestina and modern Palestinian nationalism belong to different historical categories.

Baker generally recognizes this distinction, but his account of Roman motives gives viewers more certainty than the evidence warrants.

A careful history should explain what is known, what historians infer and what remains disputed.

4. The Two Refugee Crises Were Not a Simple Population Exchange

Baker's account of 1948 introduces another consequential simplification.

He describes approximately 750,000 Palestinians being displaced during the Nakba, followed by a roughly equivalent number of Jews being forced from neighboring Arab countries.

He presents the latter movement as a response to the former.

Both populations experienced real displacement, and both suffered serious losses of homes, property and community.

But the historical processes were not two simultaneous, identical events.

Historian Michael R. Fischbach's Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries examines approximately 800,000 Jews who departed Arab countries over the two decades following the 1948 war.

The causes varied considerably.

They included antisemitic hostility, discriminatory government measures, confiscation of property, political instability and the consequences of regional conflict.

Some people were expelled or compelled to leave under severe pressure. Others migrated under different combinations of political, religious and economic circumstances.

The departures did not all occur in 1948.

For example, the Jewish exodus from Egypt intensified dramatically during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Large numbers of Jews also left North African countries during the era of decolonization, including the departure of much of Algeria's Jewish population following independence in 1962.

These events cannot accurately be reduced to one immediate retaliatory movement following the Palestinian Nakba.

Baker's compressed account obscures the different governments, policies, circumstances and timelines involved.

Nor does the existence of one refugee crisis cancel responsibility for another.

The losses experienced by Jews from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen or Morocco deserve historical recognition on their own terms.

So do the losses experienced by Palestinians displaced from their homes in 1948.

Two genuine injustices do not become more understandable when arranged as a convenient demographic exchange.

Jordan Exposes Another Weakness

Baker also claims that Palestinian refugees were not welcomed by neighboring Arab countries.

This description is too sweeping.

Jordan received substantial numbers of Palestinian refugees and extended citizenship to many of them.

Jordan's 1954 nationality law included provisions through which qualifying former Palestinian nationals could receive Jordanian citizenship.

Many Palestinians consequently acquired citizenship rights while retaining their identity and claims concerning their former homes.

Jordan was not representative of every neighboring country.

Palestinians faced significant restrictions elsewhere, and even in Jordan the experiences of different refugee populations were unequal. Many Palestinians displaced from Gaza in 1967 did not receive the same citizenship protections.

But that complexity is precisely what Baker's generalization fails to convey.

Being granted citizenship elsewhere also does not restore a confiscated home or eliminate a refugee's historical claims.

A serious account must distinguish refuge, citizenship, integration and the right to return.

Baker treats them too casually.

5. Israel Did Not Simply Leave Gaza Behind in 2005

The modern portion of Baker's timeline contains a particularly important omission.

He explains that Israel agreed to leave Gaza following the Second Intifada.

Israel did withdraw its permanent ground forces and evacuate its settlements from the territory in 2005.

That was a substantial political and military development.

But withdrawal of troops and settlers did not end every form of Israeli authority over Gaza.

On July 19, 2024, shortly after Baker's video was published, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion addressing Israel's continuing responsibilities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Court examined Gaza's position after the 2005 disengagement.

It found that Israel continued to exercise important elements of authority, including control relating to land, sea and air borders, restrictions on the movement of goods and people, customs arrangements and military authority over the buffer zone.

The Court concluded that the withdrawal had not entirely ended Israel's obligations under the law of occupation. Those obligations remained proportionate to the authority Israel could exercise and continued to exercise.

The advisory opinion appeared after the video, so Baker cannot reasonably be criticized for failing to cite it.

It nevertheless provides an important independent legal assessment of the historical situation he describes.

The distinction between physical withdrawal and continuing effective control is fundamental.

A government can remove its soldiers from a territory while retaining substantial influence over its borders, commerce and external access.

The fact that Hamas exercised internal governmental authority after 2007 does not, by itself, settle the separate question of Israel's continuing responsibilities.

Baker discusses the division between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but his description of the withdrawal leaves viewers without this crucial distinction.

For anyone attempting to understand Gaza's political position, that omission matters more than another century of ancient dynastic history.

6. The Right to Self-Determination Is Not a DNA Competition

The most serious weakness in Baker's argument is his willingness to treat ancient ancestry as the decisive framework for understanding modern national claims.

His evidence shows that Gaza has been conquered repeatedly.

It shows that its inhabitants adopted new languages, religions and political identities.

It shows that modern Jewish and Palestinian national movements developed under historical circumstances radically different from those of the Bronze Age.

These observations are valuable.

But none establishes that ancestry alone determines the legitimacy of modern political rights.

International law does not require a people to prove that its ancestors were the first humans on a territory before recognizing a right to self-determination.

Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes that right for peoples generally.

The International Court of Justice's July 2024 advisory opinion specifically addressed the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and found that Israeli policies and practices had violated it.

This does not mean that every political demand made in the name of self-determination is lawful or must be accepted.

It means that the question cannot be settled by searching for a population genetically untouched by migration.

The historical connection of Jewish communities to the territory is real.

The longstanding presence and historical development of Palestinian Arab communities are also real.

Neither connection requires the disappearance of the other.

Nor does recognizing one population's history automatically determine borders, sovereignty, security arrangements or property claims.

Those are separate questions demanding separate evidence.

Baker ultimately supports Israel's continued existence as a safe homeland for Jews and an independent Palestinian state alongside it.

That conclusion does not depend on proving that neither population can be indigenous.

Indeed, his case would be stronger without that unnecessary claim.

The Verdict: A Good Timeline Cannot Rescue a Bad Historical Conclusion

Matt Baker deserves credit for attempting something difficult.

He places the modern Gaza conflict within thousands of years of history, rejects the crude identification of modern Palestinians with ancient Philistines, and acknowledges the historical origins of Jewish identity in the southern Levant.

He also condemns Hamas's October 7 attacks while criticizing Israel's military response.

His position is not an argument for the disappearance of either people.

But those reasonable elements cannot rescue the central historical error.

Baker treats population mixing as grounds for dismissing indigeneity without establishing why the former should invalidate the latter.

Genetic research demonstrates substantial ancestral connections among modern populations associated with the region while also documenting extensive migration.

International standards examine historical continuity and cultural identity without requiring genetic purity.

Historical research further exposes weaknesses in Baker's portrayal of Roman naming practices, the refugee crises following 1948, and the consequences of Israel's 2005 withdrawal.

These failures share a recognizable pattern.

Complicated historical processes are compressed into conclusions more decisive than the underlying evidence permits.

The video is most useful when it explains who governed Gaza and when.

It becomes less reliable when it attempts to convert that chronology into judgments about who belongs, who bears responsibility and what modern political arrangements mean.

There is no archaeological discovery that grants one modern population exclusive ownership of five thousand years of history.

There is also no archaeological discovery that makes the historical connections of existing populations disappear.

Gaza's history is not a story in which everyone arrived from somewhere else and therefore nobody belongs.

It is a history in which populations changed, mixed, endured and developed new identities.

That is not a reason to dismiss their connections to the land.

It is the reason those connections deserve to be investigated with greater care than Baker provides.

References

• Matt Baker, Timeline of Gaza | 3500 BCE to October 7th, 2023. UsefulCharts, June 28, 2024. The original video establishes Baker's arguments concerning population continuity, indigeneity, historical governance and the modern conflict.

• International Labour Organization, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, No. 169. 1989. Article 1 establishes criteria involving historical descent, cultural institutions and self-identification rather than exclusive or genetically unmixed ancestry.

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Indigenous Peoples: Questions and Answers. Undated. Explains the absence of a universally adopted definition and identifies historical continuity, collective identity and territorial attachment as relevant considerations.

• Lily Agranat-Tamir and colleagues, The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant. Cell, May 28, 2020. Analyzes ancient southern Levantine DNA and models substantial ancestral connections between ancient Middle Eastern populations and numerous modern Jewish and Arabic-speaking populations, subject to important limitations.

• David M. Jacobson, Palestine and Israel. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, February 1999. Documents geographical use of the name Palestine centuries before Hadrian's provincial reorganization.

• Benjamin Isaac, Palestine. The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012. Independently documents the geographical term's presence in ancient Greek and Latin literature.

• Michael R. Fischbach, Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries. Columbia University Press, August 2008. Examines the different causes, property losses and extended chronology of Jewish departures from Arab countries following 1948; the publisher's description provides the accessible overview used here.

• David Sorkin, Maghreb and Mashreq. Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries, Princeton University Press, 2019. Provides country-specific chronologies demonstrating that Jewish departures from North Africa and the Middle East unfolded across different decades and political circumstances.

• United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Jordanian Nationality. Historical reference concerning the 1950s. Documents how Jordanian nationality legislation enabled many Palestinian refugees to acquire citizenship.

• Library of Congress, Recognition of Foreign Passports: Jordan. 2021. Explains Jordan's extension of citizenship to Palestinian refugees after 1948 and the different legal position of Palestinians displaced from Gaza in 1967.

• International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Advisory Opinion, July 19, 2024. Establishes the Court's findings concerning Israel's continuing authority and occupation-related obligations after the 2005 Gaza withdrawal and the Palestinian right to self-determination.

• United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Adopted December 16, 1966. Article 1 recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination without making it conditional upon proof of exclusive ancient ancestry.