but there is no doubt that the Habiru included the ancestors of the later Jewish people. It is worth noting that the main centers of the Hebrews within what is now Palestine were the inland areas of the Jordan Valley today's West Bank. The coastline was occupied by the Philistines, whose ruling classes were possibly Greeks, refugees from the chaos that accompanied the fall of Minoan Mycenean civilization in the Aegean, a time remembered in legend by the Trojan War.
By about 1000 BC, the Biblical and historical Jewish state of antiquity emerged within borders that conform approximately to the area now called "historic Palestine." The great Kings, David and Soloman, conquered the Philistine cities of the coast, giving us in the process such famous tales as that of Samson and Delilah. This first Jewish state survived as a political entity, with many ups and downs, until it was finally conquered and absorbed by Rome. It is in the Roman period that we enter the contentious question of the fate of the ancient Jews in Palestine, the
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