From the development of agriculture, came settled communities and civilized government (Kublin "Early History"). Before the beginning of Christianity, the Middle East had already seen the rise and decline of many famous empires (i.e. Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians). Judaism, evolved among the Hebrews as the first monotheistic religion (Kublin "Early History"). Three centuries later, the Romans began their own conquest (Kublin "Greeks, Romans, Arabs"). This is when the conflict involving territory began. The name "Palestine" was given to the land of Israel by a local Roman ruler who was defeated by a group of Jewish rebels (The Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Sadly Unique "Territory"). This name was an attempt to destroy and eliminate any memory of the people of Israel and their biblical inheritance. When the Romans and Greeks invaded the Middle East, they displaced the Israelites from their homeland. The Palestinians, therefore, had no right to take land and homes from the Israelis. However, this was done long before they existed (The Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Sadly Unique "Territory"). When the West Roman Empire collapsed, the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire, centered in Constantinople, endured for another thousand years (Kublin "Greeks, Romans, Arabs"). At the same time, Mohammed, converted Arabs to Muslim and created the Islamic Empire. Other conquers followed, but the last great empire was the Ottoman Empire, which reached its height of power in the 1500's and came to last in the early 1900's (Kublin "The Ottoman Empire"). The final breakup of the Ottoman Empire came as a result of World War I, in which the Turks sided with the Central Powers. Their defeat by the Allies reduced Turkey to its present size today (Kublin "Period of Nationalism").
From World War I on, the Middle East has been torn by conflicts. In 1948, the United Nations created Israel as a separate state as a homeland for dispossessed Jews (Kublin "Recent History").