A country

Palestine

4 stories set here.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Qumran, West Bank

The Bedouin Shepherd Who Threw a Stone Into a Cave Above the Dead Sea in Spring 1947 and Heard Pottery Break

A young Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib threw a stone into a cliffside cave above the western shore of the Dead Sea in spring 1947 looking for a lost goat. He heard pottery break. The cave contained seven 2,000-year-old leather scrolls. The discovery of approximately 25,000 fragments from 11 caves over the next decade fundamentally changed the modern reconstruction of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Horns of Hattin, Galilee

The Battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 That Destroyed the Crusader Army in One Day and Returned Jerusalem to Islamic Control

Saladin's Ayyubid army of approximately 30,000 destroyed the combined Crusader army of approximately 20,000 under King Guy of Lusignan at the Horns of Hattin in Galilee on 4 July 1187. The Crusaders had marched in dry summer heat without adequate water. Saladin captured Jerusalem on 2 October 1187. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem effectively ended.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Jerusalem

The First Crusade Army That Took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 and Killed Most of the City's Population in Two Days

The First Crusade reached Jerusalem on 7 June 1099 with approximately 12,000-15,000 surviving soldiers. The city of approximately 20,000-30,000 mostly Muslim and Jewish residents fell on 15 July 1099 after a five-week siege. The two-day massacre that followed killed an estimated 10,000-30,000 inhabitants. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was established within the month and lasted until 1187.

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The Footnote June 25, 2026 · Arrabah, West Bank

The Politically Contested Fainting Epidemic That Affected Eight Hundred West Bank Schoolgirls in 1983

Between 21 March and 6 April 1983, approximately 800 Palestinian schoolgirls in the West Bank developed acute symptoms including dizziness, fainting, and abdominal pain. The episode is one of the best-documented modern mass psychogenic illness outbreaks. Its political context — Israeli occupation, contested origin theories — made the medical diagnosis substantially difficult to communicate.

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