Chinese Trade in the Levant, 500 Years Ago

Dec. 16 2024

We’ve published a lot at Mosaic about Sino-Israeli relations, and economic relations in particular. But most of that has been focused on the past few decades. Nathan Steinmeyer describes a much older case of commerce between China and the Land of Israel:

Excavators with the Israel Antiquities Authority and the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology made an unexpected discovery while excavating on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion: a small porcelain bowl fragment painted with a short Mandarin Chinese inscription.

With the excavation team on Mount Zion typically uncovering material dating from the Second Temple (ca. 516 BCE–70 CE) through Byzantine periods (ca. 324–634 CE), a Ming Dynasty (14th–17th centuries) bowl was certainly not what they expected. This is not the first early Chinese porcelain discovered in Israel, but it is the oldest to feature writing. The enigmatic inscription reads, “We will forever keep the eternal spring.”

The team determined the bowl fragment dated between 1520 and 1570, although how it ended up in Jerusalem remains uncertain. Historic writings do, however, mention close trade connections between the Ottoman empire, who ruled Jerusalem at the time, and the Ming Dynasty, with records of at least twenty official delegations from the Ottomans visiting the imperial court in Beijing during the 15th to 17th centuries.

Read more at Bible History Daily

More about: Archaeology, China, Land of Israel, Ottoman Empire

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula