You should read Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestine-a-four-thousand-year-history-book-review/

It was a colonial possession for a long time, so the region wasn’t the most wealthy. The area was incredibly diverse, with various Islamic, Christian, and Jewish groups living next to each other. A lot of local politics was clan based, with heads of families handling a lot of dispute resolution and internal welfare. The various peoples generally practiced a form of Zeus’s Law from the Odyssey, extremely hospitable to outsiders.