the thing is tough that the phoenicians, as we understand them, were really greeks. we can understand this better now due to dna testing in the region, which has clarified that the sea peoples were greeks. some time around 1500 bce, these greek raiders set up in cyprus and systematically destroyed the mediterranean coast. what emerged from the wreckage was a semitic civilization that was radically transformed by greek seafaring, and which led to the colonization of northern africa and southern spain by ancient hebrew speaking lebanese people.
the persians needed them to fight the greeks. this is actually recorded in the hebrew bible as cyrus being extremely pro-jewish, but cyrus was not merely pro-jewish, and the mythical part of it is an exaggeration of a larger policy. in fact, cyrus was philphoenician. he wanted to rebuild those cities on the coast that the assyrians destroyed, to rebuild those trade networks. the resettlement of the jews in jerusalem, as colonized irano-semites, was a part of that philphoenicianism.
you can start to narrate history from roughly that point. anything before cyrus in the bible has no real historical credibility, but everything after cyrus is relatively easy to corroborate.
the inescapable conclusion that follows is that the ancient caananites were neither arabs nor jews in any meaningful sense, but hebrew-speaking pagans worshiping semitic and hellenic gods. that only changes after the return from babylon, and it's hard to make sense of how there could have been a monotheistic religion in the area before the persians.