Only that country cannot be taken from another people who had been living there for more than a thousand years. This is of course the root of the Israei-Palestinian conflict, it is the root of the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, and the root of all subsequent strife in the region.
And it is not over: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues today, as it has for 41 years, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
I also hear this alleged fact from time to time: that Jews in Palestine owned most of the land anyway. It was their already. The truth is that in 1948, Jews had managed to purchase only 7% of original Palestine. The remainder was held by Muslim Palestinians, and tiny portions by Druze and Christians and others.
Only that country cannot be taken from another people who had been living there for more than a thousand years.
You mean like the Jews who were living there before they were driven out by the Romans who were then driven out by the Arabs who then proceeded to live there for a thousand years?
Why is the Palestinian claim to the land legitimate, when it was stolen from the Jews, but the Jewish claim is illegitimate, when it was stolen from the Arabs?
Do you not see the double standard?
I keep harping on this because I want you to see the foolishness of the argument about who "rightfully" owns the land. Dozens of different peoples, including both the Palestinians and the Jews, have a legitimate claim to the land that Israel comprises. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Britain--these countries have all controlled the land at some point.
As long as you're arguing the double-standard that Israel does not have a legitimate claim to the land but the Palestinians do, you're not going to be taken seriously by anyone except those who already agree with you.
Not at all. History I am afraid does not flow backwards. The Palestinian have lived in the land for over a thousand year. At the same time, there were always at least a few thousand Jewish inhabitants, mainly living in Jerusalem. As side of spurious "place holding" theories, Jews were never prohibited from living in Palestine, but chose to live in a variety of other places. It was only with Zionist ambitions that the idea of a pure Jewish state came into being. That meant the necessity of dispossession of lands, villages and towns, belonging to the indigenous Palestinians, who had lived there for over a thousand years, something long hypothesized as necessary by the early Zionists. It eventually happened: two thirds of the Palestinian population were ethnically cleansed by force and fear in 1948, many dying along the way.
If you can really find some ethical-moral basis for such a plan or action, please provide it.
Well, let me give you an ethical-moral basis for resolving the issue that arose as Jewish population in Palestine grew. It was Martin Buber's proposal for a binational state, a single state that would encompass the political and social needs of both peoples having rights to the land. Buber offered his proposal to Ben Gurion, but it was brushed aside.
The Zionists had different plans and didn't need a philosopher and humanist telling them what was right or what to do. Forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, "the Arabs," was already in the cards.
