
Originally Posted by
I
by the end of the seventh century that land was recognized as Arabic, arabs and muslims lived in it. Filastine was its name(how palestine is pronounced in Arabic) then it diverted to the Ottoman Empire, still being an Arab nation, and Islam is its religion. Up until 1948, the largest community in that piece of land were Arabs. When Jewish settlers came to Palestine living there for religious purposes only, and not political, the Arabs had no problem with that. It was when the land of all the peasants (Arabs) were being purchased by Jews and slowly evicting the peasants from their land thats when the Arab peasants started feeling the danger. How is that possible? The 1858 Ottoman Land law. in a nut shell, this is when the ottoman empire started asking for registration on lands in order to claim that the land is yours, the peasants didn't feel the need to register for many viable reasons, as a result, ottoman villagers registered as owners of the land of the Arab peasants, and started slowly selling them to Jews. The Brits came later, the conflict started before that. Here are quotes from great Israeli figures:
Quote:
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)
Quote:
We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish state here. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Malalul; Givat in the place of Jibta; Sarid in the place of Haneifa, and Kfar Yehoshua in the place of Tell Shamon. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
--Moshe Dayan, addressing the Technion, Haifa (Haaretz, April 4th, 1969)
Lets not mention, the attempt to invade Lebanon in 1982 and Egypt in 1956, or are those also were never owned by Arabs?
It's an endless debate, It all boils down to war pretty much. The whole scenario is too messy, too deep and too religious. Sadly it resulted in all this violence, all those wars and the deaths of all the innocent people in between.