Toto

I think that the secular reply that holds the most water is to point out that a large percentage of the population of Israel consists of Jews who were expelled or emigrated under pressure from Arab lands. (It was a majority before the Russian Jews entered en masse.) So the Arab Palestinians who fled in 1946 look like a population exchange more than an occupation.

You will find a similar mythology that does not stand up to scrutiny behind a lot of nationalistic sentiments in many nations. But world peace requires accepting whatever boundaries history has left us with. Otherwise, the fighting would never end over whose grandfather invaded whose country.

Sakpo

Israel exists and has a right to exist. Not on biblical grounds, or other religious grounds, but because it's been there long enough that Israelis have been born there who haven't been anywhere else. Israelis have built lives there. It's their home now. I don't give two shits about ancient territorial disputes, Israelis at this point have the right to live in Israel despite the injustices perpetrated in order to secure Israel for them in the latter half of the last century. Obviously the Palestinians also have rights to live in the area as well. Any white North American who disagrees with me should go "back" to Europe. I won't buy arguments about where nomadic sheperds or whatever they were lived thousands ago from either side, I won't buy arguments from either side about what magical entities promised what to who, and I won't buy arguments from either side claiming injustices that occured decades prove Israel shouldn't be allowed to exist today. It exists and has existed long enough that we have to accept it exists, despite the disgusting behaviour involved in creating it, consolidating it, etc, and the disgusting behaviour it continues to be involved in.

Edit:

Exactly. That isn't to say we can't add new borders for a Palestinian state...but we can't just go back 50+ years, rule a country was created unjustly, and demand it dissapear.

Evangelion

Problem is that the Palestinians are Jonny-come-latelys. They don't even have a historical connection with the land.

They were moved out of the surrounding Arab nations and settled in Israel because nobody else would have them. Later, they spontaneously decided that it was "theirs."

I don't have a problem with them living there. That's fine. What gets my goat is their ludicrous claim that "It's ours anyway."

Comparison: your local Chinese community tells you that they're not content with (a) Chinatown, and (b) their personal residences. Now they want your entire state as well.

• Chinese immigrants: "That's our land you're sitting on. Now we want it back, so we can proclaim a new state of China."
  
• Sakpo: "Oh, really? Well gee, I never knew about that. Here ya go. Just take the lot."

Yeah, right.

Sakpo

Huh? My entire post's point was that Israelis have a right to exist where they are, as do the Palestinians. Your comparison to Chinese immigrants/ethnic Chinese would be laughable if it wasn't so horribly racist (playing on the common racist idea present in places with notable ethnic Chinese and Chinese immigrant populations that "the Chinese want to take everything over and leave no room for us"). As I said, my primary point was that the Israeli state has a right to exist in its current location. If you couldn't figure that out you may need to work on improving your reading comprehension.

Grad Student Humanist

It was totally devoid of Jews before they took it by force from those who lived there. Then, in the 20th century, the Western powers out of guilt gave it back to them and the Arabs were removed by force, and even now over fifty years later, the Jews continue to persecute the Palestinians with the full force of their military.

As for the Saami, there would be no reason why I should know who they are. I looked them up, just out of curiosity. So I now know that they are the people who were once referred to as Lapps, which is now apparantly a pejoritive. I still don't know why I should be expected to know that.

LymanLover

This is ridiculous. I agree with Sakpo, that is, the Israeli's living in Israel right now have a right to continue living there for the same reason that Americans have the right to live on ancient Native American territory. It would be an atrocity to forcibly expel modern Jews from their home.

But on the other hand, assertions about "historical claim" are simply a way to ignore the fact that about 1 million people were forced off of their land in the late 1940's by radical Zionists seeking territory for their new state. It was a territory war, and Palestinian Arabs were expelled by force in some instances, and left out of fear but no direct threat in other cases.

Solutions? I don't know of any, besides the much touted two state system.

Godbert

The difference between Isreal and most other current borders around the world is that Isreal was given its territory by a retreating colonial power that had zero business giving someone elses land away.
I can't see how that would not upset the arabs.

They just should have given the jews a juicy piece of Germany, it would have been some more deserved punishment for germany and it would have been the place where the least resentment against jews would have resulted. Germans still feel so guilty now that even slightly critical comments on jews never fail to cause public outrages (at least in the media).

Oresta

Evangelion:
Problem is that the Palestinians are Jonny-come-latelys. They don't even have a historical connection with the land.

My source is not on line. It is "Competeing Claims to the Territory of Historical Palestine," John Quigley; Guild Practitioner, Vol.50, No. 2.

"Until the late nineteenth century, Palestine had a population that was one of the most stable on any piece of territiry in the world" (P. 76)Palestinians have been a presence in the disputed territory since the 4000 B.C.E. About 1000 B.C.E. a Hebrew state was established there, but "the Mediterranian coastal plain continued to be occupied by the Philistines, another Semitic people, from whom the name Palestine derives." (p. 77)

Both groups have legitimate claim, The issue is the establishment of Palestinian statehood. Israel policy and subsequent actions under the Sharon regime are to subvert any possibility of this happening. Furthermore, the Bush regime has tacitly supported the Sharon regime.

Marduk

�I agree with Sakpo, that is, the Israeli's living in Israel right now have a right to continue living there for the same reason that Americans have the right to live on ancient Native American territory. It would be an atrocity to forcibly expel modern Jews from their home.�


This seems OK by me, they won it like everyone else, but it doesn�t solve the problem of the Palestinians. Do they now have to go beat up some other group to get a place to live?

Sakpo

The Palestinians should get their own state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.