I've known about this for years, but it is a very good summary for the uninitiated.

Whine, whine. The Jews are the innocent victims of the world. They are ALWAYS the victims, and NEVER the perps. Whine, whine, whiiiiiiine.

Arabs? What Arabs? There were no Arabs! They appeared AFTER the Jews appeared! Bedouins passing through don't count! Ottoman villages don't count either, because they weren't a REAL country. They didn't call themselves Palestinians back then! Ergo, there are no Palestinians!

Deir Yassin? Didn't happen! Um, it was just... guys dressed up as women! And children! Yeah!!!!

The UN partition? It didn't give a disproportionate amount of the land to a small ethnic minority! See above, they didn't exist.

Whine, whine, whiiiiiiine. No Jew anywhere in the world is responsible for what happens, ever! People NEVER attack Jews for a reason, only because they are vicious, psycho, anti-semites!

Let's send the Jews more money, to help them in their victimhood!

C'mon Amy. If this were any other ethnic group you'd call BS. It's hard to take your calls for identity groups to take personal responsibility for their actions when you go out of your way to give your own ethnic group a free pass.

The fact is, there were Arabs living there, they didn't like the partition. I'm sorry, but getting bombed is the natural consequence of colonizing someone's land.

It's like your Netanyahu quote, "Waaah, waaah, why won't the Arabs roll over and peacefully cede all their lands to us? Waaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!"

If the Arabs lay down their arms, Israel will consist of what's now Israel, Palestine, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Now that I've gotten my immature venting out of the way...

It is true that before the creation of Israel, the people who are now referred to as Palestinians were not called such. They were more local, they referred to themselves as being "From Ramallah" "From Bethlehem" or from whatever city they were from. They were not a cohesive movement, however they were very attached to the places they were from.

Then Palestine belonged to England. This doesn't mean that the loca population was British, just that it was occupied by the British. The British declared in the 1917 Balfour Declaration that "Greater Israel" should become a Jewish state.

The problem is, there was already a local population. At the time of the Balfour Declaration there were 700,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs, and about 60,000 Jews. At the time, the Jews owned about 2.5% of the land. ("Life Under Occupation", page 4, I forget the author's name, sorry about that.) Naturally, the other locals were not thrilled about giving up their land.

It is often argued that Syria and Jordan were given to Arabs, so thus the Arabs should be satisfied. But this is not relevant to someone who is from, say, Ramallah... why should he have to relocate somewhere far from his home? Those were, and are, the feelings of the Palestinians who were displaced (and who weren't called Palestinians at the time).

Following the Balfour declaration, the British issued white papers retracting some of what was said, and limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases. In 1939, about 6% of the land was Jewish owned.

The partition plan by the UN was passed in 1947. At that time, about 608,000 Jews and 1,327,000 Arabs were living in the land it described. Jews owned slightly less than 7% of the land. The partition plan gave 56% of the land to Jews. This is why the Arabs did not accept it.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it can be argued that the Arabs would be better off if they had accepted it, but they didn't, because it was a grossly unfair plan.

Much is made of the fact that the Palestinians "willingly" fled their villages. This is somehow made out to mean that the Palestinians happily ceded their lands and have no claim to them. On April 9, 1948, the village of Deir Yassin was massacred by Israeli forces. This has been recorded by the Red Cross Representative, Jacques de Reynier, whose book "A Jerusalem, Un Drapeau Flottait sur la Ligne de Feu" describes this. When other villages learned about this, they fled in terror. A total of about 369 Arab villages were depopulated by the Israelis in 1948. ("Life Under Occupation" page 7 shows a map)

It is undeniably true that the other Arab nations have let down the Palestinians. A Kuwaiti woman said to me once, "The Palestinians are our Jews. Educated, pushy, money-grubbing... as far as we are concerned they are the same people, the Jews are the ons who left and the Palestinians are the ones who stayed." The Palestinians are not beloved by the rest of the Arab world, who like to hold up these cousins to make a point, but don't necessarily actually want to do anything for them.

It is also true that there are Arabs living in Israel, as citizens. It can be argued that they are second-class citizens, but that is more of a civil rights issue that could be resolved a la Civil Rights Movement. The bigger problem is with the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza... who are NOT citizens, and are definitely lacking in civil rights. Torture is regularly used against Palestinian males, and while some of it is against actual people plotting against Israel, many, many innocent bystanders can get rounded up. For a description of methods used, I refer to "Palestinian Victims of Torture Speak out", Al-Haq 1993.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are subjected to closure, in which the borders can be completely shut down by Israel. This has a devastating impact on the economic conditions within them. During the 1996 closure, in Gaza, consumption of meat and eggs (much espoused by our Miss Alkon) fell by 30% and 22% ("Food Security: A Study to Assess the Impact of Closure on Household Food Security in Gaza, Abu Iyyada and Hannon, July 1996 from the organization Terre Des Hommes/Ard El Insan). Fruit consumption fell to 47% of all households, but flour consumption remained the same. Palestinians still eat under closure, but the quality is affected. It is also difficult for them to run businesses, as the borders are strictly controlled by Israel.

A lot of Palestinian problems are not a direct result of Israel, as well, of course. And there are other countries in which people fare worse, this is not to be denied. But the fact is, the Israeli occupation affects Palestinian quality of life. One could argue that if the West Bank belonged to Syria or Jordan, the quality might be even worse. The question is hypothetical, but perhaps it is true, we don't know. In that case, the Palestinians would be angry with the Syrians and Jordanians instead. For now, they are occupied by Israel, and it is Israel they look to when things go wrong because it is Israel that has most of the power.

A more recent complication is the acquisition of power by Hammas. Hammas was always one of the first organizations on hand whenever something was destroyed by Israelis (village bombed, house bulldozed, etc). They would hand out food, money, and other necessities, particularly in Gaza. This made them look good in the eyes of Palestinians, even in the eyes of many Palestinians who aren't particularly religious. This is a cultural difference between Gaza and the West Bank, where Hammas doesn't have as strong of a hold.

I'd also like to add, that the Holocaust was a terrible event. No one denies that, aside from a handful of nutjobs. However, it is not fair to use it as an excuse for the occupation of Palestine. While some individual prominent Palestinians, such as the Mufti of Jerusalem at the time, supported Hitler, most were not involved in World War II at all. As has been mentioned, there was no "Nation of Palestine" to side with the Axis powers. Palestine was still under the British Mandate at the time, and we know whose side the British fought on. Let's not forget that there were prominent Americans who supporter Hitler as well. The fact that the Jews were attacked does not make the Palestinians think "Hey! Those poor Jews! Sure, of course they can have our land!" It is illogical to think that the Palestinians should think this way.

There are still people in the West Bank and Gaza with keys... to the houses that they or their parents lost during the war. They still hope that they can return to them. This is the fundamental problem... the people want their homes back. It is perhaps an unrealistic expectation, but they have it nonetheless. While many Palestinians have settled in Jordan, and around the world, many still cling to the hope of going home. Not enough time has passed, and new wounds have been opened.

Sorry that so much of my info is coming from the same source, but I'm in the middle of a move and not quite up to digging out all my books on the Middle East conflict.

NicoleK:
It is true that before the creation of Israel, the people who are now referred to as Palestinians were not called such. They were more local, they referred to themselves as being "From Ramallah" "From Bethlehem" or from whatever city they were from. They were not a cohesive movement, however they were very attached to the places they were from.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Well, no.

By the 1930s the vast majority of Arabs living West of the Jordan river were recent migrants, drawn to the area by job opportunities created by the British and the Jews. The most common family name in Gaza is still el-Mazri - which means "the Egyptian".

Photographs by Victorian-era pilgrims show just how desolate a backwater the area was until WWI.

This is all well documented - particularly in the book "From Time Immemorial" by Peters.

And when the British held hearings about what to do with the Palestine mandate, they interviewed the muffti of Haifa. He said "oh no, we're not Palestinian - we are Iraqis".

Because for centuries what is now Israel and Jordan was divided like a layer cake between the satraps of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt.

And it was the British who dredged up the ancient term "Palestine" - in their desperate attempt to find a neutral name for a land that already had a name: Judea.

You are missing the point here - the fact that none of these nationalities existed before shows that they are being used to undermine Israel's legitimacy - to assert that the Arabs are somehow more "authentic" than the Jews.

In particular - the distinction between Palestinian and Jordanian is a total fiction. There already is a "Palestinian State". The only thing keeping it from being declared as such is that the ruling class are transplanted Saudis.

The invention of the Palestinian cause - as late as 1964, after nary a peep from Arabs about Jordan's 20-year occupation of "Palestine" - indicates that this new sliver identity was invented solely as a crowbar against Israel.

More Nicole:
The partition plan by the UN was passed in 1947. At that time, about 608,000 Jews and 1,327,000 Arabs were living in the land it described. Jews owned slightly less than 7% of the land. The partition plan gave 56% of the land to Jews. This is why the Arabs did not accept it.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it can be argued that the Arabs would be better off if they had accepted it, but they didn't, because it was a grossly unfair plan.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well, no.
The Israelis received around 20 percent of the land - not contiguous and barely defensible.

The vast majority of "arab owned" land was owned by absentee landlords in Syria and Iraq. And the OVERWHELMING majority of land was formerly sovereign Ottoman property. Painting this as a land-grab by Jews is dishonest.

The 1948 partition plan took into account the presence of the local Arab population. That they and their brethren chose to wage war - and lost - is not something this Israeli feels guilty about.

... yet the PC mindset seems to think that once a group gets on an imaginary A-list, they get endless "do-overs" in their attempt to slaughter others.

Again: many of the lines drawn reflect modern, fictional distinctions. The notion that there is some pristine map to which we must return is part of the PC mindwarp.

Which brings us to:
There are still people in the West Bank and Gaza with keys... to the houses that they or their parents lost during the war. They still hope that they can return to them. This is the fundamental problem... the people want their homes back. It is perhaps an unrealistic expectation, but they have it nonetheless.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
... and you are citing this as a problem that Israel somehow has to solve - or as some sort of delegitimizing claim.

I will now hasten NOT to "feel their pain".

The Arabs have repeatedly refused compromise and coexistence. They have chose terror, war, and the rhetoric of genocide.

Those choices have consequences.
Wage a war?
You lose territory - and don't get it back.
Mount terror attacks?
You lose access to a trading partner - and may not get it back.

You are invited to look at similar situations around the world:

An early Nobel peace prize was awarded to a statesman who proposed massive uprooting of Greeeks and Turks to solve the problems of Cyprus.

A similar post-colonial border dispute has led to India building an "apartheid wall" against Pakistani terrorists - oops, sorry, it's only an "apartheid wall" when Jewraelis build it.

There was also a massive expulsion of ethnic Germans from Russia and the Ukraine this past century. But I guess white people are never refugees...

International law and UN relief agencies all say that after 3 generations off your homeland, you are no longer a refugee. You are expected to acclimate.

Under Arab pressure, the UN created a SPECIAL organization to perpetuate Palestinian victimhood beyond that time.

Why the double standard?

The Israelis have every right to land taken in a defensive war. We are not obligated to give anything "back" to the children of migrants who were in the land less than a generation before the war.

(And after 30-plus years of "peacemaking", it's clearer than ever that they will use ANY territory we give them to continue their war of annihilation against us.)

Similarly, we are not obligated to open our borders to the new "Palestinian" entity as long as they continue to attack us. Kinda basic - if you want access to Israeli markets, stop trying to blow us up.

This is the way things work in the real world - rather than the alternate reality in which PC victim groups are never responsible for their actions..

The Arabs are grown ups.
They chose war - that has consequences.
They choose terror and rhetoric of annihilation - that has consequences.

Religion is a cancer and some strains are more virulent than others.

"There are still people in the West Bank and Gaza with keys... to the houses that they or their parents lost during the war." I have ancestral claims on estates including one castle in Russia and eastern Europe. That don't really mean shit since those lands were seized by the commie socialist fuck heads. As a consequence I have to work and pay taxes to support more commie socialist fuck heads, who if I succeed want to take my fucking land again. There were similar seizures of Jewish lands in those areas, some by commie socialist fuck heads some by fascists goose stepping fuck heads.

This OMG you lost your land poor baby crap is ridiculous. That's how the world has worked for hundreds of millennium, you back the wrong horse you lose you stuff. While I do not bare the anti Muslim grudge that Amy dose I sure as shit have no pity or compassion for the ones trying to blow me or mine up either. There are times where I really wish the US and Israel would take off the kids gloves and starts actually throwing punches like we did in WWII. That would really put into prospective the concept of bullying and restraint. That would unfortunately create a hell of a lot of martyrs and fuel the power hungry butchers on all sides of the conflict.