Congress has been informally notified about the pending deal, most of which is to be paid for with foreign military financing — in which U.S. taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to turn around and buy the weapons from the United States.
Congress has been informally notified about the pending deal, most of which is to be paid for with foreign military financing — in which U.S. taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to turn around and buy the weapons from the United States.
The Arabs of the Palestine area who have been present on the land for millennia fought bravely against the Ottoman empire only to be double crossed by the British who had promised them dominion over the land of their fathers. They then had to endure waves of white European Jews coming to their land with laughably spurious claims to historic ownership. Against all odds the Palestinian people persist, they are far from the “doomed people” you would like them to be.
The real bill coming due is what will happen to little Israel when the world bully turns their back on them. If you think this is impossible check out the trend in public opinion polls, there is no way to wash the blood of so many innocent children from your hands, the stain on Israel is permanent.
I said Gaza is doomed. There will always be plenty of Palestinians just over the border in Jordan. Jewish claims to the land are no more specious than Palestinian claims. They too lived on the land for centuries, even in Ottoman times and before that. The Brits absolutely doubled crossed the whole Arab world during the mandatory period, aided by the French. In the climate of political indertiminacy and vagueness, the Jews saw their opportunity and declared independence before any agreement could be imposed on them. The 1947 UN partition agreement was not such a bad one, when you consider how unrpoductive and violent the past 80 years have been. But the matter has been settled by war (and Israeli military victory) repeatedly since then. If the current situation is based on ideals and beliefs of another era, well that is just what it is. Jews saw their very brief window of opportuninty in 1948 and they took it. They will not give the land back, just as the USA will not be giving all of its land back to the native Indians. Never happen. That fact has been settled for over a century now. Arabs and Israelis will need to learn to live together in peace. You cannot correct the wrongs of history. Those belong to the past and cannot be changed. It may take several more generations coming and going before both sides begin to realize this.
The Jewish claims to the land are absolutely specious when you look at the available data. In the late 1800s the Jewish population of Palestine was negligible, about 2-3%, maybe a couple of thousand people. The current Jewish population of the country are not of the land, they are all colonial settlers who came from Europe and other areas with the intention of taking the land for themselves. Take the leader, Benjamin netenyahu for instance, his real family surname is Mileikowsky, they are Polish people, his dad made up the name Netenyahu to sound like a local.
The Palestinians however have deep ties to the region going back thousands of years sharing DNA with bronze and iron age Canaanites from the region.
The 1947 UN agreement wasn’t a bad one for Israel, sure. They got over 55% of Palestine despite being colonial settlers fresh off the boat, free land for nothing. The Palestinian people had to give up the land of their ancestors that they had been continuously farming for thousands of years, wasn’t such a good deal for them.
You are correct, Israel will not give the land back, that is not how the world works, might is right and all that. Israel is a tiny country both in land mass and population. 8 million or so Jews surrounded by 100s of millions of Arabs and other Muslim states. The only thing holding back the tide is Israel’s relationship with the USA but this relationship is not set in stone. Look at the USA’s history and how they have treated their allies in the past, the USA will drop Israel like they did the rest of it is in their own self interest. Now in the USA being tied to Israel is political poison, same in Europe. Foreign policy will eventually have to align with public opinion if officials want to stay in office. The world does not need an Israel to exist any more than it needs any other country.
Same is true of the Jews. That argument really doesn’t move the legitimacy of Palestinian claims forward one iota.
Concepts of land ownership under the Ottomans (and before that) do not conform to modern legal ideas of land ownership. For 1200 years under the Ottomans, the Ottomans owned everything, and the local inhabitants were simply allowed to reside on the land, (unless you were Armenian). It is better to look at the issue of land ownership from the Mandate era forward, where laws of land ownership and most other things were in the process of being modernized and harmonized with more recognizable and standardized western norms & (soon to be the common global understanding!) concepts of land ownership.
Even without opening a bible or koran, there is historical evidence of a very long-lived Jewish state in the region. There is no evidence of a Palestinian state- ever. Palestinians were only ever residents on the land, pawns of larger empires for 2000+ years- Ottomans, Mameluks, Crusader States, Jews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Mongols.
If you wish to argue the “Palestinians were here first” angle, you’re not going to win that debate. History and archaeology are not on your side.
That is your opinion.
Jewish exiles returning to their ancestral homelands… Sounds a lot like the Palestinian narrative about themselves. Odd, that. It took 2000 years, since the Roman era, but again, do you say that anyone who is forcibly removed from the land of their fathers somehow loses any claim to that land? What then, of the Palestinians who have relocated to Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Tureky, Europe & Egypt in the last 80 years? Have they also lost their claim to the land? When does one’s claim expire? after decades? centuries? millenia?
Be careful how you answer that, because Truth is a double edged sword that cuts both ways.
Jews purchased the land they owned in the Mandate era, when laws were in such a state that land could be legally purchased and passed on or sold under modernized reformed laws. It was not legal nor permitted by the British to simply take someone’s land. Palestinian landowners got rich selling their lands to Jews, and at the same time, sold out their own people for the sake of money.
Land stealing came later, and didn’t last long. I exclude land that the state of Israel won in wars against the Arabs. Israel simply did to Arabs what the Arabs would have done to them had the circumstances been reversed in the Arab’s favor.
Arab politics in the 20th century, post 1948 has been highly fractious itself… It’s almost as if they dislike eachother as much as they dislike the idea of Israel existing. Yes there are more Arabs surrounding Israel than there are Jews inside Israel, but absent any real consensus among the various Arab states, their hatred for Israel has not amounted to much in 80 years. Impotent terrorism that has made Palestinians pariahs globally. Several lost wars, which only served to strengthen Israel in the end. Dallying with Baathism, attempting to play the Western Bloc off against the Eastern Bloc during the cold war, cults of personality with Nasser, all of which only brought further internal and regional discord among states that claim to have a common agenda. Their own internal discord among Arabs ensures Israel’s security.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that and I certainly wouldn’t bet money on that in the next 25 years. Remember that as the current generation of Israeli and Americans age and die away to be replaced by newer generations with new thinking, the same is occuring in the Arab world. Nasser didn’t outlive Lyndon Johnson… not by much… Saddam didn’t outlive Bush. Assad didn’t outlast Bibi. The end of the cold war left the entire Arab world flat. The next generation of Palestinians may have a different perspective than the current generation, especially if they are allowed to taste some prosperity for a time and are liberated from propaganda pushing 80 year old narratives written by their grandfathers and great grandfathers.
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