Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

Do most people in Palestine support a single state or two state?

The basic premise is flawed. Borders of a land called Palestine and part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire before the British and other Allied governments divied up land belonging to the Central Powers and their allies after the First World War, is not the same as the borders of the British Mandate, or as the borders of an entirely arbitrary United Nations approved map creating two states from the Mandate, one Jewish and one Arab (which incidentally the Jewish community leaders accepted and the Arabs following Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini did not).

It might be more to the point to ask to what extent Arab Palestinians claiming the right of return (or rather, their forebears who migrated) left their homes because they were driven out by force and by threats from the Israeli Defense Force, affiliated militias, and independent Jewish nationalists; and to what extent Arab migration occurred as a result of encouragement by Arab military forces from neighboring countries, which invaded after the British withdrawal in the spring of 1948, who wished to conduct combat operations in Palestine without substantial casualties to the large Arab resident population; and to what extent those who fled the fighting were barred from returning by the Israeli government or unable to recover their land and homes from the public or private parties that seized them, as compared to those who refused to return because they didn't want to validate the authority of the Israeli government or swear loyalty to it; and to what extent land was seized from expatriate Arabs who had fought against and killed Jews after the Arab invasion.

The last point is of particular interest in light of the longstanding and continuing Israeli policy of demolishing the homes and seizing the land of Arabs (or their relatives) deemed guilty of terrorist acts or of participation in organizations which carry out such acts.

On the other side, you might consider that before that Arab war against the Israelis, a large Jewish population lived in neighboring Arab countries; and that in retribution, those Arab governments forcibly dispossessed and deported their Jewish populations, resulting in a total number of Jewish refugees roughly equal to the number of Arab Palestinian refugees.

Finally, you might want to consider that the Israeli government, at great expense and sacrifice, accommodated all of those Jews evicted by vindictive Arab governments, as well as all other immigrants of their diaspora, giving them homes and citizenship; whereas all of the neighboring Arab states allowed the Arab Palestinian refugees to rot in squalid camps as stateless persons.

It won't be up to the Zionists to decide what becomes of Palestine and their regime in Israel, and the world won't allow them to confine the Palestinians in concentration camps.

Most Palestinians no longer support two-state solution



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You might want to consider the fate of British servicemen kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the forerunner of Mossad compared to BBC journalist Alan Johnston rescued by Hamas.

If you're British it's a no brainer.

Yes it will. It's their country. The only way a third party is going to have any say over internal Israeli policies is by first waging and winning a nuclear war with both Israel and the United States.



The world has no ability to win a nuclear war with either Israel or the United States (much less both at once).

The world is free to whine about it though.

More precisely, the Zionist regime implemented in Palestine is theirs.

The country is everyone's there.

At most, your video game scenarios are worth a chuckle.

The Palestinians have no claim to other people's countries. If they wanted a country, they should have peacefully negotiated the creation of a country of their own.



Reality is not a video game scenario. Israel will defend their sovereignty, and if necessary they will defend it with nuclear weapons. And the United States will back Israel all the way.

So unless you have some way of winning a nuclear war against both Israel and the United States, you might as well accept Israel's sovereign rights.

Thanks, I can see why they changed their minds of a two state solution.

It's the Palestinian's country also, as granted by various international resolutions and treaties.

Your ideas of reality, as well, are worth nothing more than a chuckle.

No. The Palestinians have no right to be Israelis.

If the Palestinians wanted a country, they should have peacefully negotiated the creation of their own country.



Reality is reality. If you chose not to accept it, it remains reality.

The reason why Palestinians object to making peace is because the only thing they like to do is murder children.

Totally bogus. Their land wasexpropriated without their approval and they want it back from those who are squatting on it illegally.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is Israeli land and the Palestinians are the illegal squatters, the Palestinians were offered, many many times, an opportunity to have their own state created.

If the Palestinians' complaint was truly about having their own land, that complaint would have been answered by those many opportunities for the creation of a Palestinian state.

So no, Palestinians are not violent because of their imaginary claim to Israel's homeland.

Palestinians are violent for one reason only: they like to murder children.

Yes. The Palestinians have the Right of Return according to various international resolutions and treaties. Your assertion is irrelevant to this fact.


This opinion does not negate the fact that the Palestinians have the Right of Return based on various international resolutions and treaties.


Reality is one thing, your ideas of reality are quite another thing and remain only your ideas of reality.

Who are the Palestinians?

From 1920 to 1947, it was the growing Jewish community that descibed themselves as Palestinians, not the Arabs. Then the Jews started calling themselves Israelis and the displaced Arabs appropriated the term.

Illegal Arab immigration (mostly from Syria and Iraq ) into British Palestine between the two world wars, attracted by the growing prosperity of the urban economy, may have exceeded the number of Jews immigrating into the country during the same period. By contrast, the government's Jewish Agency and the Jewish organizations managing and encouraging settlement emphasized agriculture and had to provide the infrastructure for immigrants before they arrived.

So, most of the Arabs in British Palestine at the time of the war in 1947 had no more hereditary attachment to the land than most of the Jews there at the time. In fact, as urban workers they had less attachment to the land.

Yassir Arafat was born in Egypt and raised in Gaza, not British Palestine. Ironically, it was he who popularized the term Palestinian as a label for Arabs from Palestine.

This refusal to accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state is exactly the reason why the Palestinians will end up with nothing at all.

Oh well. At least the Palestinians deserve what is going to happen to them.

I posted about it already years ago, but like to do it (partly) today again:
various German-Jewish publications existed long before 1920, e.g. the "Altneuland - Monatsschrift für die wirtschaftliche Erschließung Palästinas --
Organ der zionistischen Kommission zur Erforschung Palästinas" (Old New Country, monthly publication for the economic development of Palestine -- Organ of the Zionist Commission for the Exploration o Palestine)


I "Heft1, 1904" deals one report about Palestine as a region of colonisation ("Palästina als Kolonisationsgebiet) (pages 3 to 13).
The author, Otto Warburger clearly differs between the Palestinians (most inhabitants - 600,000 - of Palestine are Muslim Arabs, some Greek-Catholic) and Jews. (interestingly, he writes that you can't differ between Muslim and Christian Palestinians, because they look very similar and even have the same clothes [page 16])

The Joint Palestine Survey Commission's report of the Jewish Agency (published June 18, 1928) contradicts your above statement, too.

Actually, the blame must be shared by both Hamas terrorists and the Likud government of Israel; if Hamas's opposition to the state of Israel must be taken seriously, so too must the opposition to the existence of a Palestinian state, as evidenced in the political platform of the party which controls the government of Israel:

"The platform rejects outright the idea of a Palestinian State a full six years after the Oslo Accords which set out a road map for its establishment. While there is no explicit call for the physical destruction of a Palestinian State, Likud's Platform in 1999 and Israeli policies preceding and following it have ensured that there cannot be a State of Palestine; even hopes for it have been destroyed. Benjamin Netanyahu, remember, is the head of the Likud Party."

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/14604-forget-its-charter-hamas-has-given-de-facto-recognition-to-the-state-of-israel

This isn't a controversial claim. Israel newspapers covering domestic politics routinely acknowledge this.

Likud and Hamas collude in a game against the residents of Gaza and by extension the West Bank.

Hamas holds no elections and controls the local media by force and intimidation. It cannot survive the creation of a viable, independent democratic state. But by provoking Israel (e.g. with rocket attacks that don't threaten it existentially and are militarily ineffective, but create terror and opposition among Israelis), it can pose as the only dynamically active advocate for Palestinian aims, attracting both followers and financial support from Arab governments. The Israeli disproportionate military reaction, killing mainly civilians not Hamas militants, isolates Israel internationally and makes the civilian population of Gaza ever more resentful and indisposed to trust to political solutions.

Israel under Likud is only too happy to reciprocate. The party's control of government rests mostly on security concerns. The party opposes the creation of a Palestinian state on principle. It too cannot survive a peaceful resolution, so it needs enemies. Hamas is a fine enemy insofar as it is militarily weak but dramatically and indiscriminately violent.

Israel has copies of Hamas membership lists. Gaza is a small place and it is surrounded. If Likud truly wished to put an end to Hamas, it would send troops in to dig Hamas militants out of their urban strongholds and kill or capture thrm. This would require building to building infantry combat. Hamas militants could be effectively targeted but at the cost of many Israeli casualties. Since in Israel the army is well integrated into society and therefore into domestic politics, this would result in disastrous political blowback for Likud.

So instead, it puts heavy artillery on the border with Gaza, and when Hamas militants fire rockets, it responds with shelling. During the invasion of Lebanon, Israel had a record high number of breakdowns among its soldiers, who had to witness civilian casualties at close range, unlike the conventional tank wars it had previously fought. It learned its lesson. Indirect fire from artillery does not allow you to see the child with its intestines eviscerated by shrapnel, or the old lady with her leg blown off, or the faces full of sick fear. It is more like a big video game. You smoke cigarettes with your buddies and talk about giving the bad guys their comeuppance.

Militarily, however, it is ineffective. Hamas militants drive a pick-up truck with a mobile rocket launcher, fire, then drive to a new area before the Israelis can respond, or they retreat back into a parking garage or an alley between buildings. Few militants are killed by indirect fire, but lots of civilians are as apartment blocks and homes are hit by concentrated (sheaved) artillery fire.

The Israeli government knows this. It is elementary military theory.

Eventually, Hamas runs low on rockets, the local population can't stand any more, international pressure mounts, and a cease-fire results with both sides claiming victory. Hamas then rebuilds its stockpiles, and eventually the cycle starts anew. Meanwhile, Israel continues expanding its settlements in disputed territories until they are too large and built up to seriously insist on abandoning or demolishing.

It's a very cynical game.

Between the census of 1922 and the one of 1931, the illegal immigration was about 9,000 Jews and 4,000 Arabs.

During the Mandate, the Jewish community in Palestine grew from one-sixth to almost one-third of the population. According to official records, 367,845 Jews and 33,304 non-Jews immigrated legally between 1920 and 1945. (Source links for above: see the related wikipedia report)