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

Why would people accuse Sharon for Sabra and Shatila then?

InfraBlue wrote:

At this point in the conflict a two state solution is a farce,

A negotiated two state solution will get the Palestinians a state based on 1967 borders.

The alternative is forcing the Palestinians out of the West Bank and giving them a state comprised solely of the Gaza Strip.

Take your pick.

InfraBlue wrote:

oralloy wrote:

MontereyJack wrote:

0bserver wrote:

Palestinians aren't indigenous to the West Bank even. Let alone Israel

Yes, they are. Demographic history disagrees with you.

Not likely. The Palestinians may have neighbored the Kingdom of Israel, but they were not a part of it.
The boundaries of the West Bank are close to what the boundaries of the Kingdom of Israel were.
There might be a case to be made that the Palestinians are indigenous to the Gaza Strip though.

Genetic research shows that the Palestinians are indigenous to the Levant. They are the descendants of the various peoples that inhabited the area, e.g. Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Israelites, etc.,

Note that the Levant was a much broader area than just the West Bank.
By saying the Palestinians are the descendants of people adjacent to the West Bank, I am not denying they came from the Levant. I'm just saying they came from a different part of the Levant than the West Bank area.
The Canaanites were the Bronze Age culture of the entire region. When that culture collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, the former Canaanites formed five new Iron Age cultures:

The Israelites
The Phoenicians
The Ammonites
The Edomites
The Moabites

Genetic research is very clear on the fact that the Palestinians are not descendants of the Hebrews/Israelites. They are descendants of one of the other four Iron Age cultures that sprung up from the ashes after the collapse of Canaanite civilization.

Here is a handy map if you want to see where those other four nations were located relative to the Israelites:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kingdoms_around_Israel_830_map.svg

InfraBlue wrote:

ridiculous references to “the Kingdom of Israel” notwithstanding.

Nothing ridiculous about me referring to science and history.

InfraBlue wrote:

This whole business of referring to religious mythologies to assert that “the Jews” are the rightful owners of Palestine is asinine.

Pretending that "scientific history" is "religious mythology" does not discredit that science.
You only discredit yourself when you deny science.
Nor is it asinine to point out reality.

InfraBlue wrote:

The profession of a religion does not establish the rightful ownership of land.

But historical fact does.

China, North Korea, and Iran doesn't have restrictions against their citizens like in Israel. They all have some level of freedom to move around in their own country.

So, what's your point?

that's intentional trolling - just ignore it

"Jews of German nationality were legally enemy aliens" - that's just a legalistic excuse for not caring for the fate of others. They were clearly trying to escape the enemy regime. I know it and you know it, and hiding behind bureaucracy makes the UK look even less moral

They were clearly trying to escape the enemy regime. I know it and you know it, and hiding behind bureaucracy makes the UK look even less moral

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

At this point in the conflict a two state solution is a farce,

A negotiated two state solution will get the Palestinians a state based on 1967 borders.
The alternative is forcing the Palestinians out of the West Bank and giving them a state comprised solely of the Gaza Strip.
Take your pick.

That's your puerile alternative.

Further ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Zionists won't be allowed by the international community.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

oralloy wrote:

MontereyJack wrote:

0bserver wrote:

Palestinians aren't indigenous to the West Bank even. Let alone Israel

Yes, they are. Demographic history disagrees with you.

Not likely. The Palestinians may have neighbored the Kingdom of Israel, but they were not a part of it.
The boundaries of the West Bank are close to what the boundaries of the Kingdom of Israel were.
There might be a case to be made that the Palestinians are indigenous to the Gaza Strip though.

Genetic research shows that the Palestinians are indigenous to the Levant. They are the descendants of the various peoples that inhabited the area, e.g. Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Israelites, etc.,

Note that the Levant was a much broader area than just the West Bank.
By saying the Palestinians are the descendants of people adjacent to the West Bank, I am not denying they came from the Levant. I'm just saying they came from a different part of the Levant than the West Bank area.
The Canaanites were the Bronze Age culture of the entire region. When that culture collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age, the former Canaanites formed five new Iron Age cultures:

The Israelites
The Phoenicians
The Ammonites
The Edomites
The Moabites

Genetic research is very clear on the fact that the Palestinians are not descendants of the Hebrews/Israelites. They are descendants of one of the other four Iron Age cultures that sprung up from the ashes after the collapse of Canaanite civilization.

Where’s the research?

A paper by The Journal for the Study of Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry cites a study--"The Y chromosome Pool of Jews as part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", American Journal of Human Genetics--in which 2.1% of Palestinians have the so-called “Cohen Gene,” a subclade of Haplogroup J2 which is found at high frequencies among Jews. The former quotes the latter saying that this finding suggests “either the shared Middle Eastern genetic heritage of Jews and Arabs, or the possibility of conversion of Jews to Arab Muslim or Arab Christian identity.” The same can be said of other Palestinians who exhibit the more general Haplogroup J2 as well as J1 which is found in many Jews as well.

oralloy wrote:

Here is a handy map if you want to see where those other four nations were located relative to the Israelites:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kingdoms_around_Israel_830_map.svg

References to long gone ancient kingdoms are irrelevant to genetic studies.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

ridiculous references to “the Kingdom of Israel” notwithstanding.

Nothing ridiculous about me referring to science and history.

What’s ridiculous is you conflating genetic research with ancient history and religious mythologies.

oralloy wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

This whole business of referring to religious mythologies to assert that “the Jews” are the rightful owners of Palestine is asinine.

Pretending that "scientific history" is "religious mythology" does not discredit that science.
You only discredit yourself when you deny science.
Nor is it asinine to point out reality.

Then you’re only discrediting yourself when you conflate science with the ridiculous notion that the Israelites and the Israelis are the same,

and the assertion that therefor the latter are rightful owners of Palestine, which you pull right out of Jewish religious mythology.

If Canaanites were there before the Israelites, whoever they may have been, then in fact Canaanite descendents would be the indigenous inhabitants, no matter where some of them may have ended up in the interim.

Roman citizens were the indigenous inhabitants for several centuries.

And since Islam developed, the inhabitants of the region for centuries have been primarily Moslems.

There was some movement, of course, since the area had been part of a wider polity under the Ottoman Empire for several centuries, and people under a common government move around, but farming communities in particular tend to maintain ties to the same land for quite a few centuries. All of them can legitimately claim they are "indigenous"

To maintain that because people of one religion who held the land for a few centuries are the "indigenous people" when other groups preceded them

and others have controlled the land since them for probably longer than that one group held it, is simply unwarranted.

Jews can claim that their god gave them the land (though they had to commit something like genocide, if you pay attention to the Old Testament, to get what he supposedly gave them--not much of a gift). But Romans, Christian Crusaders, and Moslems equally claimed their god or gods gave them the land, or enabled them to conquer it. If you don't believe in any of their gods, none of these claims seems to have any great legitimacy.

And those are the Palestinians, today's true "indigenous people".

The Jewish claim has no more validity than the Palestinian one.

In fact, since most of the "Right of Return" in-migration consisted of people whose ancestors hadn't lived there for millenia, and couldn't even say where they might once have lived, it has considerably less validity than people who actually lived in the land and can still point out their houses or the lands they farmed, and their grandparents and great grandparents, and great great on back. Or the generation after them, or the second generation.

The ship returned to Europe, docking at Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17, 1939. The United Kingdom agreed to take 288 of the passengers, who disembarked and traveled to the UK by other steamers. After much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were allowed to disembark at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. They appeared to be safe from Hitler’s persecution.

Canaanites stole the land.

Israelites stole the land.

Romans stole the land.

Crusaders stole the land.

Moslems stole it and stole it back.

It's been conquered and reconquered for perhaps eight thousand years, well before the Israelites held it for a few centuries. They're only one more set of conquerors.

Jews have no more title to it than any other group.

They weren't the first,

they have been only a small fraction of the population for close to two thousand years.

The modern-day Zionists were Europeans. They had to migrate/invade the land to become Israelis.

Only by twisting language so much you're wringing its neck can they be considered the sole indigenes.