ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

Why annihilate them with bombs when they're accomplishing the same thing by taking away Palestinian lands, and building fences to keep them out?

I read an obituary yesterday of Amos Elon, eminent author and journalist dubbed 'chief chronicler of the Israeli story'.

He wrote, "Whateve their subsequent follies and outrages, arabs have been punished for the sins of Europe".

What do you suppose he meant by that?

How naive it is to think that the Pals would be willing to live in peace with Israel were the country to return to the pre-'67 war borders. The Pals would still demand the right of return for millions of Pals who never lived in Israel. The Pals would settle for nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

If it was, what was its national currency?
What was its national capitol?
What other countries recognized it as a country?
What form of govt did it have?
When did it become a country?

If Palestine was an actual country, instead of a region on a map, these questions should be easy for you to answer.

mm, Palestine was recognized and acknowledged since the time of the Roman Empire.

From Wiki:

Right. Palestine is a recognized region on the map as is the Sinai or the Gobi or the Pacific Ocean or the Anarctic or the Galapogos Islands, or the Caprock, etc. Some or pieces or all of these areas are or have been controlled by various peoples in the past, but none have been 'countries' or 'nations' with elected representatives or a recognized government. When the modern Palestinians occupied the area up to the 1940's, they had made no effort to form any kind of government or structure. When the UN has offered them a homeland that would be recognized as their own country or nation, they have repeatedly rejected that offer.

Similar to an Indian reservation, you mean?

No more than Israel is a reservation. Israel accepted the land the UN offered them. They probably would have been willing to negotiate more with the Palestinians re who got what too if the Palestinians hadn't suddenly become committed to having it all and letting the Israelis have nothing.

right, the Ottoman Empire is imaginary history.

Hey Foxy, the mayor said I could have half of your house, and most of the garden.

I'll be moving in next week.

Is that okay with you?

Pay me what it's worth and its yours.

Seriously, the Arabs were not the only people who were or have occupied that land. The Israelis can trace their heritage back to a time when they, the Jews, did occupy that land as a nation complete with borders, a government, and recognized leaders. And they were forcibly evicted from it against their will or wishes. Can the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians say that the land has ever been theirs with their own established borders, government, leaders?

Who said anything about payment? What are you, crazy? Anyway my ancestors used to live there, about 2000 years ago, or so folks say.

I have a deed that says I own my property and have legal right to occupy it. If you can make a case that I don't, I also have very good insurance to cover my loss. So bring it on. Otherwise you can discuss it with the local law.

We have had much the same situation here among the Hopi and Navajo peoples in Western New Mexico and Eastern Arizona. Those indigenous peoples have been around probably as long as the Arabs have occupied Palestine but without establishing a central government or borders for the lands they claimed as their own. And they did get crowded out and off their land, frequently in unjustifiable ways, as the country was settled and 'civilized'. To remedy the plight of the Indians, the government did carve out large chunks of land to offer to each tribe and most did accept what was offered as the alternative was to pretty much have nothing. But the Hopi and Navajo never quite agreed on where their boundaries were. Eventually the government made the decision for them which required many Navajo families to move off of Hope land into Navajo territory and many Hopi to move off of Navajo territory into Hope territory. There remains disatisfaction to this day, but at least a peace of sorts has been achieved.

The UN did much the same kind of thing re Israel and Palestine. Israel was willing to accept the peaceful solution despite losing much of Jerusalem which is clearly more a Jewish city than any other. The Palestinians were not willing to accept the peaceful solution.

So we are stuck with the situation we have now. But it is very darn difficult to be intellectually honest and put all the blame for that on the Israelis as some on this thread consistently attempt to do.

Where did the name Palestine come from?


The name Palestine refers to a region of the eastern Mediterranean coast from the sea to the Jordan valley and from the southern Negev desert to the Galilee lake region in the north. The word itself derives from "Plesheth", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". Plesheth, (root palash) was a general term meaning rolling or migratory. This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea. The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs.

The Philistines reached the southern coast of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers - chiefly from the Mediterranean islands - overran the Philistine districts.

From the fifth century BC, following the historian Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "the Philistine Syria" using the Greek language form of the name. In AD 135, after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt, the second major Jewish revolt against Rome, the Emperor Hadrian wanted to blot out the name of the Roman "Provincia Judaea" and so renamed it "Provincia Syria Palaestina", the Latin version of the Greek name and the first use of the name as an administrative unit. The name "Provincia Syria Palaestina" was later shortened to Palaestina, from which the modern, anglicized "Palestine" is derived.

This remained the situation until the end of the fourth century, when in the wake of a general imperial reorganization Palestine became three Palestines: First, Second, and Third. This configuration is believed to have persisted into the seventh century, the time of the Persian and Muslim conquests.

The Christian Crusaders employed the word Palestine to refer to the general region of the "three Palestines." After the fall of the crusader kingdom, Palestine was no longer an official designation. The name, however, continued to be used informally for the lands on both sides of the Jordan River. The Ottoman Turks, who were non-Arabs but religious Muslims, ruled the area for 400 years (1517-1917). Under Ottoman rule, the Palestine region was attached administratively to the province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul. The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and applied to the territory in this region that was placed under the British Mandate for Palestine.

The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Roman "Palaestina". Quoting Golda Meir:

* The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity. [In an article by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, November 25, 1995]


http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php

You are interested to maintain intellectual honesty in the argument, you say.
So would it interest you to know that when Israelis occupy an arab village, one of the first things they do is to destroy all written records of the settlement's history- marriages, deaths, births, deeds to property, that kind of thing.

Why do they do that, do you think?

Why do you think they do that? What is your authority to say that they do that?

The Pals in Israel were asked to stay. However, at the call of the invading Arab countries, they abandoned Israel to make the Arab victory easier. Alas, they screwed up. Israel has no obligation to allow the return of these traitors.

How do you arrive at "traitors" when they were only trying to avoid conflict?

Your own link says that Palestine was only a region, never an actual country.

So, since it was never a country, how can anyone claim it ever was?

New Mexico was never an actual country (Texas was) Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.