[ise]

Quote by: RickSp You mean the families that had lived on and farmed these lands for hundreds of years? You are calling them thieves?

Maybe this is not the point, RickSp. From the following (thanks to Jose) it strikes me that feudalism met the 20th century head on in Palestine in 1948 with no clear cut right on either side. Maybe our Zionist friends might read this item published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East and comment without prejudice to their normal stance. I certainly learnt a lot.
Jews for Justice

How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it change? "[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally masha'a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine." Rashid Khalidi, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community? "The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was 'to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people...' As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha'am wrote that the Arabs "understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at...' [Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] 'We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly...' At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund's request, evicted them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice." "Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880's ...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it." Don Peretz, "The Arab-Israeli Dispute." "[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere...In the Holy Land...they lived together in [relative] harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the 'rightful' possession of the 'Jewish people' to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants. " Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest." "Serfs they (the Jews) were in the lands of the Diaspora, and suddenly they find themselves in freedom [in Palestine]; and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination." Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am, quoted in Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."

Many conquests only involved changes of the ruling class, not the serfs. The Norman Conquest involved a major change in England but not for the serfs. They continued as before with new masters. They paid more but did better trade. All were happy. In Ireland, with time, the Norman 'invader' became more Irish than the Irish themselves, full integrated.

The much latter Ulster Plantation involved large scale ethnic cleansing. 300 hundred years later the Ulster/Northern Ireland problem is still unsolved. So the Palestine problem is 'young' in comparison. In Palestine in '48 it was not the change of ownership of land that mattered. It was the ethnic cleansing yet the new owner may have felt entitled to evict the previous serfs. Who knows? The lesson of the Americans' experience with its previous inhabitants is one on how not to treat the locals, but then it depends on what you what you wanted in the first place. It seems that Americans have a need for a Boogie man and needs to invent a fear figure..Red Indians, Reds, Muslims...

The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict Published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East