Quote:
Originally Posted by astralis
stan,
sure, but that is not to say there was no arab inhabitants whom had been living in what was to be the state of israel at the time. israel did not come into being in an utterly unclaimed and empty land, and so of course arises the current troubles, perpetuated by primarily the fantasies of the descendants of the dispossessed and secondarily by the ultra-orthodox jews thinking the land either empty or theirs by right of God anyway.
i wonder what would have happened had the US in the 1930s decided to grant a homeland for jews in alaska (it was a bill at the time). hard to imagine what would be palestine as a sleepy bywater.
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Astralis,
I did not imply that there were no Arab inhabitants. However, they did not see themselves as Palestinians not only in the sense of a national identity, but also did not see themselves as being attached to that territory. A majority of the Arabs living there prior to the British Mandate period moved around back and fourth between the west and east side of the Jordan River or further, at the time there was no border. This is not to suggest that all of the were Bedouins or nomadic, but they were semi-transient until the time that the British started building some serious infrastructure that made it more attractive to settle down in one place.