Interesting theory. How that is relevant to the current state of affairs is a bit of a streetch, though.
I should have thought that would be obvious. I was responding to your unsupported claim that the Arab hostility towards Israel is based on economic considerations by showing a long history of only holding resentments against non Muslims.
Say what? This is a fact, jack.
Saying that the Palestinians had their land stolen from them without specifying exactly when and how is obviously a propaganda slogan. Are you referring to private land ownership or the political control of the area? Are you talking about Palestinian claims of land theft by Jews during the Ottoman period, the Mandate period or after Israel's War of Independence? According to the British reports to the League of Nations (available at the UN website), British courts found that 80% of the Arab claims of land theft by Jews were without any merit and all but a few of the remaining 20% were the result of simple misunderstandings or contract disputes. In other words, the British courts found there was no evidence of land theft by Jews during the Mandate period.
If you are referring to the period after the war, again, there is no basis in fact for saying the land was stolen, since Israeli courts were open to hearing claims from Arabs who had left before or during the war that they should be allowed to return and reclaim their property
on an individual basis. Few took advantage of this opportunity, but some who did were allowed back into Israel and either got their property back or received compensation for it.
With only a few exceptions, the Arabs who had left relied on the promises of Arab leaders to conquer Israel and restore these refugees to their homes instead of pursuing their individual legal options in Israeli courts. So were their lands stolen from them or did they effectively abandon their homes by choosing to rely on Arab promises to conquer Israel instead of pursuing their individual legal options?
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Second, the fact that you may not think religion is a sufficient reason for the Palestinians' actions is not a reasonable basis for assuming that they don't think it is. If you read the Hamas Covenant, it is clear that for Hamas, religion is the whole reason for their actions and that economic and political motivations play no part in their motivation, goofy blather about stolen land and poverty is just used by them to motivate some Palestinians who might not share their religious ardor.
It is clear to you but it surely isn't to those Palestinians still living in Ghettos who have the keys to their former homes AND THE LEGAL TITLES TO THEIR LANDS too, sport.
It is clear to anyone who has bothered to read the Hamas Covenant that religion is the whole reason for Hamas' crusade against Israel and that Hamas considers the conquest of Israel as only one step towards re establishing the Caliphate. When Hamas speaks of stolen land, according to the Hamas Covenant, they mean land that was consecrated to Islam by Allah, not to private property.
No one other than UNWRA knows how many of the refugees hold deeds to land in Israel, and UNWRA has consistently refused to release any of this information. However, if a refugee did hold a valid Ottoman or British deed to such land, he had the legal option of bringing suit in Israeli courts
on an individual basis for the return of that property or compensation for it. If he did not pursue this option, it is fair to say that, either through ignorance of his rights or political motivations or fear of reprisals from othe refugees or militants, he abandoned his property.
In any case, since you have no way of knowing if more than a few of the refugees hold deeds to property in Israel, it is unreasonable to characterize them as a group as holding such deeds.
Makes sense.
Bullshit.
ONLY two years? Try something in the realm of 1300 years, amigo.
Since the term, refugee, as used by the UN and by the Palestinians, themselves, refers to a group of people who have only one thing in common, that they lived in Israel for two years between 1946 and 1948 and then left, it would be unreasonable to characterize them in any other way. 1300 years might refer to the family histories of a few, but according to the British reports to the League of Nations, to only a very few, even 100 years would refer to only a very few. In fact, according to the British, the vast majority of Arabs who were in what became Israel migrated there from the surrounding countries during the 1930's and 1940's in response to the jobs created by the growing economy west of the Jordan River, especially along the coast, and calls by Arab leaders to move to the area in an effort to persuade the League of Nations, and later the UN, not to create a Jewish state there.
After the widespread anti Jewish riots of the 1920's the British tried to quiet the conflict by orderring immigration by both Arabs and Jews into the area be brought almost to a halt, but they report that while they were successful in stopping almost all Jewish immigration, they were unable to stop massive migrations of Arabs from the surrounding countries. The fact is that the vast majority of Arabs who became refugees had been in the area for less than a generation and a great many for only a few years, and none of these had any historical ties to the land. There is absolutely no basis in fact or logic for invoking "1300 years" when characterizing the refugees or their descendants.
Spin ALERT....or they ran for their lives to get the hell out of the way of two opposing armies just like refugees have ALWAYS done in every war.
Your anti-Arab prejudices are fairly apparent.
It is as fair to say the those who left did so to join the invading armies as to say they left to avoid the battle because we just don't know for sure what was in their minds. What we do know is that with very few exceptions these refugees did not pursue their individual legal options in Israeli courts but relied instead on the promises of Arab leaders to restore them to the land after the conquest of Israel.
You're ******* nuts. They got out of the way of a war and the only word to describe those people is refugees.
Again, you have no way of knowing if they left to get out of the way of a battle or to join the invading Arab armies. If the latter was the case, then characterizing them as refugees is a propaganda slogan.
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What a load of ******* mitigating blather.
The people in th refugee camps are not homeless, obviously, they live in houses or apartments and in the territories the camps now have a wide range of housing facilities ranging from luxury homes and and apartments for the political elite who still want to live among their constituents to essentially working class housing on a par with such housing in the region. You may not like this fact, but it true.
Because they cannot?
They're bereft of money and are not welcome to integrate, perhaps?
Tow plausible reasons I'm inclined to give credence to. But tell me, does that make the refugees anything but VICTIMS?
No it does not.
But victims of what country? Perhaps they are victims of the countries that host the camps but will not allow them to integrate into the society or perhaps they are victims of UNWRA that will pay them to remain in the camps but not to emigrate to some place where there is more opportunity.
True...so?
Colonize?
According to the British reports to the League of Nations, the vast majority of Arabs and Jews in Israel in 1948 arrived during the same period, so it is incorrect to characterize these recently arrived Arabs as the indigenous population and the Jews who arrived at about the same time as colonizers.
They already lived there so attempting to call that colonization is a bit insane, don't you think?
