A mighty Jewish empire extended over this entire area before the Arabs and their Islam were even born! The Jewish People have one of the most legitimate Birth Certificates of any nations in the world. And if you want to talk religion, fine. G-d GAVE the Land of Israel to the Jewish People. And G-d does nothing by accident!
That's as far as I got, a
mighty Jewish empire never existed.
Also since most Jews in Israel are secular, we'll leave God out of it.
(let me add, and if you insist God gave them the land, well God give it and God take it , which should be evident as no temple there, and Britain is not God).
And there was no arab muslim ownership of Palestine from 1099 until 1988. And there second most holy place "allegedly" was allowed to fall into ruin 3 times while islam was in control of the land.
You know what it doesn't matter, they were living there when the Zionist came so there.
A land that could easily support more than 7 million was populated by only 500,000 (arabs, christians and jews). A population in large part not owned by the people living there, or that did not want to register land or pay taxes that would mean military service.
People renting an apartment do not won their unit no matter how many generations live there. When the building is sold or scheduled for destruction so a newer better building can be put up, the tenants have no say, nor do they get the new units at the old price.
Most of the land was on a feudal system with ownership given to award service to the empire or sold to raise money for the empire. There was no way local farmers not making enough to pay the taxes could afford to buy the land or pay the back taxes to register the land. It would also mean they would have to serve in the Ottoman army.
If the land had been arable or profitable it would not have been sold so readily to the jews invited by the Ottoman and powerful arabs of the time.
The mufti rebel-roused the poor and disenfranchised not the actual owners of the land or those of standing. Riots did not just begin with the mufti, thought he was the main driving force of the rabid anti-semitism of the muslim world (an nazi).
The uneducated, under educated, poor and unemployed were not land owners, nor were the farmers that worked the land for their foreign masters. Those who were craftsman and had some other skill that olives, grapes or grain might have shops and small bits of land in or near the towns and villages. They would have made up a small percentage of the population.
Most of the jews and christians were not farmers, except those with the church. Apart from the feudal land owners, these are the ones that would have been land owners in the urban population.
70% of the land was under those circumstances not arable, waste land or migrant routes used by nomads on their way north or south with the seasons.
500,000 occupants of the land were not all or even most land owners, nor did they want to be to avoid taxes or military service. It is illogical to claim the land belonged to those 500,000 people when the Empire fell or was divided by the LoN/UN mandate. Just because they lived on worked the land does not mean they had any right to determine who the land was sold, or not sold to, or who could enter and live in the area. For 1500+ years they were little more than slaves under the muslim or even Byzantine rule.
Jews did not leave the land or give up their rights, they were forced out for rebelling against roman rule. When they returned, they bought land they did not steal it. They did not invade, they were invited by Ottoman and arabs, they were promised a homeland (in name) by the british and ottoman in the early part of the 19th C.