>And who lived in Palestine before the Zionists came over from Russia and Europe?
Oooh! Another history lesson! (Probably my last post for the weekend)
Both Jews and Arabs, but not that many of either. The Ottoman census showed very few people in Palestine before the 1880s, and in fact, in Jerusalem, Jews outnumbered Muslims. Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1867 and kept a diary on it, and basically said, "Holy Land, my ass. This place is barren and desolate."
In the 1870s and 1880s, thanks to Zionism, many Jews immigrated to Palestine and began farming the land. This resulted in many employment opportunities for the Arabs from the surrounding lands, who were otherwise nomadic. The population of the area exploded in the forty or so years after that.
>Whoa.......there is a lot of history in between the 20s and he 40s, a period where rising Arab/Palestinian nationalism needed to be assuaged........after all, it was they who were occuping Palestine when the Jews decided to return to Zion. How presumptious of the Zionists to think that they should have all of Palestine for themselves.
They got there after the Jews.
>And you wouldn't be pissed? You've been farming a piece of land for centuries and suddenly you're told you have to given up the better half to a bunch of Zionists who appeared on the scene a hundred years before? I know I would be pissed.
But that wasn't the case, as I said above. In fact, before the 1940s, if one referred to "Palestinians," they were just as likely to be referring the the Jews as to the Arabs.
>Plus the Palestinians were supposed to get sea access with Jaffa on the Mediterranean........well that never happened! So now Palestine is land locked on land that's mostly scrub and desert. What a deal!
No, the Jews got the desert. Yes, they did grab more after winning the 1948 war, but that was of strategic importance.
> Israel got its independence; was awarded the cream of Palestine; then grabbed more of the land then they were entitled while keeping the Palestinians 'down on the farm', all the while paying lip service to Palestinian complaints for nearly 60 years.
"Cream of Palestine?" Israel was fully considered in 1947 to have been awarded the scum of Palestine, and they irrigated it and made it bloom.
Check out "From Time Immemorial," by Joan Peters (1984). It was written by a woman who went to write a report on the plight of the Palestinians in the refugee camps, and when she began living with them, she realized how much propaganda they'd been fed about their past and about Israel, and did a remarkable amount of research on the topic.
-Z |
