The canaanites have a prior claim, by self-admission of the old jewish legends, if only we could get away from the basic dynamic here, the right of conquest
Yes there was continuous jewish presence, and not just in Jerusalem either, a few other places as well, there were christians also, and other sects ... these people absolutely opposed the zionist project, as you know, because they could see how it would inevitably lead to sectarian violence [well, duh, eh] ... i think Jerusalem should be administered by a body above religion, or if by religion then by the baha'i or quakers ... although they'd likely need calvinists with clubs for their police force, you just wouldn't want to let such types turn it into a Protestaat
The great body of jews spend more than a millennium and an half in Europe, and then decided to colonise Palestine again, as had their ancestors taken it from the canaanites ... had the land truly been without people, this would have worked fine ... but, it wasn't, and from the start indigenous tenant farmers were evicted when foreign hard currency was used to pay off turks with the status of 'landowners' under ottoman law .... nice and legal, as long as you studiously forget that the indigenous had property rights over the olive trees, and other fruit trees, also under ottoman law ... but of course if you bulldoze everything flat, then you can turn around and say innocently, what olive trees
'... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ...'
That's the part of the Balfour declaration that would seem, on the face of it, to an independent observer, to preclude the bulldozing of the locals' olive trees and homes ... you'd think, anyway [?] ....
'Since the middle of the nineteenth century, and probably long before, the proportion of children born to the Palestinian Arabs-their fertility-has been among the highest recorded for any population. The average number of children born to a Palestinian woman who lived through her childbearing years (the total fertility rate [TFR]) was slightly more than 7. The high fertility of Palestinians living in Palestine remained constant from Ottoman times until the late 1970s, when it began to diverge by regions. In the late 1970s, fertility among residents of the Gaza Strip actually began to rise, reaching more than an average of 7.6 children (TFR of 7.62) in 1979 before it decreased slightly ...'
palestineremembered.com
... which would appear to deteriorate your theory that palestinian increase was abnormal .... well, abnormal it may be, but presumably they are achieving it the old-time way, so it's legal and resultant progeny eligible for the rights of man ... somewhere that site has a map showing pre-zionist population centres, but i don't have time today to find it .... cheers. |
