Some of that land was 'bought' from absentee owners of tracts on which lived indigenous under a form of usufruct which was broken when zionists evicted them ... in some of these cases, the indigenous were sent away with a little cash money, yes that's true
But it was still purchased!! The British governing body of Palestine, for the most part pro-Arab, ensured that Jews were required to purchase any land they acquired.
So blaming the Jews for taking advantage of the existing British colonial policies is like blaming the 'Sooners for colonizing Oklahoma at the expense of the Native Americans.
Still it was a land inhabited predominantly by arab muslims, and for the most part had been ruled by muslims for centuries, crusaders and brits had their periods, but mostly muslims ...
So all someone has to do to have a legitimate claim on geographical territory is to control it for several centuries, eh?
Well, then I guess Palestine belongs to Turkey, then... They ruled it for some 400-500 years.
You certainly can't claim that the Palestinians have any property rights when any ownership of that land existed SOLELY at the discretion of the Ottoman Turks. That would be like giving a renter of one of your properties the right to render null and void any property transaction, at any point in the future.
Face it, what you're really referring to here is the lack of proper land redistribution to Palestinians locals in the aftermath of WWI and the defeat of the Turks. But I have yet to see any evidence of this being wide spread and I doubt it exists given the local outrage that would be generated when Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes.
It's more likely that these Palestinian "squatters" and renters received great benefit because they NEVER owned the land to begin with, yet saw the benefit of selling land they didn't own to the Jews under the pretense of ownership. After all, there was no guarantee that the Turks wouldn't come back and defeat the Brits and French.
So what a great deal!!
zionism was all about imposing a jewish rule on a land clearly arab
Just as Jihad was all about imposing and subjugating Palestine, Africa, and about 20% of Europe to Arab rule..
That's just the nature of power, isn't it? Except the Jews purchased their property that became the Yishuv.
and in 1948 that's what they did, they took far more than they had bought, took it by force of arms and looted the possessions of arabs
I seem to recall every neighboring Arab country in the region sought to take, by force of arms, Jewish property, properly purchased under British occupation of conquered Turkish land, as well as promising to kill every Jew they found.
But they lost, and the Israelis captured and annexed territory that has been used to stage attacks against them.
On the other hand, Arabs from Jordan annexed the West Bank and incorporated it into the Hashemite Kingdom (imposed by the British) occupying Palestinian territory in Trans-Jordan.
And no one gave a cr*p about that occupation that lasted from 1948 until 1967, when Jordan lost it as a result of attacking Israel from the area. In fact, Jordan did not give up claim to the West Bank until 1989, the commencement of the 1st intifada.
... so the majority of Palestine was in fact simply taken
Yep.. by one side or the other. The British certainly didn't purchase it from the Turks. Nor has anyone ever insisted that the territory should be given back to the Turks.
The odd thing is that the Zionists were one of the few groups of people who actually sought to PURCHASE a portion of land upon which to live.
The world can question the legitimacy of the British permitting those purchases, but then that would open the questioin of whether Turkey still has a claim on its former empire.
Hawk |
