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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (86933)	11/8/2000 11:42:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You cited a case of a sale in 1920 from a European-based landlord family, but from what I'm reading, the overwhelming majority of sales of land were by rich Arab landowners. The family in question was described as "Levantine", which I assume would in current parlance mean Lebanese, probably Christian but possibly Arab. They lived in Europe, as many wealthy landowners did, to be well away from those dreadfully foul locals who provided their wealth. The vast bulk of the Arab landowners were also absentee, according to all I've read (Arabs are hardly strangers to feudal arrangements); they probably didn't live in Europe, but they probably didn't live on their estates either. The discussion of "legality" in such cases is really a bit of a sham, as it is anywhere where land tillers have been converted into tenants by armed conquest. The law is no more than the will of the conqueror. If the conquered can successfully rise and expel the conqueror, they become heroes, and make their own laws; if their uprising fails, they are terrorists. Is there any moral obligation to follow or respect a law which is imposed by an outside power? If you buy land that is occupied by people who have nowhere else to go, have you no obligation to those people? Presumably not, according to the particular "law" imposed by the conquerors of that moment. For that matter, what right did slaves have to contest their status, as long as it was "legal". The Palestinians of 1898-1948 saw the land they occupied being rapidly expropriated by foreigners wielding hard currency, in amounts that may have been derisory by European standards, but were far in excess of any resources the local population could wield. The locals had no legal recourse of any kind. The newcomers were clearly and vocally planning to create a state in which the original inhabitants had no place. How would you expect the locals to react? If all that you had was forcibly removed from you because some person you had never seen or heard of wrote some words on a piece of paper that said it was quite alright for someone to come and take it, would you call that stealing? The Zionists had a choice. They could have attempted to coexist equally with the local population, but this would have made the goal of a Jewish State unachievable, as this would clearly not be acceptable to the Palestinians. They could have attempted to expel the local population. They could have expelled as many as possible and suppressed the rest. They opted for the third way, presumably knowing full well that this choice would leave them facing perpetual conflict. They may have felt that no other choice would do. They may have been right. In any event, the choice is made, and now they lie in the bed they made. The Palestinians haven't helped at all, but I think it's pretty clear that if you move uninvited into a place previously occupied by others, the onus is on you to establish peaceful relations, even if that means you can't have things entirely according to your desire. So now the Israelis are left with three choices. They can simply kill the Palestinians, which would be politically impractical, or they can suppress continuous uprisings, which is what they are doing, or they can give back land. Not just a few scattered bits, but a significant, contiguous piece of economic value equal to that which they retain. That last might not achieve anything, or it might achieve something. We won't find out, since they will never do it.