To: Dayuhan who wrote (115463 ) 9/23/2003 1:33:11 AM From: Lazarus_Long Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500 Any eviction has consequences. Sometimes the consequence may be that the tenant comes back and shoots the landlord. That hardly means the tenant is right, though.The tenants were not exactly "renting" the land, in the sense that we understand "renting". As with many feudal systems, they were traditionally regarded as part of the estate: when the estates changed hands, they simply paid their rents to a different owner. Many had never seen or met the owners. This sounds almost like slavery; certainly the worst sort of absentee lanlordism. And, again, the fact that the Arab landlords were operating a feudal system was not the fault of the new owners. At some point the West had to go through some sort of si,ilar transition to get to the modern concept of land ownership. Life is not fair; that does not justify terrorism. When the estates were bought by Zionists who wished to settle their own people there, the tenants were expelled, generally with minimal payoffs. They ended up in urban shantytowns, dead broke and with no relevant skills, and developed a pretty severe case of hostility toward those who had displaced them. They were easy bait for demagogues and propagandists, and provided a core of footsoldiers for the early Palestine riots. The people buying the land were able to offer premium prices to the absentee landlords because they were fundraising in Europe, particularly in England. The pound was by far the strongest currency in the world in those days, and no local could compete against outsiders bearing hard currency. Fine. But that changes nothing. The real question here is how to get matters settled- -if they can be settled. A thousand retelling of the history will change nothing. That sounds like the Palestinian version; there is also a Jewish version.I'm not trying to judge any of these events and actions as right or wrong, good or bad. I'm trying to trace a causative chain. You can no more escape right and wrong here than you can jump off the planet.