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Date: May 15, 2018 04:33PM
...Allow me to place myself in the middle of the political spectrum here. Where both sides will attack me, I know.
I don't believe in scripture, so by no means will I ever defend any biblical claims to the Holy Land as the sole property of the jewish people. But neither will I accept the myth (widely believed by most Europeans and muslims) that the jews suddenly left Palestine around the time of Jesus' death and didn't return until 1947ish.
Ottoman censuses from around 1880 show that jews then outnumbered both muslims and christians in Jerusalem, as well as in many other towns and villages of what is now Israel. That was before Theodor Herzl et al started promoting Aliyah. And even those early "colonizers" between 1885-1915 basically got themselves a passport at the embassy and legally bought property. Then, after WWI, the League of Nations and the UK agreed that Cisjordan (22% of what was Palestine until then) would become a jewish state, with Transjordan being separated from it. More jews emigrated in the 1920s and 1930s as a consequence, and after 1945 this became a flood.
Now, those who shout "Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea" need to explain just where all the jews whose parents and grandparents were born there, should go? Some say "back to Poland, Germany, Europe!" But millions of Israelis have more Arab than European blood. Millions of jews lived in, and were pestered out of, muslim countries like my Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, Iran, the islamic parts of southern Russia.
The two sides are unwilling to compromise, but the only solution will have to be a compromise. To me, Israel has a right to exist because of the promises made 100 years ago. And to me that includes Gaza and the West Bank. But we need to help the Arabs who do not wish to live in a jewish state. We should be able to make another desert bloom, this time for them.
For those, jews and Arabs, who DO want to stay where they are, I am sorry, but they will have to see eye to eye, negotiate, compromize. Or as we call it, belgiumize.
I'll go dodge your bullets now ;)