From: ziad@eng.umd.edu (Ziad K. Cheiban)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: PALESTINIANS
Date: 19 Nov 92 16:48:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: eng.1992Nov19.164859.9616
Distribution: world
Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Nov18.232058.13414@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> carasso@Turing.ORG (Roger Carasso) writes:

>90% of Israel proper was *bought* by Israel.  Further, of that 90%,
>70% was from large Arab land owners.  Further I don't know why you
>think it is Arab land..  It was Jewish land 1900 years ago, and
>turkish, and british, and others.

M A J O R     F A C T U A L    E R R O R:
  In 1948 the different Jewish organizations owned between 6 and 7 percent only
of the territory of Palestine and that is nowhere near the 90% you cite.
After the 1948 war Israel enacted the infamous "Law of Return"
thereby confiscating the lands of all Palestinians who could not prove
they were present in person on their properties during certain dates which
I forgot but which roughly coincided with the war itself.
This allowed the Israelis to confiscate large amounts of land because:
1- Most of the Palestinian lands were in the hands of large property owners
who could not possibly have been physically present on all their properties.
2- A lot of Palestinians had fled because of acts of terrorism and massacres
such as the one in Deir Yassine.
  Palestine was never British land it was Arab land under British mandate.
It was never Turkish either it was an Ottoman province. FYI the Ottoman
empire sought its legitimacy in Islam and not in Turkishness and treated
all Moslem subjects, be they Turks or Arabs or what have you, equally
reagardless of their ethnic background. During the Ottoman empire the land
was owned by Arabs, hence it was Arab land. The different Jewish tribes
were not the only inhabitants of that land 1900 years ago, also some of these
tribes were nomadic further weakening the claim that it was Jewish land.

>Sometimes it seems so futile for us to argue like this.  There are
>major philosophical things to discuss.  For example, does might make
>right?  I mean what does it mean for the land to be jewish land or
>arab land.  Land is land and whomever can control it for the time has
>it.  I mean ultimately that is the way it will be, always.  

Unfortunately in the real world we live in, might does make right.
Israel itself is one of the proofs of that.

>My basic understanding is that there is plenty of arab land and no
>jewish land, aside from israel.  I hope you see why jews feel a need
>for a land of their own.  I hope you also understand that palestine up
>until 1947 was defied as israel + transjordan (jordan).  Why can't
>jordan be the palestinian state.  It's population is 2/3 palestinian?
>Aren't the palestinian's upset at king hussain?  You talk about
>apartheid.  He's a british transplant from the royal family of saudi
>arabia.

  We are talking about people here, not about cattle and not about innanimate
objects! What gives anybody the right to disposess a people of their lands, 
to move them en masse and to replace them with immigrants from Poland the
ex-USSR etc...? 
  Regardless of the kind of governement and boundaries the Palestininans 
would accept (an issue that hasn't been resolved) their individual attachment
is to their own houses and lands which allowed them to live relatively decently.The issue is not an abstract question about the legitimacy of Jordan's 
political system or about the circumstances of its creation but of real people,
like you and me, who have been rendered homeless overnight, and who are
discriminated against systematically and on a daily basis in Israel and the
occupied territories. 
  As for the plentifulness of Arab land versus the small size of Israel,
there are several things to be noted:
1- Most Arab states do not welcome Palestinians and do not recognize them
as full citizens with equal rights.
2- A lot of the Arab lands are deserts.
3- Again the fact that there might be some land where they will find refuge
is not an excuse for uprooting a people.
  The end goal of Zionism is to move all of the world's Jews to Israel, 
this will require more land and due to the balance of power that tilts heavily
in favor of Israel, it will be able to uproot more Arab populations and take
away their natural resources with ease. There are no fixed boudaries to Israel
they seem to expand as needed, under thinly veiled pretexts. All neighbouring
Arab countries are very wary of that.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.arabic:5031 soc.culture.indian:37775