Dravinian: Glad you are taking an interest in the very releavant history but you are neglecting a very huge piece of the dynamic. The offer was made in 1919, officially in 1920, in 1922 England took up to 80% of the Arab portion and illegaly created Trans-Joprdan to pacify Hashemi (i.e. Arabian) clients.
The 40% you speak of? That is after 80% of the Arab portion got sliced off ever so quietly.
My figures are indeed correct as the come.
As for Jews moving around,etc.,etc. No culture has been as cohesive as long and as attached to a land as long as the Jews have to THAT piece of land. We have 4500 CONTINUOUS years of connected living with that land. the Arabs have only existed as a distinct people for 2800 odd years. Do the math. And when you do it notice that they did not come out of their little home of al Hejaz until Nabatea, i.e. the Roman Era. That is to say, they did not walk the world stage until we had fought and died for that land for thousands od years.
Petraeus is beautiful but even they did not give a shi& about any kind of Arab nationalism and concentrated on caravans.
It was not until the latter half of the Ottoman Era that we see many Arabs moving onto this land, although they did first conquer it BY FORCE in the 630s of the CE/AD.
When they came, Gaza was Jewsish in totality save for a Byzantine garrison, the so called "West Bank" was entirely Jewish if you include Samaritans among the Jews as most do, and of course the rest was entirely Jewish.
Yes, the land IS occupied, YES it was stolen from the indigenous but guess who those indigenous are ? Not the first to come there but certainly the oldest of the many cultures and one with a continuous physical and cultural tie...one that predates on both counts, by thousands of years that of the Arabs.
"PAlestinians were living there when the British turned up..." As were the Jews, Circassians, Druse, Bedua, Armenians, Sudanese, Ethiopian Christains, and many other ethnicities, religions, and creeds.
If you want to do some math, look at population distribution and majorities. Who held the majority in Jerusalem? Safed? Tiberias? Caeseria? Keep going? Or should we argue about thatch and mud hovels owned by absentee Turkish landholders who actually were the deed holders, not the Arab migrants who wandered in from Syria and Egypt among other places.
Even the place names have remained in most cases, Jewish. Bethlehem? House of Bread? Hebron? Even Arabs rarely sully the name by calling it al Khalil. Ma'sah'dah (Masada)? Herodian? No contest, sorry.
Arabs originate on one place on Earth despite their having coopted all of N. Africa and almost the entire Middle East, even into China, they come from al Hejaz. al Hejaz is a tiny sliver of desert with a few choice oases from where they had migrated in the time of Muhammed to settle cities chiefly populated by Jews...cities like al Medina and Mecca itself.
When you speak of those who were on the land before tje Jews, think of where they are? The last of them, the Phonecians, Mycaean Greek by ethnicity fell into extinction some centuries before the Common Era.
Are the Navajo now considered indogenous in Arizona? the Sioux in S. Dakota? The Seminole in either Florida OR Oklahoma? Most would argue a hearty YES. Fact is, none of them sprang from that area but out of the many thousands of years of human habitacion THOSE mentioned tribes are the last coherent and viable tribes to inhabit those spaces so yes, they ARE infigenous to THOSE places.
Just as with the Jews. Of any nation in the Middle East, which has the historical context to claim the land they live on? Only Jews. Many Hiterritres or Medianites coming around ? Amalek looking for his lost sons? We have been there for almost 5 millenia, in ninority for the last 2 but there none the less and this is undeniable.
Pretend what you wish, buy into what you want, but it does not change actual history and science.
Do I think they should have happily signed anything? Noy at all but they should have been pragmatic enough to know which way the wnd was blowing and since they did not even have a distinctive culture let alone a national history, they did not have much to sacrafice. Some malarial or rocky lands that some Turks living in Aleppo or Istanbul allowed them to till for the lion'sshare of the profit? Yeah, let us fight for that right.
Jews sat a table, in front of a paper, that gave that portion of land to them free and clear. Most did not own any of it. Most had less than 150 years anywhere near it and yet they refused the offer!!!
Then they cried when Jordan was created and tried to and eventually killed its monarch because of their own poor decison making.
Nothing has changed in almost 100 years. It is my prayer at least that they have at last realise what others did long ago, you have to go with the flow. This is the reason why the Jewish Refugewes from Arab Lands who outnumber "Palestinian Refugees" about 2:1, and lost property equal to 10 times what the "Palestinians" claim to have lossed settled down and began making lives.
This is why today Israel sits with highest standard of living in the entire Middle East and Gazans are scroungimng for cooking oil. You live by your decisons, this is common sense. Make good ones, usually have a good life, make terribile ones, well you do the math.
