Philip Tang

You are making the big mistake that modern Jewish settlement in Israel was started by Europeans. In fact there was continuous settlement of Jews in that land even after the Roman wars. The Romans only forbid Jews from Jerusalem and the regions around it.

The next group of Jews to arrive were those who were living in other lands within the Caliphate, plus Spain from which Jews were returning back into the Arab world after the expulsion by the Catholics. They were later on joined for the first time by Jews from Europe.

The land was largely wasted and Jews did a marvelous job of improving agriculture and making it more livable both for themselves and the small Arab populations who lived there.

With the arrival of more Jews from Europe came an influx of more Arabs from surrounding lands which was beneficial to both. Soon some areas including Jerusalem were predominately Jewish, and others largely Arab. The post WW2 period saw many more Jews in Israel, this time predominantly from Europe who improved the agriculture to standards where it could support greatly increased populations.

The English occupation saw massive hostility from both sides and with the UN partition a war between the Jews and the Arab populations, with the Arabs attempting destruction and the Jews fighting for land which they owned and which they had worked. The war saw movement both ways, Arabs from the Israel sector and Jews from ancient pre-Islamic Jewish communities such as Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon etc. The numbers were similar although attention is only given to the Arabs.

These displaced Jews from the former Caliphate were accepted into Israel and form HALF OF ITS POPULATION, the Arabs were not accepted by the surrounding lands but given only temporary residence and trained to fight for an annihilation of the Jews, even those who had fled from Islamic lands.

Judging by the debate on this matter, it seems that the issue of 35,000 Jews leaving Czarist Russia for land purchased from the Arabs by the Jewish Agency from 1909 to found Tel Aviv in the dunes of Jaffa beach has been left out of the debate.

Up to the first world war Jewish colonisation of Palestine had the active support of Arab effendi and local landowners who sold their land to the Jewish Agency at outrageous prices. These people worked the land till they dropped and started to enjoy a standard of living that became the envy of their Arab neighbours as the land produced fruit and olives.
This relationship lasted through the first war up until the thirties when the british introduced legislation to prevent the Arabs from selling land to Jews.