- 'Do they not offer them stolen land?'

They were only ever offering not to steal all of it all at once.
- That's not any kind of a fair deal.

Oh dear AC, not the thieving Jew again? The Palestinians could have had 80% in 1948, but all they have ever wanted is all of it free of Jews.

Fester,

That is wrong.

Totally wrong.

It's part of historical record that Zionist forces
had taken more than 78% of historic Palestine,
ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages
and cities and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in
a series of mass atrocities including more than 70
massacres.

As for land grabs and theft?

The more than 3 million Palestinians living in the
occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem daily face
home demolitions, arbitrary arrests and displacement
as Israel expands its Jews-only colonies and steals
Palestinian land to do so.

Palestinian movement is restricted by military
checkpoints and the Separation Wall that has obstructed
their ability to travel freely.

The Gaza Strip where some 2 million Palestinians live has
been under Israeli siege for more than a decade whereby
Israel controls the air-space, sea, and borders;
the Strip has witnessed so many assaults that they have made
the area uninhabitable.

But that's been Israel's aim since the beginning.

Hi Fester,

"The Palestinians could have had 80% in 1948"
They already did have 80+ percent prior to 1948 Fester.
- Only if they'd firstly given up the land they were already on for generations would the Jews have had 20% in total to give.
What do you think the Nakba is, if you don't know all these things you can't make an informed judgement that takes into account the historical events.

Let me explain this better.
Lets say you owned a 100 hectare block of land.
Lets say I turned up, started living on your land without permission, and then I decided to offer you 80% of your own land, keeping 20 hectares for myself.

Is that fair?
Should I not expect you to object to this offer?

So what if you're a Palestinian and it was you, and lets say you object to the above deal and say 'No deal', and I (the Jew) spend the next 75 years doing salami tactics on you and your block, bombing the shite out of you on a regular basis, turning off your water, poisoning your wells and destroying your olive groves and taking more land until all you have is 1 hectare down in the back corner.

Would you think it fair now?

When Israel had the war of Independence in 1948 they claimed Palestinian lands as their own, and murdered and ran off the existing Palestinian inhabitants that had lived there for generations.

Everything Palestinians are claimed to have done to Israelis was firstly done to them by Israelis.

I told mhaze this weeks ago, but he just couldn't get it through his head
The land was not unpopulated prior to 1948
- People already lived there and had done so for many many generations!

What do you think happened to all the people that lived in these towns?

List of towns and villages depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_villages_depopulated_during_the_1947%E2%80%931949_Palestine_war

How much land did Israelis have prior to this?
Look at the bloody map - not much, they took it all by force.

Dear Critic,

Regarding land ownership, the truth is somewhere in between and the land is a mosaic.

Some lands were grabbed alright.

But other lands were bought with good money, the full price, some of which not just once, some not just twice, some not even thrice, but four times paying for the same land:

Once to the effendi (local lord) who owned them.
Once to the vassal farmers who complained that the effendi is throwing them off the land, collecting all the benefits whereas they get nothing.
Once to the Bedouin tribes which claimed to have seasonal rights to come with their flocks to graze the land.
And once to the corrupt Ottoman rulers, who claimed that nothing can be registered as yours until you pay them too.

Do you consider it fair to enjoy the money but not willing to part with the sold goods?

Now for the grabbed land:
Some of it was taken in a defensive war,
Some was taken by scare campaigns,
Some by legal tricks,
And yes, some of it was taken in disgusting pogroms,
And some was just found empty or even uninhabitable and taken because nobody else was there.

What is little understood, is that in 1948 Israel had no policy as to what to do with the villages and towns it conquered. That came down to the local young commander of the unit that took the village, typically in the rank of captain. Some captains allowed the residents to remain, some allowed some of them to remain and some expelled them all. Many locals fled their villages in advance leaving them empty, either out of fear (occasionally justified, occasionally not) or because Arab leaders ordered them, so they could use their village to launch strikes against Israel, just for two weeks, then let them return after the victory (that never was). Again, some captains allowed them to return, some didn't.

And speaking about land-grab, what about the lands that were owned by Jews in Arab countries, especially Iraq and Morocco when the Jews were kicked out?

[continued...]

[...continued]

At the bottom line, none of this matters, it's only hot air:

My family was born in Israel, they rightly paid good money for their lands, in Israel proper, not in the occupied territories. They built their homes there and they want to live, they don't want to die, they don't want to take anybody else's land, but whether right or wrong, they will do whatever it takes to stay alive on their land. They can and they will. And yes, if worse comes to worst then they will even use nukes as necessary.

The so-called "Palestinians" (which are genetically their own brothers and sisters) ought to get used to the idea that no matter what they do and no matter how many sympathisers they obtain, they cannot win: they can only do some limited damage, they can kill some, wound some, rape some, destroy that much, they can get the sympathy of people like yourself and Foxy, but they will never be able to take, keep and enjoy my family's homes by force.

Deserving or otherwise, regardless, Israel was willing to give them back a lot, not quite 100% of what they asked for, but still a lot, still most of it, yet they didn't want it. They could have even cheated by first taking what was on offer, then demanding more, but the truth is that they never wanted a state of their own, they are not interested in land, never were: they are only interested in killing my family - do they and their supporters think that we are all such idiots who would let them, who would nicely extend their necks for the slaughter?