The Quran is a nothing more than a blueprint for world domination couched in religious terms.
Islam is too be on top and not be dominated.
The people in the Levant signed the Dhimmi contract with the Arabs way back in the 7th century.
This contract was broken by the Zionists who took the land and made Islam and Muslims subordinate to the Jews.
This is the conflict.
Now, mix into that the confusion over land ownership dating back to the 1800's. The Ottoman's needing money for their wars with Europe, invoked heavy taxes on the local population, who sold their land to the effendis (absentee landlords usually living in Syria) to avoid the taxes. Effendis sell the land to the Zionists. The farmer never stopped seeing the land as his.
Then you have to add in their the Palestinian Arab definition of homeland. It is not the West Bank or Gaza, it is the village where he lived.
Many of those villages were lost in the War of Independence, but to the Palestinians, those lands and those farms (whether they were sold to the effendis or not) are still belong to them.
The Jews, after being totally abandoned by the West in Hitler's ovens, decided that if European governments will not protect them, then they will return to the land of their fathers (a land always close to their hearts) and defend themselves. To the Israelis, this little piece of land is the only place they can live in peace. By that I mean that here they are able to defend themselves because the world had proven (and I include the US in that) that when push comes to shove, the Jews are abandoned.
Bernard Lewis wrote: It was Israel’s stunning victory over the Arabs in 1967 that forever blew away the stereotype of the frightened victim, to be destroyed, abandoned, pitied, and rescued at the discretion of those more fortunate than he, as circumstances might dictate.
The Jews have a fortress mentality totally justified by history that they are alone.
So, you have Islam versus survival. Islam says to the Jew that we must rule you as Allah dictated. You have the Jews saying, "never again."
And you have a bunch of us in the U.S. saying "Amen."
Interesting. I was unaware of those details about a Dhimmi contract.
Even though I'm disposed to accept Israel's case that they likely are the oldest historical "owners" of the territory, my take on the matter has changed. There's more to it than just "who got there first". For one thing, even completely fair "ownership" changes easily and often, and the Holy Lands more often than most. It takes me a minute to come up with an empire that ~didn't~ at one time or another have a reasonably enforceable title to the place.
But life and time and tide is not necessarily about "fair". Sometimes it is about right and wrong, and there is a difference.
Fifty to maybe a hundred years ago, the so-called "Palestinian" cause might have had an articulable case and reasonable people might have given a sympathetic ear. Maybe even me.
But that's all gone now. A side that professes and countenances the intentional targeting of innocents-- that straps explosives to a child, and sends that child into a busy pizza parlor for the express purpose of shredding the children of the other side-- that side ~must~ lose whatever argument they make.
It is morally imperative that certain methods and intents are so thoroughly barbaric that they must not ever be granted success, nomatter the origin of their claim. They've become by their own profession no more than parasites on the human condition. They must now lose-- and lose utterly.
My .02 :-)
I have a book by Bernard Lewis, "The Arabs in History". I'm slowly going through it, but it's taking a while.