The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict

You guys are whining about ad hominems and here I present a refutation of some of their simpleton claims and you do a cart-wheel to avoid responding. If you're too lazy to find out the truth find another topic to whine about like knitting or checkers next time.

Give it a rest, Dennis. You yourself supplied me some statistics which stated that 92% of Israel has Arab owners "at law". Even if you were wrong, no one can deny that huge swaths of land were stolen in 1948. The only question is how much. Right?

Jewish agencies would buy feudal holdings from the landlord and run the peasants off the land.

Liar. Here is another refutation. And by the way, the only "ranting" I see here is you. I've presented numerous facts througout these posts. Here is more to expose your lies:

Other instances of purchased land by the Jews in the Mandate. Arab money lenders foreclosing on fellaheen. Jews purchased the land and paid the debts of the fellaheen (Arieh L. Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession (1984), p. 207):

The fellaheen of Taiyibe, Tira, Tamra and Na'ura had mortaged their lands to money lenders, mostly the family of Abd el-Hadi. Gradually the mortagagees acquired title to large portions of the land. The situation became critical. The fellaheen were unable to repay their loans and there was an immediate danger that they would lose all their land. In order to get free of the oppressive moneylenders they sought to sell part of their holding, a tract of 50,000 dunam.
They turned to Hankin and offered to sell the land to the Jewish National Fund, if it would undertake to pay their debts. The Jewish National Fund bought these lands during the years 1936-39. The fellaheen escaped the embrace of the moneylenders...

Many of the landowners in the Mandate who sold land to the Jews were not even "Palestinians". Ex: (Avneri, p. 201)

Most of the land in the Hills of Naftali was the property of absentee owners, residents of Syria and Lebanon. In March 1940 Nahmani made a survey of the holdings of landowners who were not Palestinian citizens. He found they owned a total of 83,467 dunam in the Districts of Safed and Tiberias, 26,000 dunam in the Safed District and 7,000 dunam in the Tiberias District were owned by Circassians, Druse, Iranians and Germans. None of these landowners were citizens of Palestine. .....Ahmed Mardini, a Kurd from Damascus, owned 2,200 dunam; Hassan Farah, a Christian from Marj Iyun, owned 2,000 dunam; and 520 dunam were owned by Abdullah Khuri and the heirs of Shahadrin Khuri, all of whom were from Lebanon...The village of Malkiya, comprising 765 dunam, was owned by the heirs of Hussein Sulayman Buza, Moslem Kurds living in Damascus, and was sold to the Jewish National Fund....[etc.]

Avneri gives one example of the benefit the Jews brought to the land in purchasing these tracts of land (p. 207-08)

The P.I.C.A. [Jewish Agency involved in land puchases] owned 2,354 dunam in the village of Tira. It had bought the land many years previously, but had never extablished a Jewish settlement there, and it was being worked by tenant farmers. In 1946 the Jewish National Fund bought the land and undertook to indemnify the tenant farmers. It paid them LP. 6,097 as a compensation and also bought their houses and adjoining gardens for an additional LP. 9,548. The fellaheen who remained in Tira as neighbors to the Jewish settlers gained a further major benefit when malaria was eradicated from the area. Two years before the land was bought in Tira, Dr. Sliternik, the head of the Jewish Agency's Health Department, visited the village with a view to planning for the eradication of the disease. He found that..."almost all the villagers suffered from malaria....The danger is redoubled because of the many swamps in the area, over which we have no control or supervision...." Once the tract was bought the swamps were drained, and the Jewish and Arab settlements were freed from the disease.
The fellaheen of the above-mentioned villages had lived on the land for many generations and had struck roots in the villages. Not so with the fellaheen of the Mugrabi villages. Half their lands were owned by emirs, descendants of exiles who had accompanied Abd el-Kader, who for the most part were living in Syria.

Many moderate Arabs (finally silenced after the Mufti led Islamic riots of 1936-39) sold the land to the Jews despite the hypocritical threats of other pan-Arab nationalists. Ex.: (Avneri, p. 209):

The Fahum family of Nazareth sold the Fund [Jewish Nationalist Fund] a 3,000-dunam tract of land "in fee simple and free of tenant farmers." The head of the family, Yussuf Fahum, who was mayor of Nazareth for a time, sold his land despite terrorist threats. According to the Jewish National Fund functionaries who dealt with him, he was a proud man and he despised the hypocritical Arab public figures who sold land to Jews in secret and then gave vent to extreme nationalist utterances. He effected the sale openly and publicly without resorting to intermediaries or fictive owners.

To give you an idea of the duplicitiousness by many Arabs in and around the Palestine (either under the Ottoman Empire or the British) with respect to the issue of "displacement", Arieh L. Avneri, in his excellent book, The Claim of Dispossession(1984), gives a typical example of what happened when the Jews made legitimate purchases of land and were faced with false claims of dispossession (pp. 153-154):

For many years, the moshava Hadera, whose lands had been bought in 1891, was not troubled by land disputes and by claims of displaced people. In 1929, the neighboring Arabs began filing claims on lands that the moshava, had allegedly stolen from them. The Arabs from Fuqara filed a claim for 5,000 dunam; those from Arab ed-Demair claimed 150 dunam; and the Nufeiat Arabs seized a tract of 1,200 dunam. The latter claimed that the land belonged to them, and they were adamant in their refusal to leave.
The claims of the Fuqara and el-Damair Arabs were disallowed in court. The trial on the claim of the Nufeiat Bedouins was held on July 24-31, 1930. The Court found against them. They appealed, and a Court of Appeals with A. Plunkett, 'Ali Hasne Effendi and A. De Frites as judges heard the case. Judgment was rendered in Nablus on December 5, 1930 denying the appeal. A copy of the decision was forwarded to the Colonial Office, which received ongoing information on the situation in the country in general, and especially on the cases before the Land Court.
The Nufeiat Bedouins, according to the P.E.F. Map of 1878, were totally new to the area north of Hadera - they had been encamped south of the Wadi Hawarith. Nevertheless they persisted in claiming that the land sold in 1891 belonged to them. The Bedouins might have abandoned their claim, had it not been for the support of the Waqf and the Supreme Muslim Council [political Islamic organs during the British Mandate].

Another methodology of the Arabs, in their attempt to rewrite history on the ground and extort the land from the Jews would occur, especially in Urban areas, when the rich Urban Arab absentee landlords would sell land to the Jews. What occurred was that the Arabs would sell the land in legitimate transactions to the Jews and the Arab landlord would then encourage and foment other Arabs to attack the Jews with the hopeful expectation the Jews would vacate the newly purchased land. Avneri describes the typical scenario (p.179):

The Arabs never charged that the Jewish urban community in any way interfered with the development of the Arab towns or that it displaced Arabs from the existing towns. The reason no such charge was made was that the city plots sold to the Jews were sold by rich urban Arabs, who were often themselves the spokesmen of the Arab nationalist movement. Some had even organized the gangs of hoodlums who attacked the Jewish quarters in the cities - the very sections which they themselves had sold to the Jews.

Many times the Arabs simply did not respect the rule of law and blatantly flouted it notwithstanding the legitimate land purchases by the Jews. Example (p. 188):

The Government had sold land in Ashrafiya to some prominent Arab families who could prove, as it were, that they had previously owned the land in the area. In 1929 the P.I.C.A. (Jewish Committee involved in land purchasing) bought 2,000 dunam of land from these families. The Jewish National Fund acquired an additional 4,300 dunam. During the period of the riots [1936-39 Grand Mufti led Arab Islamic riots against Jews, British, and moderate Arabs] local Arabs seized theses tracts of land and held them. In 1940, after the seige on Jewish settlements had been lifted, the P.I.C.A. and the Jewish National Fund sought to reassert their lawful ownership. The Arab squatters made various claims to title and to alleged rights in the real property. Their claims were heard, as was customary, in the land court, and were all disallowed. The Jews, pursuant to the Court's finding, sought to plow the lands, but the Arabs did all they could to hinder them and refused to leave the area in dispute.

The beneficiaries to State owned land from the British, were largely the Arabs. The British had sold scant State owned land to the Jews which clearly was in abrogation of Article 6 of the Mandate. However, to give you an idea of how the Arabs squandered a lot of this land and were unable, unlike the Jews, to bring life from the land, in the end giving up and selling the land to the Jews, Avneri gives one example (pp. 187-188):

The Arab National Company of Nablus was one of the beneficiaries of the Government's generous land grants in the Beit-Shean Valley. It received a tract of 1,200 dunam for intensive cultivation, to serve as a model for the Bedouins in the Valley. At the same time that the Arab leadership was carrying on its violent struggle against the Jews, other Arab leaders sought to evolve a constructive policy, which would not only prevent the sale of land to Jews but would improve the lot of the fellah as well. Thus the Arab People's Fund and the Arab National Company provided the fellaheen with instructors to teach them how to grow bananas. The crops failed. The fellaheen, on the advice of their instructors, uprooted the bananas and planted citrus goves, and also tried to raise vegetables. These projects failed as well. In the end these lands were sold to the Jewish Nationa Fund.

In the months leading up to partition, Jewish terrorists cleared Arabs out of much of Palestine in a systematic attempt to obtain more of the land. When the British finally left, surrounding Arab states attacked. When the smoke finally cleared Israel consisted of 78% of the land and 700,000 Arabs were refugees. While there is fault on both sides, the facts are that the Arabs were offered a bad deal in the beginning and became refugees when they attempted to object.

More lies. Your Arab friends attacked the Jews after the Partition Resolution 181 on Nov. 29, 1947. The Arabs were the sine qua non of this conflict.Now look who started the violence against the Jews. Look closely at you history.

The following from Benny Morris (anti-Zionist himself who can't dispute the unequivocal and fundamental pan-Arab Islamic aggression), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49 (1987) at pages, 29ff.:

"The United Nations General Assembly vote of 29 November 1947, which supported the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, prompted Arab attacks and sniping against Jewish passers-by in the big towns, and on Jewish traffic on the roads, the following day.The AHC (Arab High Committee), which completely rejected Partition, declared a three-day general strike, beginning on 1 December, thus releasing the Arab urban masses for action. On 2 December an Arab mob, unobstructed by British security forces, stormed through the Jewish commercial center of Jerusalem, looting and burning shops and attacking Jews. Arab and Jewish snipers exchanged fire in Haifa and attacks were launched on the neighbourhoods in Tel Aviv which adjoined Jaffa and its suburbs...As in 1936, National Committees were set up in Arab towns to direct the struggle in each locality....Traffic to and from the Jewish neighbourhoods and towns was often interdicted, prompting Jewish retaliatory strikes.
In January 1948, in line with Arab League resolutions in December 1947 supporting indirect intervention, Arab volunteers (some of them ex-soldiers), spearheaded by the battalions of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), began to move into the country. The first full-scale Arab attacks on Jewish settlements were launched with the aim of destruction and conquest-on Kfar Szol (9-10 January), Kfar Uriah (11 January) and the Ezion Bloc (14 January)....In the countryside, the Arabs gained the upper hand in their efforts to block the roads between the main Jewish population centers: the introduction by the Haganah in January-February of escorted convoys was matched in March by improved Arab tactics and increased firepower, which, in a series of major ambushes of the Khulda, Nabi Daniel and Yechiam convoys, managed to destroy most of the Yishuv's armoured truck fleet.
The defeats of March and the prospect of invasion of the emergent Jewish State by regular Arab armies prompted the Haganah's switch in April to the strategic offensive. By then, the Arab exodus from Palestine had begun. By February-March 1948, some 75,000 Arabs, mostly from the urban upper and middle classes of Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, and from villages around Jerusalem and in the Coastal Plain, had fled to Arab centers to the east, such as Nazareth and Nablus, or out of the country."
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So you see your Arab Islamic friends started the conflict and the exodus of Arabs occurred BECAUSE of their violence in rejecting Resolution 181.

In 1967, Israel used this tension as a pretext to invade and conquer the rest of Mandate Palestine. Since then, it has pursued a policy of state-supported colonization.

"Tension?" and "Pretext?" hahaha. The Arabs did the following to initiate the 6 Day War on June 5, 1967:

(1) On May 22,Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli shipping. The blockade cut-off Israel's supply route to Asia and stopped all oil from Iran which was Israel's main supply of oil.

(2) On May 18, Egypt ordered the UN Emergency Force, which was in the Sinai as a peackeeping entity since 1956, out of the Sinai.

(3) On May 15, Egyptian troops began moving into the Sinai.

(4) Both Nasser (Egypt), Assad (Syria) and Aref of Iraq in several speeches indicated that the Arab forces were ready to destroy Israel.

(5)Assad moved his forces into the Golan.

Yeah, you're really on to your history.

Don't act dumb. I pinged you earlier on this thread to read the FACTS. FACTS being that the Ottomans owned the vast majority (92%) of the land in Palestine. That this Ottoman land then was taken into the British administered Palestinian Mandate.

You know how the Federal Government owns a lot of the land out West in states like Utah? Same deal.

Wake up!

43% of Israelis are Jews who were booted from Muslim nations.

This is another one of your favorite lies. Most left voluntarily or due to Zionist blanishments. Almost all left after the creation of the state of Israel (so voluntary or not, it was a reaction to that event). Even it were true that they were booted out, that would not change anything about the Palestinian claim to the land stolen from them. It would simply mean that certain Jews had claims against certain Arabs, not that other Jews had the right to steal from Palestinians.

The fact is that Zionists have repeatedly used world events to advance the cause of their racist state. After the Nazi holocaust, Jews were sent to Palestine despite their wanting to go to the US. Same thing after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the same thing after the establishment of the state of Israel.

SOURCE

WRONG! , let me explain below.If the fact that all the Jewish groups combined only controlled 3%-7% of all of the land does it follow that the balance must have thus belonged to the Palestinian Arab populous? As yourself this question: who in any country in the world (from dictatorships to democratic bastions like the U.S.A, the U.K., ect.) owns/controls most of the land in that country? The state of course and wasn’t that true even as far back as the turn of this last centuary (and further back than even that). This is true for any country in the world. In every one of the countries in the world the state is AWAYS by far the major stake holder when it comes to property – and so by very huge and significant proportions (always significantly more than 50%). In you go back in time you will always find this trend so. In the U.K. which has the highest level of privately own land (about 5-10 years ago) the state owned 61% of the total land mass of the U.K. In other states this figure rises to 95% for some countries. As stated above this is a trend that can be seen true for every country in the world for the last 100+ years. Thus is it valid to state that the balance of British mandated Palestine belonged to the Palestinian Arabs? Not at all. The “government” of the day in British mandated Palestine was the British mandated government and they would have and DID control/own most of the land – not the Palestinian Arabs.

If memory serves me correctly the total land owned by the Palestinian Arabs was at the most 3-4 times that of the total owned by the Jewish groups (i.e. 12% - 28% at a very maximum). Thus whichever way you look at it the vast majority of the land resided in the ownership and control of the British mandated government of British mandated Palestine. This one fact thus inevitably results in certain undeniable truths:-1) I have often heard the following been emphatically stated : (A) “The Jews STOLEN Palestinian land”. This is often used in context of referring to all of British mandated Palestine. (B)” Who did(do) the British think they are giving Palestinian land away?? !!!!!” ; once again referring to British mandated Palestine. As can be seen by the above these two arguments are swept away in a single stroke. Firstly the majority of the land belonged to the British government and they could ultimately sub-divide it as they choice, whether it be at their own discretion or with the help of the U.N. - and that is ultimately what they did (trying to deal with fairly and often in regards to the numerous, confusing & some times conflicting promises that they had made). Another thing to think about is that the British fought for and took it from the Ottoman Empire in W.W. I, they paid in blood for it then. And they paid heavily for it in blood to retain it (and Egypt) during W.W. II from Rommel’s Africa Corps and the Italians. Would that give them even further say in its final end particularly as they owned most of the land of British mandated Palestine? I would say YES.2)

Secondly (and this relates to the statement of “....STOLEN land....”) British mandated Palestine was never the almost exclusive the property of the Palestinian Arab people to be “stolen” by the Israelis when it was subdivided, it was never theirs to be stolen from during the sub-division; it belonged to the British government. Some may say “....It was stolen during the ensuing conflict!.....” and this is the real crux of the matter. However my reading of the situation is that firstly the British & the world saw that the two groups just could not live together (and both parties made mistakes in this regard) so they came sub-divided the land. The Jewish people were happy but the Palestinian Arab people and their surrounding neighbours weren’t and the rest is as they “history”. In the end the Palestinian Arab people lost their chances for a state and this mostly because of their and their neighbours insistence on conflict to unite/”liberate” and “divided” land. But in the end the land was not ONE COUNTRY forcibly divided (like former East and West Germany) but British property (British mandated Palestine was never a self standing state, but always a province or protectorate of some sourt). So how does sub-division of some-elses property equate to theft? It DOESN’T! Did many Palestinian Arabs and Arab Israelis lose their private property? Yes - however it should be stated too that the Israeli government has undertaken a number of steps to undo in one way or another this loss of property. First the majority of the private property “lost” (or fled from) in ‘48 (and later conflicts) has where possible been put under the administration of an Islamic Waqf until proper ownership can be ascertained. Furthermore the Israeli government is prepared to compinisate the owenrs of private land that cannot (given to other

Dennisw, I think this Architect character is an Architect of a flimsy house of cards (lies).

A few months after the war, Yitzhak Rabin remarked: "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai on 14 May would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it" (Le Monde, 29 February 1968).

Israeli General Peled was even more frank: "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]" (Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).

Finally, in 1982, the Israelis admitted that they had started the war (although official Zionist propaganda in the United States still does not acknowledge this fact). Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech delivered at the Israeli National Defense College, clearly stated that: "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him" (Jerusalem Post, 20 August 1982).

Many other Israeli army and government people have admitted the same thing. Even if Egypt was preparing to attack, this has nothing to do with land stolen from Jordan

43% of Israelis are Jews who were booted from Muslim nations.

This is another one of your favorite lies. Most left voluntarily or due to Zionist blanishments.

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Fine by me. All the Palestinians in 1948 also left voluntarily. This just seems to be the way things are done in the MidEast.................. </sarcasm>

The creation of Israel is only 50% due to European Jewish Zionism. The other 50% is the ingathering of Jews from Arab nations/territories. 800,000 Jews were driven out of Arab controlled places where they had lived for centuries. Now the Arabs have Jew free nations so actually they should thank Israel.

The Israel of today is 43% composed of the 800,000 Jews (and their offspring) who were expelled from Arab nations post 1948
___________________________________________

July 2001
To The Editor THE MAGAZINE
The Jerusalem Post.
_________________________

Dear Editor,
That is why we have not heard about the fact that, though the Christians
(mainly non-Arab) constituted l3% of the population of the Middle East
during World War I, today, with natural increase, they account for only 2%.
Most of these non-Arab Christians, e.g. Egyptian Copts, Assyrians of Iraq,
etc. have either suffered forced Islamisation or have left their native
Middle East, where their history dates back long before the rise of Islam.
Those that remain are still victimized. Even most of the Christian world,
including the Vatican, is silent.

As for the Jews, what is today the Arab world constituted its most ancient
Diaspora with a rich history rooted in the region for over a thousand years
before the Islamic conquest. We have witnessed the dissolution of virtually
this whole Diaspora with the majority of these Jews opting for Israel.
Today, they and their progeny make up 43% of the Jewish State's population
(not including Jews from Iran). Some came out of love of Zion, as did a
minority of us from the West.

The majority (800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab nations)
was forced out, not by an edict as in Spain, but because it
became impossible to continue to live there:
Pogroms swept the area with the exit of the colonial regimes which, whatever
their sins, largely nullified the racist dhimmi legislation Islam imposes on
Jews and Christians alike. In Baghdad on Shavuoth, l941, the Farhud broke
out, 175 Jews were killed, a thousand injured, Jewish property looted and
900 Jewish houses destroyed. And again in l945 and 1948. The scourge of loot
and murder struck the Jews of Libya in 1945 and 1948; Aden in 1947; Aleppo
in l945 (including the looting of the Great Synagogue), again in l947 and
1948 and Damascus, Syria in 1938, 1945 and 1949. Moslem riots hit Egypt in
l945 and 1948 and where, in l947, racist legislation deprived the majority
of Jews of their places of work. In North Africa too, particularly in the
l950's.

No Arab country was innocent of abuses. Yet the media was not
greatly moved. Not a single Moslem Arab or breast-beating human rights
activist expressed sorrow at Moslem injustice to Christians or Jews.

You have performed a public service by printing an article about the
deplorable Moslem slave trade in Sudan. It is also a source of pride that
the leader of the humanitarian movement to abolish it, Charles Jacobs, is a
Jew (The Jewish abolitionist by Robby Berman, July 6). The silence of
organizations such as the UN and Amnesty International only confirms our
opinion of them as biased and unbalanced in their views and actions. Mr.
Jacobs makes an important statement when he says that "People are also
silent because they are terrified of being labeled anti-Arab or
anti-Muslim".

Yours sincerely, Malka Hillel Shulewitz,
Editor THE FORGOTTEN MILLIONS
The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands.

The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands
Edited by Malka Hillel Shulewitz
London: Cassell, 1999. 238 pp. $75

Middle East Quarterly
September 1999

As the Palestinians gear up to press their case for reparations and other benefits from Israel, it is fitting that the "forgotten" story of the Jewish refugees from the Arab lands also be brought to public attention. The editor counts their number and that of their progeny today at about two million; she argues that the "world in general and the Arabs in particular owe them a debt," for having left their homes without violence, having endured a very difficult time initially in Israel, integrating into life there, and then becoming productive citizens.

The volume contains some first-class talent, mostly Israel academics, and they cover many aspects of the topic. Bat Ye'or provides a useful summary of her important theories about "dhimmitude," the state of mind of being a second-class citizen in the Islamic order: "The world of the dhimmi is one of silence," she writes, in just a few words summing up why the plight of the Jewish refugees is so vastly less known than that of their Palestinian counterparts. Reprising an analysis first made in this journal, Ya'akov Meron reviews the gratuitously cruel policies of the Arab states as they expelled their Jewish populations fifty years ago. Chapters by Yehuda Dominitz and Pnina Morag-Talmon usefully describe the absorption process within Israel.

With luck, others will take heart from this study and speak up about the hundreds of thousands whose lives were disrupted not because of war but due to unregulated passions. Perhaps it might even lead a future Israel government to break with the tradition of ignoring the population exchange that took place a half century ago; and when opportuned about paying reparations and other benefits, will reply with a report along the lines of The Forgotten Millions.

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http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/06/13/Books/Books.8121.html

MALKA SHULEWITZ'S book is also a collection of essays by noted academics and professionals, but its purview is narrower, highlighting the forced exodus of about 800,000 Jews from Arab countries between 1940 and 1970. According to Shulewitz, this exodus - whose numbers exceeded the 580,000 Palestinian Arab refugees of 1947-49 - was largely overlooked for two reasons: The enormity of the Holocaust of European Jewry overshadowed the tragic departure of Jews from Arab lands. The second reason was that the State of Israel tried to absorb these Jews, while the Arab states worked hard not to absorb the Arabs from Palestine.

While some of these Eastern Jews had been well-off, the majority, as historian Norman Stillman has already observed, were a persecuted minority in ghetto-like communities known as "mellah" or "harat al-Yahud." Shulewitz says most of the Jews did not leave on their own but were forced out as the Arab states carried out an ethnic cleansing of their Jews. Any discussions of possible compensation for the Palestinian Arabs - for their dislocation - must, she says, also include discussion of compensation for the even larger number of Jews who were dislocated, not by war, but by Arab political decision.

These views are buttressed by a joint essay on population transfer by her and by Islamic history expert Professor Raphael Israeli as well as a particularly trenchant analysis by Islamic law specialist Professor Yaakov Meron entitled "The Expulsion of the Jews from the Arab Countries: The Palestinians' Attitude Towards It and Their Claims." Professor Meron cites documented threats by Arab diplomats and Arab politicians regarding the fate of the Jews in their countries, if the United Nations went ahead and offered the Jews even a small state in Palestine.

"The United Nations... should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries," declared Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha on November 24, 1947. Meron, citing these remarks and others, shows conclusively that leaders of several Arab countries threatened and then carried out the forced exodus of Jews.

The Forgotten Millions also includes an excellent overview of the status of minority groups by Dr. Mordechai Nisan as well as a penetrating study of the discrimination and persecution of Christians in Arab countries by Professor Walid Phares who notes that more than one million of Egypt's Copts have emigrated under economic and social pressures of the last century.

This excellent collection of essays (including chapters by Bat Ye'or, Harold Troper, Avi Beker and Pnina Morag-Talmon) is supplemented by first-rate maps and numerical tables detailing the movements of Arab and Jewish refugees. One can only hope that Israeli negotiators will take the time to read it.

The writer, a regular contributor, is a Jerusalem-based journalist and academic.

The quotations you're taking are out of context and moreover they don't reflect the consensus of opinion that the STRAIGHT of TIRAN blockade was sufficient in and of it itself to constitute a declaration of War. Morever, Resolution 242 reflects the justification of Israel's actions over the West Bank, Golan and East Jerusalem since 242 does not require Israel to withdraw to its pre-67 borders. Therefore the war was completely justified by any standard of international law.

Stop quibbling over the amount of land that was obtained legitimately. Unless you are willing to claim that none was stolen, I do not want to hear about it. 700,000 refugees came from somewhere. Right?

The only architectural work he seems to know is to build a facade of lies and disinformation about Israel. He is a self admitted atheist who buys into the leftist lies on how the "struggles" of 3rd worlders are always noble and just.

Where he sees heroic Palestinians I see a bunch of Muslim misfits who live to hate and destroy non Muslims.

By the way, did you get your quotations from the ELECTRONIC INTIFADA. I plugged your quotes in on google and this is a favourite site of the INTIFADA lovers:INTIFADA LOVERS. LOL!

You done gone mental on me son! You just cannot handle the truth of ownership Palestine by the Ottomans. LOL!!!!!

FACT: Yesir Arasplat first declared "Paltinian state" in 1988.

Ottomans owned the land. No one wants to own desert land!!

..........Deal with it. You were and are dead ass wrong. You are only good for comic relief now!

You call acts of war and agression precipitated by the Arabs and Israel enforcing rights pursuant to Resolution 181 and in defence against aggression, stealing land? You need to seriosuly rethink your positions. By the way, Israel gave up the Sinai back to Egypt with the oil wells Israel developed and other infrastructure. The expection was that Camp David would moderate the other Arabs with the principle "land for peace." All it earned was a bullet-ridden body of Sadat and more hardening by the Pan Arab cabal.