[Architect]

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?

[dennisw]

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

[dennisw]

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!

[Lent]

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.

[anapikoros]

Seeing as you are the one making claims about land being "stolen" the onus is on you to prove it.

Given that the bulk of the land was State Lands and passed from government to government it can't be considered "stolen".

As to your question of where did the refugees come from - in relation to "stolen" land the short answer is that the vast majority didn't own any land. The fellahin were landless peasants working on land they rented or simply squatted on when they could get away with it. Many Arabs didn't run away and it was usually those who in fact owned land that stayed to protect it. At the very least if they were forced to move they didn't go far.

A large number of the people referred to as "refugees" in fact went back to their own countries. For example the population of trans-Jordan was 350,000 in 1921 but just a few years later it was down to 150,000 (British commissioner's figure). The bulk of the missing in fact had crossed the river to get jobs on the other side taking their families with them. When things got hot in the 1948 war they simply picked themselves up, crossed the river again and registered themselves with the UN as refugees and have lived on UN handouts ever since.

The same applies to those who headed for Lebanon amd Syria - they were just going back home. But the Arab governments forced them into camps to use them for political purposes.

Any Arab who has a legitimate claim to land and property is able to make claim in Israeli courts for compensation. A few in fact do and are compensated. When the British set up a compensation system for Arabs who had been forced off their land for reasons of public works or other reasons such as the land they rented having been sold by absentee landlords there were 8000 claims of ownership but only 200 were found valid. The land registers from the 1860's onward are available and all legitimate claims can be proven.

And before I get flamed I know that there are other issues in relation to land ownership but I just used these points as examples only to make the point that the simple claim of "stole" land is not as simple as it sounds.