Jews have the absolute right for their homeland. Zionism the movement itself was created during the second half the 1800′s. Jews purchased a substantial amount of territories in Palestine-Israel (see testimony of the Mufti of Jerusalem in front of the British Peel Commission) from local sheikhs and lords and built settlements there. This dates as early as 1860, that is 79 years before WWII.
During all of this time Jews kept migrating back to their historic homeland which comprised of two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.
They were driven out of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 720, B.C.E. The Babylonians in 586, B.C.E., drove the Jews out of the Kingdom of Judah, including Jerusalem. Then followed the Persians in 536, and the Hellenistic Syrian Seleucid Rulers in 332 BCE. Jews – The Maccabees re-conquered Israel in 166 BCE.
Romans conquered Israel in 63 C.E., and in 70 A.D. destroyed the Jewish second Temple.
Which was followed by these conquests:
Byzantines in 313; Persian in 614; Arabs Muslims 636 CE; Crusaders 1099; and the Mamluks in 1291.
Then came the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In 1564 the Ottoman Empire encouraged and stimulated Jewish immigration which added over 10,000 new Jewish returnees to Palestine-Israel (The Ottoman land records for Palestine showed that the government owned over 90% of the land) and the British Rule 1918-1948.
During the time of the Roman rule of Israel, the Jews in the kingdom called Judea revolted against the Roman rule. The Romans crushed the rebellion, exiled many Jews out of the country, seized many others and turned them into slaves deporting them to Rome and other places. Not only that, they changed the name of the land from Provincia Judea to Palestine to humiliate the Jews.
For 600 years or so, Arab Muslims imperialism spread throughout the Middle East from Arabia. Among other conquests, the Arabs conquered Judea-Palestine, killing many of the local Jewish population, and converting many into Islam. The story of how the Arabs got to Palestine is the story of conquest, imperialism and occupation.
During the 19th and 20th century, when Arabs had little to no interest in the land of Israel, Jews bought massive amounts of land and resettled there. After WWI the Allied Powers, the international community and the League of Nations under the San Remo Treaty of 1920 assigned the British “The Mandate for Palestine” as trustee over the land so that a Jewish state would be created in that land. The British had their own agenda in mind.
The original Mandate territory included what is today Israel; Gaza, Parts of Sinai, West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Jordan and the Golan Heights. The British had their own agenda and divided the country up. They gave to the Arabs the allocated land which had been Mandated to the Jewish people in violation of the San Remo Treaty of 1920: everything East of the Jordan river. This land which was intentionally given to the Arabs constituted 80% of the land allocated to the Jewish people. The British gave the land to the Hashemite Kingdom for the Arab population in order to create a new State: Trans-Jordan. The British also traded the Golan Heights to the French who ruled Syria for oil in Iraq. Thus, after already separating the country into one Arab state Trans-Jordan, which is present day Jordan, they intended to break up the remaining Jewish land West of the Jordan River, present day Israel and wrongfully give it to the Arabs.
In the meanwhile a conflict emerged over territorial boundaries between the Jewish inhabitants and the Arabs. The U.N. proposed a deal to split the remaining land of the British Mandate for Palestine (yes, split yet again) into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jewish leadership accepted the proposal, provided the Arabs also accept it. The Arabs declined. Thus the 1948 war began. A war in which the Arabs with armies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and local militias of Arabs, and help on a smaller scale from the armies of Algeria and Libya attacked the new Jewish entity. The Arab coalition had the weapons and a large army and were confident on victory, to the extent, that they asked the local Arab inhabitants to vacate the land while they decimated the Jews.
But fate had other plans. Through divine intervention, the Arabs lost that war. Many Arab civilians fled their homes because their Arab leadership told them to. Some were panicked by rumors. There were only a few incidents with civilians. (It is an important fact that during the war of 1948, Jewish settlements that were seized by Arab forces were razed to the ground – Kfar Etzion for example and the remaining population there killed).
The true and detailed facts and history is much more voluminous and complex. The problem Israel faces is that it is not as quick to explain the 4000+ years of Jewish history in Israel to counter the Arab lies and propaganda. Lies are easier to spread. However, upon close examination of the historical facts, the lies are exposed as baseless propaganda and should be dismissed as such.
It should be noted only a small segment of history is being presented here. I did not enumerate anything about how Arabs used terror and violence since the beginning of the conflict. I did not mention that before Arab nationalism and Muslim radicalism took over, the small Arab community was glad that the Jews were coming back to their ancestral homeland, providing an economic boost and jobs to the region, (even king Faisal was delighted.) I did not enumerate or discuss in detail the Arab-Palestinian refugees without telling how and why they became refugees.
I might also mention that the Arab countries expelled over a million Jewish people, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and land (120,000 sq. km. which is five times the size of Israel and valued in the trillions of dollars). About 650,000 of those Jewish refugees from Arab countries were resettled in Greater Israel. It is time for the Arab countries who expelled the million Jewish people to resettle the Arab-Palestinian refugees in their own countries, and or Jordan, and put an end to this conflict and end the misery and displacement of the Arab Palestinians. This will bring about peace and coexistence which the people so rightfully desire and deserve. It will bring economic prosperity and an increase in the standard of living for all the people.
YJ Draiman