Prince pickleprince wrote:
Not to mention that the Palestinians fought against the Germans in WW2 and were promised that Palestinian homeland in return for their efforts.
Um... But weren't they given one?
The first point that's missed is that "the palestinians" is not a religious or ethnic designations. It encompassed all the people living in the region known as "Palestine" at the time. That included Arab Jews and Arab Muslims (technically Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims). Within that were numerous tribes and other affiliations.
The region was broken into 3 major components. Syria, Jordan, and a third section to be split between Jewish Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians. Of that portion, about 1/4th was set aside for the Jews with the remaining 3/4ths set aside for the Muslims (based on population at the time).
The Jews took their land, created a nation, and applied for membership in the UN.
The Muslims took their land, fought and squabbled among eachother, then decided that the traditional "enemy of my enemy" process would help out, and attacked the Jews to try to take their land.
The Jews (now known as the nation of Israel), defended themselves, and took advantage of UN recognition (such as it was) to get military aid, and repulsed the attacks, and occupied the Muslim territory (and some other territories from Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, all of which aided the Muslim Palestinians in the attacks.
While that's an overly simiplified version (and certainly there was a lot of other things that lead up to the attacks), I think it's incredibly simplistic to say that "the palestinians" were promised land and not given it. Even if we redefine palestinian to mean just the muslims living in the region, that's not true at all. They were given land. They decided to fight a war, and lost it as a result.
The real problem in the region is not, nor has been the Jewish nation of Israel. Even to the point at which its existence pisses off muslims and is sometimes used as a rallying point, that's not really the problem. It's with the muslim palestinians themselves. In the 60 years this has been going on, they've not once showed any sign that they'd know what to do with the land if they were given it. They've never been able to actually join together to do anything other then attack someone else. Alot of that harkens back to their tribal days. But how can they expect to be treated as a nation and gain the benefits of one, if they steadfastly refuse to actually *form* one?
And *that's* the problem.