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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
For as long as I can remember, I have never heard any representative of the nation of Israel state the land is theirs because God gave it to them. From what I have read only a small percent of the Israeli people could be classified as extreemly religious (the ones who want to rebuild the temple, re-institute ritual animal sacrifices like the days of Moses and David...) 95% of the Jewish people in Israel hold their religious beliefs much like we do here in the US - People believe in God, and have religious convictions, but we dont start killing people because of our religion.
Before it was Israel (1946? 47?) it was Palestine. Not the nation of Palestine, the British colony of Palestine. The UN took control of the land away from the British, and formed a new independent nation: Israel.
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I think that the "God gave it to them" viewpoint (especially among
outsiders) is more of a misunderstanding of the poetic licence that is used when describing the area as a Semitic ancestral homeland. Whether or not some divine bequest took place isn't really relevant—the rationale is that because the old Jews were native to this region, it follows that the Jews of today are entitled to reclaim it.
This is a bit problematic, of course, because of the centuries that Jewish groups spent spread throughout Europe and Asia (not necessarily of their own will). While the Jewish principle of maternal descent ensures that (typically), present-day Jews have old Jewish ancestry, it's not immediately evident that proof of ancestry represents sufficient cause to reclaim dominion over the ancestral lands. Indeed, in most other situations, displaced groups are not returned to their homelands to goverrn themselves.
Indeed, the fact that the Palestinians (also Semites) were not granted the opportunity to return to a specific ancestral homeland of their own is a major source of the tension. Among ardent supporters of the Palestinians, it's sometimes viewed as an injustice orchestrated by the West, to place Jews above Muslims. Of course, in the West, we typically view the creation of Israel as a gesture of goodwill offered to the Jews in recognition of their plight during the Second World War.
It wasn't so much that the UN seized it from Britain, though. Britain had been subjected to criticism for restricting Jewish emigration from Europe into Palestine, and was not well-regarded by the Palestinian populace in general. After the war, they therefore granted the UN the authority to administer the region, and a proposal was accepted by the General Assembly to create a Jewish state from some of the lands.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
and everyone lived happily everafter... Ok, it was not all cut and dry - there were many Palestinian people who lost land and homes when this happened in the late 40's AND the surrounding (Arab) nations banded together and immediately attacked the new nation of Israel. It was a mess from day One.
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Much of the problem was due to that impression that the West was coddling the Jews by granting them the best land in the region, and leaving the Arabs to subsist in the desert. So much of that mess might have been avoided, if the UN had divided the land more evenly, or better still, refused to segregate the region on ethnic and religious lines.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
Having said all this, I believe 99% of the people in the middle east, on both sides of the conflict, would be happy to live together in peace. Its the 1% who can only stay in their positions of power and control and self-importance, who keep pulling the situation down to the lowest denominator. People like the leaders of Iran, who publicly call for the nation of Israel to be wiped off the map - the extremist who think that strapping a bomb to yourself and murdering men, women and children is what God wants you to do.
As long as people keep listening to these lunatics, the conflict will never end. This conflict has nothing to do with God, or what God wants
you got a bunch of people running around who are not interested in being students, or business people, or engineers or farmers or production workers - not when they can be the leader of "freedom fighters" or do-it-yourself religious leaders, or you can become a martyr in a glorious "religious" war.
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In all fairness, the Israelis share some of the blame. Destroying infrastructure, and occasionally killing civillians in the process? That's no way to fight fair. Isreal, as a developed, presumably principled nation has a greater responsibility to behave in a way that promotes co-operation and trust, not mutual hatred—even if the suicide bombers do the worst possible job of returning that decent behaviour in kind. Someone has to grow up, and take a principled stand. Israel is the only party capable of this, thanks to the general disorganization and squalour endemic in the Palestinian territories. I'm not suggesting that they drop their guard completely, but by inconveniencing the Palestinians at every turn, they're systematically and deliberately preventing any sort of order from developing in Palestine. With checkpoints, no trade can be successful. With bombings of infrastructure, industry and agriculture are paralyzed. With tanks in the streets, and bulldozers knocking down houses, they epitomize the instillation of terror. Only Israel can stop their own madness—Palestinian reprisals can't possibly damage the Israeli state in any great fashion, despite the damage that they inflict to individuals, and in fact, only serve to harden the resolve of the fools who orchestrate the Israeli campaigns of destruction.
Israel needs to do less, not more. Lasting peace and successful co-existance can't be achieved by striking into your enemy's cities; these things require unpopular compromises. But when the alternative is perpetual combat, the loss of face that may be incurred is meaningless.