Originally Posted by
Zeek
They are not occupying any sovereign state, they have a necessary presence in Judea and Samaria which is disputed territory to which Israel has a reasonable claim.
If that is the case, then annex all those territories officially and enfranchise all the Palestinians who live there, enabling them to live in whatever part of Israel they wish.
Legally and historically Israel has a far stronger claim on Judea and Samaria than the Palestinian Arabs, but also recognises that some Palestinian Arabs have reasonable claims to some parts.
Legally it is based on the Balfour Declaration
You can't be serious! How does a proclamation made by the British to get Jewish support for WWI constitute a legal right to a country which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire? Are you forgetting that at the same time the British were promising the same territory to the Arabs via their agreements with the Sharif of Mecca? Of course, they were also making deals to divide practically the entire Middle East with the French via the Sykes-Picot agreement. But I'm glad you brought this up because it does point to who was really responsible for this whole mess. It was the British double-dealing!
and accompanying directives that confirmed and conferred the area into Israeli ownership, and Britain under her mandate of the area was legally supposed to facilitate this.
And how does this mandate system which basically amounted to an extension of Western imperialism constitute a legal right?
Historically the land had a continual Jewish presence in it for over 3,000 years, and no other nation ever made and claims of sovereignity...
Uh, the Ottomans held undisputed sovereignty over Palestine for over 400 years. Arab nationalism isn't born until the 19th century but nationalism anywhere is relatively new idea historically speaking. Also, I don't think it is true that Jews had a continual presence there over the last 3000 years. The Byzantines did not allow Jews to live in Jerusalem. They weren't allowed to return until the rise of the Islamic Empire. However, I did recently find evidence that the majority of the inhabitants of Jerusalem (but not Palestine) were Jews under the Ottoman Empire. It caused me to change my mind about whether Israel should be able to keep Jerusalem as their capital.
Religiously...it features throughout the Bible, and there are solemn promises given by G-d to the Jewish people that it is their land....
You do realize that Jews descend from the Kingdom of Judea, not the entirety of Israel? Their territory roughly coincided with the Gaza Strip. So if you want to use the Bible to justify their getting this territory let them take the Gaza Strip and give the rest of Israel to the Palestinians. It is likely that the Palestinian people are descendants of the Samaritans anyhow. Yes, this is silliness but no more silly than trying to make a biblical claim to the area to begin with.
No one was that bothered with Israel until they saw what the Jews could actually do with the land....
Uh, the Palestinian people bothered with the land.
It is absolutely not false...Arafat was utterly corrupt, and his long term goal known as the 'phased plan' was to obtain the whole of Israel a bit at a time.
Yes, Arafat was corrupt. As for your assertion that his long term goal was a
'phased plan' to obtain the whole of Israel a bit of a time, I challenge you to present evidence of this. It should come from Arab, not Israeli sources.
As my friend has already pointed out, what he and other Moslem leaders say to the West is simply to placate us trusting idiots, while they carry on implementing their strategy for making Israel into another Moslem State.
You do realize that prior to the rise of HAMAS the most terrorist wings of the PLO were the Christian, not the Muslim wings. We can thank Mossad for putting the Islamists at the forefront of this struggle. As for Arafat, he wasn't particularly religious. His wife was a Christian and once the Palestinian Authority was established he attended Christmas services in Bethlehem every year.