Helpful.
Quoting historical documents is fine. However, there has been a shift in opinion amongst Labour supporters for example towards a two-state solution that recognizes a Palestinian right to statehood.
Quoting historical documents constitutes a large measure of what I do 8 hours a day. Examining them is what has influenced my thinking on this issue.
It is History that also teaches me that Two State solutions are not particularly successful and run counter to the development of civilization. I distrust lip service paid to such solutions. Oslo for instance would have resulted in an nonviable Palestinian State clinging to a mere vestige of a territory of which, at the outset, in 1948, Jews owned about 7%. I cannot see that this would have brought a peaceful settlement of this conflict. The success of any such partition agreement is, in my view, directly relative to its perceived fairness.
Only in topics outside of my own sphere of interest do I allow my thinking to be influenced by others, and then only when I am reasonably assured that it is scholarship that drives the investigation rather than partisanship.
Kattey has provided an example.
The last two times the Arabs conquered Jerusalem/Israel, the majority of the Jews were on the forced Diaspora. The Jews are now home and will never allow it to be taken again.
Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, Shlomo Sand, has written extensively on the Diaspora:
From:
Israel deliberately forgets its history
Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile
by Schlomo Sand
Le Monde Diplomatique
September 2008
Translated by Donald Hounam
"But during the 1980s an earthquake shook these founding myths. The discoveries made by the “new archaeology” discredited a great exodus in the 13th century BC. Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land, for the good reason that the latter was Egyptian territory at the time. And there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the pharaonic empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders.
Nor is there any trace or memory of the magnificent kingdom of David and Solomon. Recent discoveries point to the existence, at the time, of two small kingdoms: Israel, the more powerful, and Judah, the future Judea. The general population of Judah did not go into 6th century BC exile: only its political and intellectual elite were forced to settle in Babylon. This decisive encounter with Persian religion gave birth to Jewish monotheism.
Then there is the question of the exile of 70 AD. There has been no real research into this turning point in Jewish history, the cause of the diaspora. And for a simple reason: the Romans never exiled any nation from anywhere on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. Apart from enslaved prisoners, the population of Judea continued to live on their lands, even after the destruction of the second temple. Some converted to Christianity in the 4th century, while the majority embraced Islam during the 7th century Arab conquest."
The very unpopularity of Sand's thesis adds credibility. Historians such as Ilan Pappe have had their lives disrupted by publishing books that question the dominant narrative in Israel. Furthermore, the archaeological record seems to support him:
“The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David’s conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule.” Illene Beatty, “Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.”
“Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE.” The Jewish Bulletin, July 31st, 1998.
I am no Koran expert but I am assured by many of my acquaintance that the basic tenet with regard to hostilities is that it is permissible to return "in kind". In view of the following statistic, I suspect that, in the Palestinian mind, that condition has been fulfilled.
123 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,050 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (this statistic predates the current action by Israel)
