🚀 go-pugleaf

In ba.general Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:
> In ba.general Al Smith <invalid@address.com> wrote:
>>>      As for the "right of return," most Palestinians left the area
>>> set aside by the UN partition for Israel either voluntarily or after
>>> the invading Arab armies told them that anybody found there would be
>>> killed.  They expected to return to a Jew-free area after the Arabs
>>> conquered, but--surprise--the Arabs lost.


>> I keep reading this bullshit over and over. If the Arabs owned the 
>> land, and if they left it voluntarily, they've got a right to come 
>> back to it. Makes no difference why they left ... it's their 
>> fucking land!

>      Do your ancestors have the right to whatever they left in
> Ireland or England or France or wherever they came from?  Of course
> not.  Basically the Arabs started a war and lost, and must suffer
> the consequences.  The Arabs who stayed--and there are many
> thousands--and I believe those who returned immediately after the
> 1948 war have full citizenship and full property rights.

     A couple of more points on this subject:
- By your logic, some Indian tribe "owns" the land your house is
located on: they either left voluntarily or were forced off.  If a
"Native American" shows up on your doorstep tomorrow, are you 
prepared to turn the land over to him?
- A state of war exists, and has existed since 1948, between Israel
and all the Arab countries except Egypt and Jordan (which have
signed peace treaties with Israel [in exchange for billions of
American dollars]).  Under these conditions, Israel is not required
by international law or anything else to allow hundreds of thousands
of enemy civilians into its territory.  The rights of these
"refugees," like many other topics, would be the subject of peace
negotiations to end this state of war.  Many Palestinians and other
Arabs reject the existence of Israel under any circumstances; some
of the more "moderate" want the "right of return" to be a 
precondition for negotiations rather than a subject of them.  But
in no way are the "refugees" automatically entitled to the land they
owned (or at least occupied) before 1948.
     (One of the ironies of the Middle East is that Iraq is one of
the countries legally at war with Israel--and has been since 1948.
And the current American-sponsored government of Iraq is as
violently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic as Saddam Hussein was.)