🚀 go-pugleaf

Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@green.rahul.net> enscribed:
> 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

You don't inherit a claim. Once you die and your estate is probated, you can no longer sue for damages. Refugees in the U.S. who are still alive do sometimes make claims against whatever assets they can. The compensation to Japanese interns had to be speeded up because they were dying of old age.  Jews are suing German and Swiss banks for losses in the thirties and forties.

>      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?

Apparently you have been living in a box under a freeway and missed some of the news in recent years. There has been a lot of fighting about where Indians should be able to build casinos in California. That was after the initial fight that established the sovereignty of their land.

> - 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

What enemy civilians? Palestinians are former Egyptian and Jordanian nationals and their descendants. As you yourself pointed out, Egypt and Jordan made peace. So what enemy country do they inherit their enemy status from? I could understand you labeling Druze in the Golan Heights as enemy civilians, but not Palestinians.

> "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

Palestinians have no sovereign state to negotiate an end to a war they are not a part of. And many Israelis reject the creation of a sovereign Palestine state under any circumstances. So? 

> 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.

Again, American hypocrisy. Maybe you should check out the LIBERTAD Act of 1996; the U.S. actively supports the Cuban right of return. I guess that's because Cubans contribute more to American elections than Arabs.

-- 
Feh. Mad as heck.