The palestinians are Arab inasmuch as they speak Arabic. But their genealogy is not that simple. Most of the people who are palestinians are descended from people who were there at least at the time of the crusades (say the 12th century) and probably earlier. Back when Palestine was part of the Roman empire (I can't remember when it fell to the Arabs, maybe the 7th century?) it was a diverse ethnic community speaking primarily Syriac, a descendent of the Aramaic that Jesus et al. spoke in the 1st century much as Italian is a descendent of Latin.

Many of the so-called "Samarians" back in the 1st century (AD or CE) were descendents of the Northern Kingdom ("Israel") who were not taken into Babylonian captivity, and who held to the Five Books of Moses because the prophets in Babylon weren't part of THEIR experience of God.

Many of these same people became Christians over the course of the next several hundred years. Not all of the inhabitants of Palestine at the time of the Muslim takeover converted to Islam; and many Christians moved to the area during the middle ages. As a result, there is a small but not insignificant minority of Palestinian Arabs who are Christians (primarily Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox), who can trace at least part of their ancestry right back to the time of Christ, right there in Palestine. And for that matter probably the lion's share of the Muslim Palestinians can trace their ancestry back just as far.

So it's far too simple and quite erroneous to say that the Palestinians "stole" the land from the Jews.

But it's quite obvious how the Jews have treated the Palestinians from the time they were granted their autonomy from the British in 1940. While "genocide" is too strong a word, "harassment" is far too weak. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. The so-called Jewish settlements were not made in unoccupied, open land. Many if not most were made by driving out the people who had lived there for over a thousand years, destroying their livelihood by chopping down their olive trees, and forcing them to move somewhere else.

It's uncomfortably an awful lot like what was done in this nation to the Cherokee, Crow et al.

It really sickens me how everybody keeps saying, "if only those nasty Palestinians would just stop throwing rocks, then we could go back to peace again." How many Palestinians have died since this current uprising began? How many Jewish Israelis? Now who is the oppressor and who the oppressed?

I will continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, as we are commanded to. (Psalm 122:6). May Jews, Christians, and Muslims somehow learn to live together in peace.

Alex
O..O
=o=