I have no doubts that the Zionists from the early days had their sites on Palestine as a place to settle, but they were aware of the back breaking work that would have to go into making it a decent place to live.

There is no doubt that the Palestinians were exporters of oranges pre-Israel, but I would seriously doubt those who believe that it was the land that many are trying to conjur up, where the fertile plains were overbriming with luscious fruit & olive groves.

You want factual articles try reading through this site:http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/c2feff7b90a24815052565e6004e5630?OpenDocument which is the official British report of 1930, & you will see that the British Government were bailing out the Palestinian farmers, to ensure that they were profitable. Yes I am aware that this was in the early part of the Depression, but their were many others who would not have been bailed out, including British Nationals.

My Mother-in-Law was an early Kibbutz worker, during the early 1950's & even at that time the work was back breaking to trying to establish the agriculture of settlements. They were faced, not with wonderfull land that they just walked into & stole from the Palestinians, but fields full of nothing, where they cleared the stones & rock with bare hands & watered it with buckets until they built irrigation systems. They lived hard lives in tents, not in stone houses stolen from the people already there.

Yes they did try to get more people into Palestine than the mandate allowed, because they could see the early stages of what was going to happen in Europe. They had already seen millions of Jews forced out of their ancient homelands in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland etc. & wanted to know that there would be somewhere they could go where they would not be beaten, tortured, murdered & raped, just because of their religious beliefs.

Yes I do not condone, as many Jews do not condone the building of settlements on the West Bank etc., but as Nerd has said, when they tried to negotiate, not only did Arafat refuse, but a hardline Jew murdered Yitzhak Rabin. At that time the Israeli government were doing ther damndest to get the settlers to stop building & were getting a very hard time of it & subsequently the hard right were let into power.

Suppose Native Americans, suddenly started a campaign of terror to recapture all their ancient homelands & that involved taking homes that you US citizens have, how would you feel? Would you just say "Gee guys, sure we'll move out of this wonderful abode to make way for you to roam in your ancient ways" I very much doubt it.
We may believe that both sides have it wrong, but the hardline Jews are winning out because Arafat & his cronies keep doing their utmost to keep terror alive & not give way on negotiations.

Am I too emotional about the subject? You bet I am. If my Grandparents hadn't been part of that mass emigration from the pogroms of Eastern Europe around the turn of the century, then they would have been part of the mass murder that wiped out just about all of my Grandparents' families.

This is a very emotive subject for all Jews around the world, & although most of us can see the injustice of what is happening in Israel, we constantly have the past, & not just the recent past in our hearts. We don't want to be denied & wiped out, as the Arab Nations would have us.

If people want to be genuine human rights campaigners then I have no problem with that, but please stop believing everything you read, no matter what the source.