The current edition of the Economist (a no-nonsense periodical) carries a special report on the versions of history taught to both Israeli and Palestinian school children. "Few foundation myths" it says "are as diametrically opposed as those of Jews and Palestinians"

It adds that things have changed a bit, with most Palestinians accepting that the State of Israel is here to stay, with most Israelis coming to accept the Palestinian's own right to self determination. "Israeli revisionist historians have rewritten the academic accounts of the country's birth to reflect its mistreatment of the native population" It points out that 'old skool' desciptions of the 1948 era "tended to suggest that Palestinians either left their homes voluntarily, selling them to Jews, or were encouraged to lave by other Arabs - rather than, as sometimes happened, being forced out violently"

The view that Palestinians abandoned their homes so Arab armies would have an one field to slaughter Jews borders on a kind of evil racism. It depicts Palestinians as part of an evil conspiracy due to their evil nature and of course deserving their subsequent exile. By contrast, the Israelis who occupied their homes are only enjoying the fruit of surviving yet another assault on them. In short, the Palestinians, thanks to their evilo nature that led them to conspire against Jews, deserve everything they got......
(sounds a lot like anti-semitic 'conspiracy' theories drummed up over the years to justify outbursts against Jews)

As I've pointed out before, it is normal human instinct to flee danger, and take only what you can carry. Millions of Lebanese civilians fled their homes last summer thanks to threats by Israel to bomb their homes whether they stayed or not. Should they be sent into exile, and their homes given to someone else, now that they've been out of them a while?
People sent their kids to the countryside during the London Blitz - maybe the kids shouldn't have been allowed to return?
And if you have five so-called Arab armies and an Israeli one converging for a scrap on your neighbourhood, don't tell me you'd hang round if you had a choice. People fled with what they could carry - and importantly (since people here keep on insisting on legalities) the title deeds to their properties. Some of those exiles, though advanced in years, are stilla live. Even Wolfgang concedes first-generation refugees have some right to return. So why are these guys still in exile? They are first generation (though I don't see why the second generation shouldn't return - Jews 'returned' to Israel after 67 generations) AND they hold the title deeds to their property.
Seems to me simply that we have a two-tier system and a level of discrimination that can't simply be explained away.

No-one has yet been able to satisfactorily answer my comment that if it is acceptable for Israel to create a Jewish state (combining ethnicity and religion), then it is also logically Ok for any other country to create a legally mono-cultural mono-religious state, and to discriminate against or expel or block entry to people who don't fit the bill (this is the general gist of the argument given as to why Palestinians dispossessed shouldn't be allowed to return to their property).
Where then, does that leave the foundation stone of our Western-style liberal democracy (of which Israel and its proponents claim to be a part - indeed the ONLY example in the Middle East) based on pluralistic inclusivness and equality??

It's quite a headache when you think about it.....