Robomatic: "
A good deal of the problem is the refusal to see the Jews of Israel as Palestinians, too.

To get into the Indian/Colonist analogy, it's as if the Indians after over a thousand years reclaimed a portion of their original lands, displacing the descendants of Colonists.

The blind refusal to see the Israelis as Jewish Palestinians of an earlier vintage leads to the perception of them as occupiers when in fact they displaced the descendants of squatters."

That's an interesting thought. I mentioned earlier that there were Jews living in Palestine prior to the formation of the Israeli state. These particular Jews had been living in the area for centuries or longer. But there are other Jews living in Israel who have no such connection with Palestine. They, and their ancestors, had been living elsewhere in the world (in places such as Europe) for hundreds if not thousands of years. It can hardly be said they have some kind of ancestral 'squatters' rights'. They would indeed be a bit like Indians claiming back their lands after not one, but two thousand years.

Present day Indians might indeed have a better claim to their ancestral lands - 1) they have been displaced relatively recently, in some cases only a little over a hundred years 9as opposed to thousands, as in the case of European and Russian Jews) and 2) their title to their land was guaranteed to them in a series of treaties with pale faces, which the pale faces subsequently broke when and how they felt like it. For example, the Black Hills and the lands around were guaranteed to the Sioux for a s long as the sun shines and the rivers flow. Obviosuly the sun stopped shining a few dozen years later when first gold and later uranium were found there.

In the case of the Palestinian arabs, things are altogether different. Those who fled in the Nakba, or were driven out, took the title deeds of their property with them, and some even their house keys. That was almost exactly sixty years ago (Israel celebrates this fact this year) and so well within living memory of the displaced Palestinians. There are still some alive today who fled at that time. It is not a question of thousands of years as in the case of the European Jews. Yet these refugees are not being allowed back. The reason is as obvious as it is simple: Jewish Israelis now occupy the housesd farms and shops of these refugees, and for them to return and claim what is legally theirs would mean displacing these latter day colonists.

That is why there is a 'problem' in Palestine.