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Submitted by Dr RJP (United States), Oct 18, 2007 at 14:32
Sproul said, "For years, now, I've been under the impression that the pre-1948 "Israeli" Palestinians occupied homes and farms which had been in their famiies for many generations, and that they clearly had defacto ownership of those properties. And that the Israeli government forcefully kept those who had lived there from returning? Am I wrong in that impression?"
ABSOLUTELY! People do not know that Israel both discouraged Israeli Palestinians from abandoning their homes at the start of the 1948 War, and then ALLOWED OVER 300,000 Israeli Palestinians to return to their former homes immediately after the 1948 truce was called. The only Palestinians prevented from returning were those who could not prove that they had been permanent residence in Israel. This "Right of Return" claim is an attempt by the Palestinian Authority and supporting Arab countries to force Israel to absorb Palestinians with no direct ties to the land in a blatant attempt to change the demography of Israel. since 1993, the PA has padded the list of "Palestinian returnees" to Israel with nearly 2 million Palestinian Arabs with no known kinship or permanent residential ties to Israel.
They have already done so in Jerusalem which used to be only 2% Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of illegal Arab settlements being built there since 1993, the percentage of Arabs living in Jerusalem has soared to18%. Over 400,000 Arabs have illegally settled in the West Bank in the same time period. If anything, the Israeli Government is ENCOURAGING ILLEGAL ARAB IMMIGRATION .
Sproul said, "I heard several Israelis say publicly that they didn't want the refugees to return because Israel would loose its Jewish majority. Was there some other reason for keeping the refugees out? Or aren't they being kept out?"
Israel would lose its Jewish majority if the Arabs were to have their way and force Israel to accept people with no right whatsoever to be in Israel, as I outlined above. Why are Palestinians living in camps in the West Bank? Why not ask, "Why are Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon, an Arab country?" It is by design that Arabs keep Palestinians in camps so that they can continue to blame Israel, and so as to divert attention from their own internal problems. Why, you should ask, won't a single Arab country allow Palestinians, their "brothers," to resettle there? Ironically, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has made a concerted effort to resetlle legitimate Israeli Arabs. The Palestinian "refugee camps" have also become a dumping ground for Palestinian Arabs from other Arab countries.
All that need be said of Carter is that he is delusional, and has.been for some time. You will find that most of the people critical of Israel have bought into the leftist way of thinking, that there is some great Zionist conspiracy and that Arabs are victims of Zionist imperialism, and that blowing up schools, synagogues, restaurants, and market places is the moral equivalent to trying to prevent terrorists from blowing up schools, synagogues, restaurants, and market places. Israel's government certainly deserves a lot of criticism, but not in the way leftists think Their government is validating terrorism by handing away land that has been part of Israel for 3,000 years for nothing but an insane idea that it will appease groups like Hamas who want to totally destroy Israel and all Jews with it. "Land for peace" has never worked before, and has only made Israel weaker.
Look what happened when Gaza was turned over to the Palestinians? What was the first thing they did? Rebuild their infrastructure? Create jobs? Provide welfare the those in need? No. The first thing they did was to attack Israel with rockets.
Zionism is not a nationalistic movement Zionism is not any kind of sinister plot. Zionism has always been the attempt to recapture, through legal resettlement, a tiny, sliver of land that was, and is, Israel, the historic homeland of the Jewish people. No attempt has even been made by Zionism to extend Israel's borders beyond what was promised to them by the British government -- the same people who carved up all of the Middle East in 1917 after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, and created independent Arab states from it.
The Arab states need to give up on their perennial quest to have a unified, Arabic continent, and permit Israel to coexist with it.
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