Originally Posted by
billygoat
The first two sentences in your post have two errors. One is definitional and the other is historical. The following is a non-political and non-religious reply.
Definitional problem
1) Zionism means the movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and for Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Israel.
2) Palestine has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term that derives from the Greek translation of Israel, which means wrestle or struggle in English. (It was Yasser Arafat who came up with the idea of claiming the term Palestine as the name of a nation, shortly after the formation of the PLO in 1964 in Egypt.)
Historical problem
Prior to the conquest by the Israelites in the land, there were in existence several (what we would now call) city-states. After the Rehoboam-Jeroboam problem, the nation split in two: Judah and Israel. Eventually both were conquered, with only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin returning to the land and resuming their nation, while the other ten tribes remained in exodus. Israel eventually fell under the rule of the Roman Empire. Then came along several Islamic caliphates, and ultimately the Ottoman Empire for about four centuries. Right around when World War II ended, the British (with a little help) pushed the Ottoman Empire out of the land and eventually ceded the land to the Jewish peoples. That led to the 1948 declaration of the nation of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli War followed shortly after. Israel was successful in defending herself, but lost what is commonly called the West Bank to Jordan (then called the Emirate of Transjordan), who annexed the territory to its state, and the Gaza Strip to Egypt. (If you ever wondered why the West Bank is on the eastern side of Israel, now you know -- it's a Jordanian term.) Along came the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel regained control of what it calls Judea and Samaria but everyone else sticks to the term West Bank. it also regained the Gaza Strip and took control of the Golan Heights.
So there was never a nation or people called Palestine in the Middle East. Never, ever. There were groups of Judaists, Muslims, and Christians living in the land prior to 1948 but there was never a state called Palestine.
But since 1948, Israel had agreed to cede land to the folks who call themselves Palestinians no less than five times and all five times the PLO said no. What's peculiar is that from 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank. The Palestinians could have demanded an independent state from the Jordanians. On the contrary, while Jordan was in control Arafat said there was no longer a claim since it was no longer part of "Palestine". Once it was back in Israeli hands it miraculously became disputed land again. That sums up the historical problem.
As for the rest of your post, I'm unable to reply without getting into politics and religion. So out of respect for the rules of this forum, I'll decline to comment.
