Let's say that creating a Jewish homeland is a nice idea but does it justify settlements & Greater Israel?

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Duke of Tudor

Israel is the true homeland of Jewish people. Israel has no intention to invade its neighbors, especially Egypt and Jordan who are at peace with Israel.

opal1331

No, it doesn't justify the settlements on land that is not theirs, but throughout history, the jews have done the same thing wherever they settle, that's the reason they were and are not wanted anywhere in the world.
Now, some keep up with the rhetoric about they have to realize the jews have a right to exist, with the exception of very few in this world, they do, but it seems Israel is not willing to realize that the Palestinians also have that right, and are doing their best to eliminate them and take their land.
True, when the Israeli's manage to drive the Palestinians into the sea, and take all of their land and homes, there will still be no peace as they will then try to take from the other neighbors.

mark

There is no justification for settlements any where.

That will never happen, the US will never allow it to happen (America supports the idea of a Jewish state but they would never allow it to threaten their own dominance.) But of course there are crazies (like Dylan RaY) who believe in this nonsense and it's best to stop them now (in the West Bank) before they start getting greedy and asking for more and more and more land...

Jasmine

They probably will, I've read their "dream" is the "expansion" of their precious "homeland".
I totally agree with the first answer.

PS- It was stolen, people were living there and they were forced to move out, told that they were going to be returned once the "war" was "over" but instead they moved Jews into their homes.

Gottbaum

It is not a nice idea...it is a multibillion dollar invasion and the cause of the devil on the earth. EVIL lives in Tel Aviv.

Sophia B

It does not justify them by any stretch of the imagination. Sadly, I believe the settlement will continue on and on, but perhaps not into Iraq.

Maya

No. By definition a jewish homeland need only be a jewish-majority country and there have been many opportunities to create them. Even today Guyana could easily become a jewish-majority democracy. Israel Zangwill proposed the idea many times. Jews were not interested in this large,fertile and mineral rich country on the Caribbean so today through immigration it is 50% Hindu and 10% Muslim. Ironically,it became in the late 90's one of the very few non-zionist countries to have a jewish president.

ZULU

That is an interesting question.

yotg

Israel hadn't "grown" since 1967; on the contrary, as you know.

Yes, some settlers believe in a wider state ("Biblical Eretz Israel") but for most of the public and for all of our political system this idea is out of question.

We don't want it, we don't think about it, we don't talk about it, we show zero intentions to occupy the mentioned countries, yet it seems that every Arab person I talk to fears from it. How come? What makes you think we do want to "go on and on into Jordan, Syria and Iraq"?

kismet

Nobody created a Jewish homeland; it had been in existence for over 4,000 years!

BMCR

No, they are not.

Here is a more basic question and that is, why the h___ not?

In other words, your basic settlement is built on an empty hilltop on in an empty valley that does not misplace a single Arab.

The main reason why settlements are an issue is because the Arabs have made them an issue. That they are somehow an "obstacle to peace". Even if we do accept that premise that they are an "obstacle" I can't imagine why that would be a greater obstacle then, oh I don't know, terrorism?

Mr. X

if they wanted to do that, it would have happened a long time ago.

Liora

I think that you need to understand a bit about how the land that is Israel returned into the hands of the Jewish people.
It wasn't "settled", ie "stolen" as is so often implied, suggested & stated in the Arab & UK media, & on Yahoo answers. The land was acquired legally, and there is no interest in acquiring any other land in the countries you mention.
In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Arab landowners SOLD the land to Jewish Philanthropists & Zionist Leaders the world over, who donated it back to the Jewish people- many of whom were immigrants from Russia, Bulgaria and Romania. They started clearing the land of swamps and malaria, scorpions, snakes & thistles, in the 1800s to revitalize the land.
The Jewish effort attracted an equally large immigration of Arabs from neighbouring areas who were drawn by employment opportunities and healthier living conditions. There was never any attempt to "rid" the area of what few Arabs there were, or those Arabs that immigrated into this area along with the Jews.
This contrasts with the actions of the governments of Morocco, Egypt, Iran (then Persia), Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon Syria & Yemen, who caused thousands of Jewish people to flee the homes that had been lived in by their families for generations. They ended up in pre-State 'Palestine'. (Even a cursory glance at the general Jewish population of Israel today, reveals a majority of dark-skinned Israelis, bearing testimony to their Middle-Eastern roots).

"The weekly Fasl al-Maqal . . . based in the predominantly Arab city of Nazareth in northern Israel ran a list of 54 leading Palestinians who had sold land to Jews from 1918-1945.
"It comes amid widespread controversy over a Palestinian Authority campaign against Arabs who sell land to Jews . . . . Authority officials early this month announced that Palestinians who sell land in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or east Jerusalem to Jewish settlers face the death penalty. They have also said sales of Arab-owned land inside Israel will be punished"
One of the most prominent names on the list is Mohammed Taher al-Husseini, father of al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and supreme head of the Palestinian nationalist movement.
Another was Kazem al-Husseini, grandfather on the mother's side of Faisal Husseini, the top PLO official in Jerusalem. Kazem sold lands in Jerusalem, where he was mayor from 1918-1920.
The list includes five other members of the Husseini family, one of the most prominent clans in pre-1948 Palestine and today.
Mussa al-Alami sold 90 hectares (222 acres) to Jews in Bisan, now the north Israeli city of Beit Shean.
Ragheb al-Nashashibi, mayor of Jerusalem from 1920-1934 and head of the National Defence Party, sold over 120 hectares (296 acres) of land in Jaffa, outside Tel Aviv & also sold land in east Jerusalem.
Yaakub al-Ghussein, sold land to Jews in Jaffa and what is now the Gaza Strip for 4,000 Palestinian pounds, equivalent to British pound sterling at that era.
The Abdel Hadi, Bseiso, and Fahum clans also sold land to Jews.
The Arab heads of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Gaza were also among those who sold land to the Jews, including As'ad el-Shuqeiri (a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri), members of the Muslim Supreme Council, members of the High Arab Committee, the High Islamic Council and the Arab Executive Committee, the main bodies which led the fledgling Palestinian nationalist movement against Zionism!

In 1923, the British divided the "Palestine" portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts; Jews would be permitted to settle the 27.8% of the land west of the Jordan River - land which had been purchased legally - creating a Jewish Palestinian National Homeland, whilst 72.2% was allocated to form an Arab Palestinian nation called Trans-Jordan east of the Jordan River.

The Abdul Hadis â€“ the biggest landowners in Palestine â€“ concluded a secret agreement with the Zionist leaders in 1928 on the eve of the 7th Arab Conference, promising that the customary denunciation of the Balfour Declaration would be dropped.
In public, these leaders stepped up their attacks on the Jews, denouncing any transfer of ancestral soil to the Jews as a betrayal. During the 1936-1939 Revolt, Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Al Husseiniâ€™s guerrillas actually executed â€œtraitorsâ€, so the small Arab landowners no longer dared to sell their land openly to the Jews. At the same time, a close relative of the Mufti was doing a brisk trade in precisely such deals - forcing sales from Arab small-holders at below-market prices and then reselling to the Jews at exorbitant rates.

In 1930, Sir John Hope Simpson was sent to Palestine to report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development. He recorded that: "They [the Jews] paid high prices for the Land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those Lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."

In 1931, the British offered plots of land to 600 Arabs who they deemed to be landless; only 100 took the British up on their offer and accepted the plots.

Anita Shapira, A. 1992. "Land and power". New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, (p.174).
â€œWhile the effendi [Arab landowning] stratum engaged in these profitable transactions (land deals brought it the handsome sum of Â£854,796 in 1933, Â£1,647,836 in 1934 and Â£1,699,488 in 1935), secret collaboration with the British and the Zionists enabled its members, nevertheless, to preserve their dominant position.

By 1937, 387,500 acres of land had been purchased from Arab landowners. In Israel, we have archives where numerous documents of such land purchases can be viewed.

In 1946, Trans-Jordan was again renamed simply Jordan. In other words, the Eastern 72.2% of what was Palestine was renamed twice, in effect, erasing all connection to the name "Palestine!"
The bottom line is that THE PALESTINIAN ARABS WERE ALLOCATED AN "ARAB PALESTINIAN" HOMELAND, in what is now Jordan. The remaining 27.2% of Palestine, PURCHASED from Arab landowners, (now west of the Jordan River) was to be the "Jewish Palestinian" homeland.

In 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, intended to divide the remaining 27.2% of Palestine into a Jewish Palestinian State and a SECOND Arab Palestinian State (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population concentrations. These were to be the Gaza Strip plus Judea-Samaria - today termed the "West Bank" of the Jordan River).
The Jewish Palestinians acceptedâ€¦..... the Arab Palestinians rejected - because they wanted all of the land, both East AND West of the Jordan River - and to get rid of all the Jews.

The 'Palestinians' as a nation of Moslems, were a creation of Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat in 1964, with the main goal of destroying the Jewish people living in the Land of Israel. - still the defined goal of Hamas, today.

King Abdullah of TransJordan noted in his memoirs that the Arabs at that time freely sold land to any willing purchaser. "It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping."
The Peel Commission investigated all Arab complaints regarding Jewish land purchases, but found them baseless. The "complaints" were actually a bargaining tactic used by the landowners to drive up the land prices before selling.
Hajj Amin al Husseini directed much of his terrorist violence against fellow Palestinian Arabs in order to stop small Arab landowners from selling their lands to immigrant Jews - in order to restrict the supply of land, so that Hajj Amin and his relatives could raise the price of land as high as it would go.

Ok how about this. The Arabs can go back to the Arabian Peninsula where they came from, and the Jews can have Israel which is where they came from. There it is settled.

spReez

Jews will eventually get ALL of Israel and will be placed at the top of all nations!

Mark S, JPAA

Yes.

As soon as all the Arabs agree that Israel has a right to exist, then we can talk.

Dylan

Settlers want ALL of the land God gave them. Understandable, right?

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