Originally posted by RiwkaThus, in school textbooks and other publications it is often claimed that the land of modern Israel was in fact "stolen" from the Arabs and that the Palestinians were effectively "robbed" by the Jews.
This, of course, is nonsense. They bought it from them.
Although Palestinians have legitimate grievances, there is absolutely no historical basis to their claims - some of which are utterly ridiculous - that Palestine is exclusively theirs and that the Jews "stole" their land.
For the truth is that Jews have always lived in 'Palestine' and Jewish settlers did not, as it is often claimed by Arabs, seize land, but rather they bought it.
Critics and foes of Israel should recollect that the state of Israel was established by the Jews on Jewish and legitimately purchased land. And it was blessed by the United Nations and recognized by nations of the world, most notably the United States.
They did not purchase the entire land of Israel.
According to an Israeli goverment web site, they only had one tenth of the land.
Maps on Palestinian sites show it as even less.
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
By May 1948, when the Mandate expired and Israel was about to proclaim its statehood, land redemption had placed nearly one-tenth of the country under Jewish ownership, the rest being owned by the government or by Arabs.
The population at that time was mostly Arab:
US-Israel.org:
The Arabs constituted a majority of the population in Palestine as a whole-1.2 million Arabs versus 600,000 Jews.
