posted on Apr, 29 2003 @ 09:00 PM
Boy have you opened a can of worms!
The easiest answer is just to blame it on the British, they started the whole mess....
OK here is my interprtation, Estragon might be better at this so feel free to jump in and correct me.
in the 1800's the land known as Israel was part of the Ottoman empire.
When the first world war came, the british attacked through egypt up to Turkey and promised the arabs living in israel that if they helped them fight
off the turks who were there then they could have it as their country, they did help the british and so in the 1920's palestine was born.
Around that time the Zionist movement started growing strength (it actually started in the later 1880's I think)among the Jews in Europe, and they
started trickling into palestine and living there speaking the once dead language of Hebrew.
Basically they were sick of being picked on in Europe and wanted to go home to their ancestoral homeland, a valid hope that every year they asked for
"Next year in Jerusalem" in the Passover festival.
Then WW2 happened, 3 million (?) Jews were killed and many fled Europe. After WW2 the British felt sorry for the Jews and gave them Palestine. The
arabs were understandably upset and the British partitioned the country into bits some for the Jews and some for the Arabs (Telaviv and Jaffa as good
examples of this).
The british were not fair in this however, by putting the jews into concentration camps in cyprus when they tried to go to Palestine (which was rough
considering what they had been through) and allowing the arabs to arm themselves but not the jews.
Round about 1948 (?) the british said " Righto mates, we are popping off home you blighters had better look after yourself, we are sick of being
policemen" (typical british response to international affairs see India for example) So they left, and the Jews and the Arabs fought it out for
supremacy.
Despite the superiority of the Arabs the Jews were able to win, and ever since then have ben fighting the arab nations around them for the right to
stay in their ancesteral homeland. The Israeli success is often because of Arab incompetance such as the 1973 (?) war when egypt sent 90,000 troops
north with no maps and only one kitchen!
So on the same bit of land the Arabs call it Palestine ("Palastinains" are not a racial or tribal group just the name of the arabs who were living
there at the time) and the Jews call it Israel.
Part of the british partition is still there with the Arab areas and the Jewish areas.
[Edited on 30-4-2003 by Netchicken]