Originally Posted by
Incesticide
As such, and I shall state this now, I have ignored the nine pages of debate and will be responding to the original thread starter.
The United Nations created the state of Israel by assembling the areas where Jews outnumbered Arabs (incidentally, there never was a Palestinian state, there was a British colony, so, at best, Israel "stole" the land from the British, who "stole" it from Turkey). Palestine was part of a province of the Ottoman Empire (a very Muslim empire). The Jews bought land legally according to the laws of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians sold them the land that they bought. All of this happened during the era of the Ottoman Empire (a very Muslim empire). When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Britain and France split the regions, and Britain obtained Palestine. Britain inherited what the Ottomans had done.
The rumour that Palestinians have been expelled from their lands after the creation of Israel is false. Israel expelled them after it was attacked by the Arabs. Incidentally, the Arabs expelled millions of Jews from their lands too (the so-called "Black September" by King Hussein of Jordan). Moreover, the Arabs refused the state of Palestine that was offered to them by the UN in 1947, and, in any event, leaders of several Palestinian organizations have repeatedly declared that their goal is the destruction of Israel.
The main reason that Palestinians still live in poverty is that the Palestinian Authority originally created a very corrupt regime (supported by Western Governments), that was very unpopular with the Palestinian people and later led to the election of the much less corrupt Hamas (which ironically enough, was opposed by Western Governments).
Israel has no responsibility to return the occupied territories to the Arabs. God only knows why the Western World (particularly Europeans) has suddenly decided that winning countries must withdraw from the territories occupied during a war. Will Germany now be entitled to the territories that Hitler lost during World War II? Should Taiwan take back all of China? Will Europe return to Rome the lands that the Roman Empire lost to the barbarians? And will the Arabs withdraw from the lands they occupied during the Arab wars, from Morocco to Iraq? (Again, mostly) Europeans are outraged that many more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis, as if it was an outrage that more German civilians died in World War II than, say, French or Polish civilians.
This is not to say that one side is blameless. As the adage goes, "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". But Israel missed several opportunities too. The whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a farce of stupidity, one side trying to outsmart the other one while causing devastation to its own people. Unfortunately, now the two sides have created so many stumbling blocks to any peace negotiations that it will be almost impossible to negotiate anything.
The Palestinians want a state? Fine, but then you must give the people living in Western Sahara (annexed by Morocco), Kurdistan, Casamanche (Senegal), Somaliland, Chechnya, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia a state - anything else is double standards.