#1 What is referred to today as Palestine is a creation of the repeated failure of the Arab states to destroy Israel in in 1948 and 1967. When those who owned and operated the lands now associated with the various factions commonly referred to as Palestinians up till 1967 finally figured out that they could not budge Israel off of land they lost in their failed wars of annihilation, they simply declared said lands to suddenly be entitled to self rule they failed to grant them while under their tutelage. The non-Syrian, non-Jordanian, non-Egyptians, non-Lebanese [as they were never really integrated into the world of their previous occupiers] become willing pawns both in the regional conflict as well as the greater international conflict of the times. Let's remember the 1948 date because just a couple years before hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Germans from 'ancestral' lands now owned and operated by the Russians, Poles, and Czechs were all made displaced persons, refugees, and no one cares. That's the price of losing a war. Unlike those tagged as Palestinians, there were places that integrated those Germans into the main stream of society rather than segregate and isolate them. |