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Everyone Has Rights
In 70 AD Titus sacked Jerusalem and the Jews scattered throughout the
Roman Empire. Few remained in Palestine. After the Western Roman Empire
collapsed, the Byzantines succeeded and ruled Palestine from Constantinople
until Islamic arms rolled up North Africa and much of the Levant. Beginning
in the 8th century, save for a brief period of spotty European military
rule during the Crusader Kingdoms, the Holy Lands were controlled by Muslims
for over 1,000 years. The Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453 and
ruled what is now called Israel until the 20th century.
The Ottoman Empire, propped up for centuries by European powers, disintegrated
after the Turks sided with Germany in World War I and reaped the whirlwind.
When Europeans carved up much of the Arab world, the territory now called
Israel was regarded even more lightly than when Titus descended and destroyed
the Temple. About 600,000 Arabs lived there prior to the war, according
to British estimates, on land so desolate it scarcely supported that number.
The impoverished Arab families who owned the land initially greeted the
Zionist arrival as a great boon and sold land to the settlers at grossly
inflated prices. Many early Zionists were also Bolsheviks, however, and
insisted on working the land themselves. Their collective farms displaced
Arab agricultural workers.
At various points in history, both Jews and Arabs have held valid legal
claims to Palestine. Beginning in the year the state of Israel was created,
1948, they have fought four wars over the land. Less ambiguous than the
legal situation, and perhaps more to the point, is the record of those
conflicts.
James Clark
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(c) 2002 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 18
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