Jews don't get a pass "just because"

[kılıç_mehmet]

A piece of sand, and two sides, semites to the core, fight eachother for it. Both sides have good arguments for themselves.
Jews were the original inhabitants of the area long before the arabs came along. Similarly, arabs have been inhabiting the area for longer than thousand years.
Considering this, both jews and arabs have the right to call the land "their own". Just as the greeks have sent an army to claim western Anatolia from us, but failed, the jews have tried to claim Palestine from the arabs and succeeded.

If there are two parties who are right, the only way to settle things is war.
And that is what we have in Palestine right now. The arabs will not rest until they have driven out the jews out of Jerusalem, while the jews will stop at nothing to re-claim their promised lands.
As I said, only war can settle things, and peace is impossible.

To the OP. It certainly does not matter if both sides were secular to the core-jews are an ethnic group of their own right, and their ethnic consciousness is in deep relation with their religious identity, while arabs, even though having different religious groups amongst themselves, are also quite nationalistic, and no one would like to see invaders in a place where they constitute a majority, yes?

Religion has very little to do with it.

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And if an Apache knocked on my door and said he used to live here I'd laugh in his face and call the cops to lock the nut up. The Romans threw the Jews out of Palestine in 135 AD.

What happened is that the UN stole Palestine and gave it to the Jews. Probably in the hope of getting them out of Europe.

Actually the Jews conquered what is now Israel, the ceasefire line in 1949 was not the same as the boundaries in the UN partition plan of 1947.

If it had not been for the ceasefire, the Jews would have taken the West Bank and Gaza, along with what is now Israel. Also there would have not been any doubt that a lot of the Arab population would have fled for neighboring countries as a result.

The arabs could certainly wipe out Israel if they wanted to-5 million jews, surrounded by an arab sea...Jews are not a nation of conquerors, nor a nation that has ruled over others for millenia. They have lived under the wings of others for so long, they cannot hold off the arabs for any longer, if the arabs were to unite. Even if the arab would spit at the jew in Israel, they would drown. But the only good thing is, that the jews only have to fight specific groups of arabs, and they are already quite downtrodden and primitve. But groups like Hamas-if they would actually spark a nationwide arab awakening, would lead to the destruction of Israel. And I believe that Israel will be eradicated off the maps sooner or later, but what will follow afterwards, nobody knows.