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The lands that zionists have bought have mostly been uninhabited and barely inhabitable at the time. And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jord

The lands that zionists have bought have mostly been uninhabited and barely inhabitable at the time. And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jordan in 18th and 19th century themselves, just like zionists did not a long time later. Arabs who call themselves "palestinians" now didn't have any identity linked to the land. In fact, to this day, the third most popular arab last name in the region is "Al Masri", which literally means "The Egyptian". The word "palestinian" used to mean "the jew" up until 1960s, when Soviets engineered first palestinian terror groups. When zionists declared Israel's independence in 1948, they were actually on the fence about country's name, because both "Israel" and "Palestine" were synonymous with Jewish homeland in everybody's minds. "Israel" was the ancient name and "Palestine" the modern, zionist one. The only arab group which was really indeginous to the land were bedouins, and they thrive in Israel. The only terrorists linked to bedouin communities (like the one who recently killed people in Jaffa) have been incorporated in the palestinian communities (the one in Jaffa by marriage, if I'm not mistaken). So no, the whole zionist project didn't have any conflicts with any indigenous people already living on the land. They did, however, have conflicts with people who have settled the land not that long before, and had adopted a totalitarian ideology of subjugating all other ethnic and religious groups.

aguaviva 2y ago
And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jordan in 18th and 19th century themselves, just like zionists did not a long time later. Arabs who call themselves "palestinians" now didn't have any identity linked to the land. The first statement is simply false. As a result, the second is equally vacuous. While migrations in the late Ottoman period were significant, they were not nearly large enough to offset the "core" (pre-1781) population, which had been continually resident for over a thousand years. Going by all the known data we have (for example the tables in the page below) the influx due to migrations could not have amounted to a net increase of more than about 20 percent. The vast bulk of the net population increase during the 19th century was due to improvements in living conditions and infant morality rates, not migration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti... The fact that Palestinian national identity is largely a 20th-century creation (as with modern Israeli nationalism) is irrelevant to the core issue, "connection to the land". The central fact here is that all nationalisms are modern inventions, and up until the late 19th century, most people self-identified in terms different from the names of the nation states their descendants live in today. What's sad here is that instead of trying to say something positive about Herzl's ideas, or the Jewish diaspora's claim of a connection to the land -- all you can think to do is attempt to water-down and delegitimize the largely (by all the data we have) indigenous population's history, and their connection to that land.

aguaviva 2y ago

And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jordan in 18th and 19th century themselves, just like zionists did not a long time later. Arabs who call themselves "palestinians" now didn't have any identity linked to the land. The first statement is simply false. As a result, the second is equally vacuous. While migrations in the late Ottoman period were significant, they were not nearly large enough to offset the "core" (pre-1781) population, which had been continually resident for over a thousand years. Going by all the known data we have (for example the tables in the page below) the influx due to migrations could not have amounted to a net increase of more than about 20 percent. The vast bulk of the net population increase during the 19th century was due to improvements in living conditions and infant morality rates, not migration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti... The fact that Palestinian national identity is largely a 20th-century creation (as with modern Israeli nationalism) is irrelevant to the core issue, "connection to the land". The central fact here is that all nationalisms are modern inventions, and up until the late 19th century, most people self-identified in terms different from the names of the nation states their descendants live in today. What's sad here is that instead of trying to say something positive about Herzl's ideas, or the Jewish diaspora's claim of a connection to the land -- all you can think to do is attempt to water-down and delegitimize the largely (by all the data we have) indigenous population's history, and their connection to that land.