Again, as I stated earlier in many, many words. Jews have been in that area of the world long before Mohammed existed. In fact, thousands of years before. Israel as a country goes back to the time of Kings Saul, David and Solomon (1000 BCE) .Modern Israel is not much younger then any of the other states in the region. The Ottoman Empire, which emanated from modern Turkey was not Arabic, but certainly Moslem. The Arabs are an amalgam of many peoples who inhabited the lands from the Fertile Crescent to Gibraltar. But in the Mandate Area there were always a continuous presence of Jews, the Jewish religion and its culture. Most of the land in the Mandate Area was uninhabitable and therefore both Egyptian and Turkish absentee landlords were anxious to sell property to immigrant European Jews. Between 1880 and 1914 over 60,000 Jews entered Palestine, mostly from Russia, Galicia, Roumania and Poland. Many settled on wasteland, sand dunes, and malarial marsh, which they drained, irrigated and farmed. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 on the sand hills outside of Jaffa. These immigrants purchased land piecemeal from European, Turkish and Arab landlords, mostly at extremely exorbitant prices. That transference of land for money has always been accepted legally in the Common Era. Their right to this purchased land has been supported by every level of jurisprudence. For the record in 1922 there were 590,000 Arabs and 84,000 Jews, today there are over 6.5 million people living in Israel (80 % are Jewish) aside from the 1.5 million Arabs in Gaza and the 2.4 million living in the West Bank. The total area of the Palestine Mandate, circa 1947, is 10,421 square miles. The density of that area is 1036 individuals per square mile. In comparison, the State of New Jersey has 8.6 million residents in its 7,417 square miles, or a density of 1159 individuals per square mile.

Jordan, which occupies, since 1921, the largest piece of the original post WWI British Mandate, covers 35,637 square miles and is 17 times larger than the West Bank and Gaza. Its population is mostly Palestinians and its density is 162 individuals per square mile.

There are a few conclusions that could be drawn from those statistics. In 1922 the British Mandate which included today's modern Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, had only 6% of the region's current population. As Jews immigrated into Palestine, they created jobs and wealth. As a result Arabs flocked to the Mandate area to seek work! Besides that dual surge in population, it was no where near over-populated. The same area today has the density of New Jersey, and Jordan, a country of mostly Palestinian Arabs has a density of only 162 which 15% the density of the 1947 Mandate area. The real Palestinian State is the Kingdom of Jordan!

In 1905, Neguib Azoury, an Arab representative at a meeting in Paris to discuss Arab nationality, stated, “The reawakening of the Arab nation and the growing Jewish efforts at rebuilding the ancient monarchy of Israel on a very large scale – these two movements are destined to fight each other continually, until one of them triumphs over the other.”

Between 1886 and 1914 Jewish settlements were attacked by Arab bands. But there was some enlightenment in the Arab world, and in a 1919 letter to Professor Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School ( Later a long-time Justice of the United States Supreme Court),
Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab world during World War I, welcomed the return of the Jews to Palestine. His son, Emir Feisal, who represented the Arab world in the Paris Peace Conference, had this to say about Zionism: Emir Feisal wrote, “We Arabs especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist Movement… We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome… We are working together for a reformed and revised near East, and our two movements complement one another. The movement is national and not imperialistic. There is room in “Syria” for us both. Indeed, I think neither can be successful without each other.” (Quoted by Israel's UN Ambassador Chaim Herzog, November 10, 1975 in response to the Zionism is racism resolution)- see the complete letter below:

DELEGATION HEDJAZIENNE

Paris Peace Conference

March 3, 1919

Dear Mr. Frankfurter:

I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American Zionists to tell you what I have often been able to say to Dr. Weizmann in Arabia and Europe.

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together.

The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organisation to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.

People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for cooperation of the Arabs and Zionists, have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences.

I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not on questions of principle, but on matters of detail such as must inevitably occur in every contact of neighbouring peoples, and as are easily adjusted by mutual good will. Indeed nearly all of them will disappear with fuller knowledge.

I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their places in the community of civilised peoples of the world.

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,

(Sgd.) Feisal

Therefore, there was ample proof that there was some sincere interest in allowing Jews into the Middle East. The letter is self-explanatory! But times had changed and in the post Feisal Era, people like the Grand Mufti saw opportunities in driving the Jews from Palestine. He learned quickly from the Nazis that scape-goating, along with confiscation of property and wealth from the Jews could add to his power. The inciting of riots, Arab pogroms and religious hatred drove an intractable wedge between these neighboring peoples.

Mr. Gilman has stated correctly that there are now two distinctive claims for the same land. Therefore with that historical anomaly in mind, what was done and what can be done? In 1947 the United Nations voted for partition of the land. The nascent state of Israel was given a “gerrymandered,” truncated and almost indefensible parcel of land that was divided into three sections; one on the coastal plain, one large part in the barely habitable Negev Desert and the last part in the northern mountainous area near the Golan Heights. It was a fraction of the original Mandate area that had earlier included Trans-Jordan. They accepted the conditions set forth by the UN. Ironically if the Arabs had accepted the partition, Israel may have never been able to survive with those truncated borders, and the wish of the Arabs to control Jerusalem would probably have been fulfilled. In fact the borders of 1947 Israel would have been 20 miles from Jerusalem, which would have been internationalized.

But, as history has so vividly reported, the Arabs rejected the UN Partition and the overwhelming vote, and attacked the Jewish settlements and the land that the Jews occupied. Even with six modern armies, they were defeated. The rest is history, and they have been defeated time and time again. Now they have given up on modern armies, and some have turned their pipedream of a Palestinian Irredentia to bands of terrorists who are known as Hamas and Hezbollah. What else is new?