[Bleeding Red]

Originally Posted by _Q_

Show me evidence that the commonly accepted idea that arabs owned the majority of the land that is now known as Israel is false.

That is not a commonly accepted idea - it is leftist propaganda. Here is some rightist propaganda for you:

Again note - The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.3


AND -"Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:

We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.6

In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."7

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...myths/mf1.html

I am sure you have seen this image before. But just to refresh your memory here:

Yes, I have seen the image before but what the pictures leave out says just as much as what they show. There should be a third colour there, not just green & white - like black showing where there was no one. That would be most of the Negev, the desert. The pic would also be more accurate if where the first image says "Palestine" is said "Ottoman Empire" or "British Mandate Palestine". Most of that green in the first image was either empty desert or owned by Syrian landlords who willing sold their parcels to Jewish interests in the early 20th century.

Just because the land was not an independent nation called Palestine, it does not mean that the land was not owned by Palestinians.

Well, according to Ottoman Empire records a lot of that land was owned by wealthy Ottomans living in Damascus, as noted above.

That is as absurd as saying that land in Alberta is not owned by Albertans because there was never an independent nation called Alberta.

Canada did say that to the Blackfoot, the Cree, etc., but that is a whole different argument.