When people talk about the return of the Jews to their homeland, they sure love to miss out on the return of the Palestinians, too. That it's the Palestinians' fault in everything, and not how awful the UN partition plan was to give the majority of the country over to a minority of the people. Who is dumb enough to actually accept that deal?
Scum contuing to be scum.
If anyone's interested, Miko Peled (grandson of one of the signatories of the Israeli Indpedence Declaration, Avraham Katsnelson) gives an amazing view of the issue from the perspective of an elite upper class Israeli who's against the apartheid and of the indoctrination that goes on in Israel. His books called The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.
There's a few talks by him on YouTube but this one covers the themes of his books:
https://youtu.be/TOaxAckFCuQ
This is something that people like JordanN and GuessWho should watch, get their myths and facts checked out.
Are you looking for a serious answer?
It comes from Cold War politics when Israel took on and single handily defeated neighboring countries that were sponsored by the Soviet Union.
Since you want to drag settlements along, tell me why was Israel invaded in 1948 when they neither occupied Gaza or the West Bank? And before there was even state, why was there several riots targeted at Jews between
1920 - 1948?
No matter how some want to skew the conflict, it's never a black and white issue.
JordanN, you're just conveniently leaving out major details like how before 1948, Palestinians didn't have an army and Israel wasn't attacked at that time so Israeli forces already conquered more than a majority of the country with ease as there was little resistance. Here's a quote from Miko Peled as linked in the video on the previous page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOaxAckFCuQ#t=6m50s
"The myth that we're told about 1947 (and I heard it once again today at the Seattle Times), is that in 1947, after the UN finally recognised the right of the Jewish people to finally have their own state, the Arab armies attacked intending to destroy this fledgling state of the young Jewish community and this is only several years after the Nazi Holocaust.
Yet somehow between the end of 1947 and the end of 1948, the Zionist forces were able to conquer almost 80% of the country, destroy over 500 towns and villages including schools and mosques and churches and homes and exile almost a million people within a 12-month period. How did they do this if they were being attacked by massive armies from the outside?
But once again, when we look at the facts, we realise that in 1947, the Jewish community - the Zionist community - had quite a substantial military force. They had a force of close to 40,000 armed men. Well trained, well indoctrinated. My father was one of them. There was no equivalent on the Palestinian side. The Palestinians have never had a military force. To this day, Palestinians have never had an army or military force. There was no equivalent of the other side. The Arab armies - such as they were - didn't enter the war until may of 1948. Much of the ethnic cleansing had already taken place. The war had been taking place for over 6 months by then. So, of course, this is a myth.
This is a myth that nobody takes the time to investigate and question. But once again, the reality that in a 12-month period, so much was done exactly because that is exactly what the purpose of these Zionist forces to capture as much of the land is possible and get rid of as many people as possible and that's exactly what they did."
falastini brings up also the point in your chronology that you're missing:
Because when a colonial entity suddenly starts moving into your land, talking about creating their own country, where you and your families have lived for centuries, starts buying land and excluding Arabs from working on it, the natives saw the writing on the wall. Not to mention the Balfour Declaration. What was supposed to happen if not resistance?
There was violence on both sides. Israel displaced 300,000 Arabs before they proclaimed their independence in 1948.
The UN partition plan was bullshit. Jews made up the smaller population (~30%)(many of which just flooded the country because of the war) but were offered 55% of the land. Whereas the Palestinians, who made up ~70%, were given 45%. How does any of that make sense?