Anything that uses this many scare quotes can be recognized easily as not a serious work of scholarship.

Simply put: The land was not empty prior to the establishment of Isreal, and unless you want to believe that the arbic peoples there 'sprung from the dirt' after a rainstorm, then to claim so denies certain obviosities.

Before the 'return', the political authority in the most hotly contested area (Jerusalem and the surrounding area) was shared between Jews, Christians and Moslems, and outside the city of Jerusalem the majority ethnic group was not Jewish. The land was held in ownership, which has been nullified, discounted or removed by the new political authority. Real people have been displaced and packed into areas they did not choose to move to, but were forced to move to.

This issue [the pre-Israel ethnic/political make-up] can be considered completely outside the question of who is a bad guy and who is the good guy, and who is right and who is wrong- and it should be considered as an issue of empirical fact.

Claims that a 'palestinian state' qua state existed prior to modern Israel may or may not be politically motivated tripe- and may or may not be an expedient for the working-out of religiously motivated hatreds and grudges.

On the other hand- the root Israeli claim:

that a Supreme Being said that they (and only they):
1) could/should have that land Ages ago and therefore they should have this land now.
2) That because of (1), they should have complete political hegemony of all the peoples in that area, no matter who was there before them and no matter what the political landscape was there before their so-called return.

That claim the very essence of religiously motivated hatred and is as closed to an absurd political expediency as you can get. 'Because God said so 1000 years ago' is not a credible foundation for a state nor for maintaining political power ovcer a group of people who don't want you to have power over them. At least not for anyone who wants to be different than the set of people who are waging war on the west because, supposedly, 'God said so'.

Davin L.