You said that Jewish settlers had purchased about 75% of the land they settled on. What about the rest? Do I hear a libertarian say that it's OK to take 25% by expropriation if you pay for the other 75%? I'm sure the people living on the other 25% were less than thrilled with this arrangement.

Jordan is not carved out of a very healthy part of the region. Tell me why they should give up their water to provide an independent state for Palestinian Arabs who formerly lived in a country where they had had homes already.

Jerusalem is always going to be a problem. It was in Arab possession, and then suddenly it wasn't. Wouldn't you be ticked off? Now, I agree that the opposite extreme, to which the Arabs went, was not a helpful or appropriate reaction, even though it certainly conforms to the Arab culture that still follows the old "honor"/blood feud code, which, incidentally, Muhammed tried to short-circuit at the founding of Islam. (FWIW, I also think the Yom Kippur War was a low blow, and I'm glad the Israelis smacked them around.)

Still, it wouldn't kill you, who railed against the eminent domain ruling by our own Supreme Court, to look at this problem from the Arab point of view for once. The idea that the Arabs should cough up a place for the Palestinians to go would both confirm that Israel was entitled to take away what it took and admit that the Arabs as a people are helpless to stand up to what they view as an interloper in their midst. Capitulation is not negotiation. If just laying down and licking the feet of your opponent is what is demanded, then the opposite extreme, denial of Israel's right to exist, is what we're going to get. It's the only position they can take to negotiate to anything acceptable, in the laws of the marketplace. If you want 50%, you don't start your negotiation there.

What crime, seriously, did the Arabs of the 1930s and early 1940s commit that allowed them to be, um, fined in this way except that they lived in a place that European guilt wanted to give to the Jews?