Much has been written and said about the ongoing crisis in the middle east. There are those that say the basic fault of all the problems is the occupation by Israel of Arab lands. They say once you have done away with this problem the problems will subside.

We need to try to examine whether there was a similar problem before June 6, 1967 when Israel ostensibly took control of all places that people claim are occupied. That war was initiated as a war of annihilation by neighboring Arab countries when so called occupied lands were not an issue. In addition claiming those lands as occupied are historical distortions as they are and always were historical Jewish biblical lands that belonged to the Jewish people. There was never another state in control of those places outside of Jordan which does claim ownership of those places any more.

The real issue here is not territories or any real land dispute, the issue is the inability of the Arabs of the middle east to accept the return of the Jewish people to its historical homeland.

There have been attempts to appease Arab elements with unilateral and agreed upon land give aways. They included Jericho, Gaza, northern Samaria and different parts of Judea and Samaria. All these have backfired terribly and caused hardship to all parties involved.

see interesting article on similar subject

http://mwma.org/news/content/v iew/106/2/

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