Regardless of who controlled the land...individual people owned individual houses and now live in permanent refugee camps, whilst the people who drove them from their homes occupy those houses or houses built upon the land the Palestinian family vacated.

There has never been a minute in the last 3000 years where Jews did not live in the area known as Israel. The Arabs who lived there did not ever own a single grain of sand let alone any actual land. The land was owned by various empires. The Roman, Egyptian, Ottoman, and British empires all owned it at different times.

Those who lived on the land (Jews and Arabs) didn't own the land during these years. When the land was given to them in 1947, it was the first time any Arabs had owned any part of the land they were squatting on.

Israel is the home of the Jews in the same way China is the homeland of the Chinese. To claim otherwise is either dishonest or laughably stupid.

Oh, so if you own land that you don't live on, and I build a house on it. You're the bad guy when you tear down the house and make me leave?

Nope. Jews predate Israel.

If I am the Israelis in this instance then I never owned the land in the first place. Somebody bigger than me stole it from you and handed me the keys.

I always assume Zionists think we should give NY & or FL back to the Native Americans & TX back to Mexico.

If somebody stole my land I'd convince my children to blow themselves up in those people's buses and pizza shops!

Oh, no wait, I wouldn't. I'd get over it. I'd love my children and teach them to love.

What if you and your children were living in cramped unhealthy conditions and they risked a sniper bullet in the head when they left the house?

maybe if i (and my neighbors)didn't send them out with explosives on them i wouldn't have to worry about snipers.

Suicide bombing is a relatively new phenomenon. I do believe it is a response to the brutalising effects of occupation. And the effects are brutal.

it's not a response. it is a choice. a response is when the doctor hits your knee with a hammer and your leg bounces. A causes B. I'm pretty sure that no man, woman, or child has every woken up and thought "this occuption sucks" and spontaneously exploded.

I'm not suggesting that the situation is anything less than shit, but blowing yourself and non-combatants up is not a response to anything other than a persons fucked up allegiance to a misguided notion.

My brain did. You can see evidence of it all over this message board.

Yep. Chinese people predate China, but China is still the home of the Chinese people exactly the same way that Israel is the homeland of the Jews.

No, if you're Israel, someone stole it from you, someone stole it from them, someone stole it from them, and then that person broke it in pieces and give you some of it back.

Excellent point, though to be more accurate, the land was never yours to begin with so it wasn't stolen from you. :)