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First of all, the "war" of 1967 lasted only 6 days. Israel managed to double it's land and displace over 500,000 Palestinians, the success was mostly due to "pre-emptive" strikes.
Palestine was a country and was ruled by the British from 1920-1947 when it handed it over to UN along with the responsibility of solving the Arab-Zionist problems that Palestine was experiencing. (It came under British rule after the British helped the Arabs fight off the Ottoman empire)
The Zionist were people who believed that the Jews should have their own state due to the increasing anti semitism in Europe, the whole idea came from Theodor Herzl in 1896 and thanks to years of lobying was pushed into a declaration by Arthur Balfour who stated that Britain will work towards "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". This happened of course after 1916 when the British Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, had promised the Arab leadership post-war independence for former Ottoman Arab provinces.
In other words, the Arabs got screwed. They fought off the Ottoman Empire under the impression that they would then gain the land back, all of a sudden they get told that they were fighting to free up land for the Zionists. When Zionists started to immigrate heavily into Palestine the Arabs got a bit pissy. England was unable to keep the whole thing under control and decieded to hand the mess over to UN.
UN Solution? Split the thing in "half" giving 56.47% to the Jews and 43.54% to the Arabs. Fair? Considering that at the time the Jewish immigrants owned only about 6% of the land? I think not.
It should then be no surpise that the Palestines call the day the country got split as "al-Nakba", or the Catastrophe.
Needless to say war broke out immediatly and Israel happily slaughtered Arab inhabitants of villages surrounding Jerusalem.
There are plenty of cases of Israel going out to "eliminate" terrorist and then proceeding to slaugher innocent civilians. The same Ariel Sharon who is in power now resigned earlier(80s I think) due to one of those slaughters, which was described as one of the worst ever in the middle east.
Fact is that all Palestinians want is their land back, the land they fought and died for since the 1920s. The land that the Zionists managed to cheat them out of. The land that got split 56% going to 6%.
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