Okay, my numbers- they come from a book called Myths and Facts, by Mitchell G. Bard. The book has its own sources, that I'll give. And the Israeli census, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be legit, as it was a ocunt of their own citizens. The arabs in Israel in 1949 were Israeli citizens, who vote, have governmental representation, etc. I can't find the source for the 809,000, it just says it in the book, but there is a source for the UN number of refugees (472,000). (Progress report of the UN mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official records: Third session, Supplement no. 11 (A/648), Paris, 1948, p. 47 and Supplement no. 11A (A\689, and A\689\add. 1, p. 5).
As far as the population numbers over the years, I know that prior to Jewish immigration in the mid 1800s, there were fewer than 250,000 arabs west of the Jordan in Palestine. Let's go back a bit- the name Palestine was given by the Romans, after they went to war against the kingdom of Judea in the second century BC. Despite a protracted revolt, the Romans eventually killed over a million of the jews, destroyed their Temple and drove them all out. They renamed the area "Palaestina" after the ancient Philistines, as an insult to the the Jews.
Rome became christian not long after, and around the 8th century Islam grew, and expanded rapidly. They eventually got as far as Spain. They took control of Palestine from the christians at first. (Incidentally, the Muslim claim to Jerualem is based on the premise that in Muhammed's dream in the Quran, where he rides on a magic peacock to the "further mosque", and ascends to heaven, meeting Jesus and all the jewish prophets, he rose from the Temple mount. The thing is, there was a church on the site during Muhammed's lifetime, so if he indeed rose to heaven from the spot, it was from the roof of a church :-). (Not very PC, I know). Anyway, the muslims had a policy of converting churches and holy sites of enemies they conquered in to Mosques, and they converted the church into a mosque, and assigned the passage in the Quran to that spot.
A few years ago I was in Instanbul and saw the Aya Sofia, this huge and beautiful crusader cathedral, that had been taken by the Ottomans and made into a mosque. When I was there, they had done renovations, and you could see the christian mosaics juxtaposed with the islamic writing and these huge gold discs, it was realy amazing. Anyway....
So then the crusaders and muslims fought over the holy land, as is well known. The crusaders were trying to drive out the "infidel muslims", and the muslims were trying to drive out the "infidel crusaders". The area ended up as a province of the Ottoman empire. The ottoman empire was huge- Constantinople(Istanbul) was the capital, and it stretched to southern Russia, encompassed modern day Turkey, and a number of other provinces. Palestine was never settled or developed, and it was pretty much a wasteland for hundreds of years. Like I mentioned before, there were only 250,000 arabs in the whole place. There was always a jewish presence in Palestine, from the the time of the Romans. The number was around 10,000, many were killed by the crusaders, and many died of dysentery and malaria. It was never any easy place to live, but even so many rabbis in jewish history made pilgrimmages and settled there. There was never any national entity on the land in all of history except for the Jewish kingdom. Then, in the mid-late 1800s, many jews started coming in. There were fewer than 250,000, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades (Carl Voss, "The Palestine Problem Today, Israel and its Neighbors", (MA: Beacon Press, 1953), p. 13). As jewish immigration increased, they began settling the land- draining the malarial swamps, creating farmland. The land was barren and in disrepair when they arrived, and over many years they planted trees and worked the ground and made it fertile again. They built schools, hospitals, an infrastructure. This development created employment opportunities for the arabs, and many came in large numbers seeking work. As you probably know, the Arab world is very poor, with the leaders stinking rich. At first there was a lot of cooperation between the arabs and the jews- the jews taught arab villagers how to farm, they shared knowledge and medical facilities, etc. That's why in 1948 many arabs stayed in Israel- because it was the Jewish settlement that had given them a decent life. Anyway, as time went on more jews came, fleeing Europe among other things. Some arabs were threatened by their success, others at the prospect of losing "arab land". Gangs formed that started attacks on the jews, and there were pogroms, such as the one in Hebron in 1929, where an arab mob attacked the jews, and killed 133 of them, and wounded 399. They were attacked with axes and knives, for the most part, and the bodies were mutilated and beaten. In the course of that, virtually the entire Jewish population in Hebron, which had been there since the Romans, had fled or been killed. The leader of the gangs that terrorized the jews was the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem. He met with Hitler and begged him to bring his final solution to Palestine. He also met Eichmann and other nazi leaders. Many arab leaders allied themselves with the Nazis in WW2. This mufti is actually Arafat's uncle. Arafat lived with him for some time as a boy (so THAT'S where he gets it...). No kidding.
The UN divided the land in 48 based on population- the jews were the majority in the jewish mandate, and the arabs in the arab sections. By the way, it should be noted that as the jews settled, they were never stealing land lfrom anyone- they purchased the land legally, as they went, often at excorbitant prices. The jews didn't "steal arab land". You know what happened after 48.
I found the statistics for Israel's military, in 2001 Israel had 186,500 regular troops and 445,000 reserve. So the 500 or so refusers are a pretty marginal phenomenon. They also had 3,930 tanks and 800 aircraft. Egypt, their biggest military threat, has 450,000 regular troops and 254,000 reserves, 3,505 tanks and 494 aircraft. Syria has 380,000 troops regular troops and 132,500 reserve troops, 4,800 tanks and 520 planes. (Shai Feldman and Yiftah Shapir, Eds., "The Middle East Military Balance", (Cambridge: MIT press, 2001).
You asked what I saw on the map of the settlements. Clearly in the 80s and 90s more settlements were built. Obviously, Israel was trying to get a stronger foothold in these territories. I am pretty sure that they knew that eventually some solution would need to be found for the palestinians. That said, Israel was and is not willing to go back to the pre-67 borders, which leave the country 9 miles wide at it's most vulnerable point. Abba Eban, the late former Israeli ambassador to the UN, described them as Auschwitz borders. Israel lost 1% of its total population in the 48 war, and they are intent on keeping a military reality on the ground that deters attacks on them. They are not going to sacrifice the lives of their citizens by making themselves militarily vulnerable again. The point of the settlements was to have some foothold in crucial strategic areas, like the Golan(which Israel took heavy losses from when Syria attacked them from there, it's the high ground), the high ground in the west bank, gaza, etc. The settlement establish strategic depth. One reason more settlements were built was just to give people places to live. But also, they were clearly trying to increase their foothold in these areas. They knew eventually that they would have to dismantle some of them, but the more there now, the more strategic depth Israel will be able to retain. A palestinian state in all of the west bank would be a mortal threat to the state of Israel- from it they could shoot down planes coming into Ben Gurion airport and shell most of Israel. The settlements are there to hold onto as much of the land as possible. Considering the reality of the situation, I can't blame them for that. It says in 96 Netanyahu resumed building. It had stopped since the Begin administration. I can tell you why he resumed it- after the Palestinians failed to stop terror after Oslo, the "peace process" had already been set in motion. Israel repeatedly had its arm twisted to make more concessions to Arafat, and Netanyahu knew this would keep coming. He realized that Oslo had been a mistake, and he resumed the building of settlements to try and minimize the damage that was sure to come. They weren't, and aren't trying to annex the land- if they had intended that, they could have done it in 67, legally. By international law, Israel has just as much right to hold the land as anyone else. Sharon, and most Israelis, are prepared to dismantle some settlements now, once the Palestinians truly dismantle the terror groups and actively end the violence. They agreed to do this at Oslo, and every subsequent agreement, and never ever followed through. Were terror to be truly renounced as a negotiating tool, peace could be made. The Israelis are ready to give up some settlements- more were made so that Israel could hold onto some of the west bank, which they need to do for security reasons, it is a military reality. This is the only reason they occupied it in the first place. It isn't a choice- most Israelis, Sharon himself included, if you read his interviews, don't want to be ruling over another people. Sharon also knows the Palestinian leadership's real intentions, which are abundantly clear after the last few years.
I'd like to note that the Palestinian government is made up almost exclusively of PLO members. The PLO slogan is "revolution until victory- see
www.fateh.net. The PLO was formed in 1964, with the goal of "liberating palestine". The thing is, if what they were really killing all those people for was a state in the west bank, what were they planning on liberating in 64? That was before the 67 war, before there was ever any occupation by the IDF.
About news today- you should be aware that most western news sources rely heavily on Palestinian sources. Journalists are frequently intimidated and given threats over publishing anything that makes the palestinians look bad. Much like CNN's Issan jordan recently admitted that they had withheld reporting about Iraq's human rights abuses, as it would have compromised their coverage, it is the same situation here, and in most of the arab world. Also, the majority of reporters don't have any real background in the history of the region, even of basic things. The news that comes through is often simplistic and imbalanced- it tends to portray everything as 2 sided, no matter what, and fails to try and dig for any truth. I'd like to end with some quotes from Palestinian and Arab leaders:
"They(the jews) try to kill the principle of religions with the same mentality that they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the prophet Muhammed."
-Syrian President Bashar Assad at May 5 welcoming ceremony for the Pope, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, May 6, 2001.
"Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him for his revenge on them was not enough."
-Columnist Ahmad Ragab, Al-Akhbar (Egyptian newspaper), April 18, 2001
"The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity."
-Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi before the UN Human Rights Commission on religious tolerance, December 5, 1984
" The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight."
Jamal Husseini, before the Security Council, April 16, 1948
" The arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but, instead, they abandoned them . forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."
PLO spokesman Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen), on the Palestinian refugeses in 1948, Falastin a-Thaura, March 1976
"Allah willing, this unjust state... Israel will be erased; this unjust state, the United States will be erased; this unjust state, Britain will be erased... Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah... Blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons' and plunged into the midst of the Jews..."
-Sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mahdi a few days after Yasser Arafat's cease-fire declaration. P.A. Television, June 8, 2001
"The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent arrangement, based on the premise that the war and struggle on the ground [i.e., locally against Israeli territory] is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land... for the Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goals of the 65' revolution..."
-PA Minister of Supply Abd El Aziz Shahian, Al-Ayaam, May 30, 2000 (the "65' revolution" is the founding of the PLO and the publication of the Palestinian covenant that calls for the destruction of Israel via an armed struggle)
"We decided to liberate our homeland step by step... this is the strategy... we say: "should Israel continue- no problem. And so we honor the peace treaties and non-violence, so long as the agreements are fulfilled step by step. But if and when Israel says "enough", namely, "we will not discuss Jerusalem, we will not return refugees, we will not dismantle settlements, we will not withdraw to the borders," in that case it is saying that we will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom. I am the first to call for it. If we reach a dead end, we will go back to our war and struggle like we did 40 years ago."
PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Nabil Sha'ath, interview with ANN television, London. October 7, 2000.
Phew, I guess that's enough for now. Please resp