[Ltftujkg]

Palestine was not really a "country" in recent times. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 1500s up through World War I, after which it became part of the British Mandate of Palestine (which actually included all of current Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan, though the latter was later excluded from the plan to create a Jewish homeland). The 1947 partition plan created by the UN would have created both a Jewish state and an Arab Palestine, but it was rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders (though, after looking at the map, I think the only reason the Jewish leaders accepted it was post-Holocaust desperation for a homeland - both territories looked like a set of Rorschach inkblots).

In Christ,
Mike

Mike, I was going to end this discussion with my last message which is truthfully how I feel, but I do need to respond to something in your above message which I only just read.

You write : "Palestine was not really a "country" in recent times. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 1500s up through World War I, .."

This statement is misleading. Are you saying that Greece, which was also occupied by the Turks for 400 years - and therefore to all intents "part of the Ottoman Empire" - ceased to exist as a country during this time period?

We were liberated in 1912 up here in North Greece. We never stopped being Greeks just because the Turks occupied our country. Can we not assume that Palestine and its people remained true to their country as we did? Did they become Turks? Perhaps our Orthodox religion protected us to a certain extent. I am not sure that all Palestinians are Muslims (I know a percentage of them are Christians) but does the fact that they had the same religion as the Turks mean that they forgot that they were Palestinians?

Effie