[slg]

I don't know where your numbers are coming from, but they are at the very least misleading because the population was not exclusively made up of Jews and the group we now call Palestinians and not all land was privately owned.

EDIT: I rephrased this to more clearly explain my point.

[sudosysgen]

I don't understand your argument. Jewish Palestinians plus non-Jewish Palestinians do make up 100% of Palestinians.

[slg]

Oops, I made that more confusing by trying to note everyone was a Palestinian when the place was called Palestine. By "non-Jewish Palestinians" I was trying to refer to the predominately Muslim and predominately Arab group that we now just call Palestinians. There was and still is a population of Christians in the area and there presumably was some larger population of foreigners in the area when it was under foreign rule. I edited that comment to clear things up.

[sudosysgen]

Everyone is still a Palestinian nowadays though.

The reason why there are less Christian Palestinians is because a lot of them were deported or fled shortly after the Nakba.

A lot of them would come back if Palestine was restored, but most of them are legally prevented by Israel from coming back.

Not even Hamas or Hezbollah wants Palestine to be a single religion or single ethnicity state, so I don't really understand what you were trying to convey.

[benja123]

The Christian population in the Christian towns of the Westbank (Bethlehem) and in Gaza have been decreasing steadily for the past 70 years - this has nothing to do with the occupation of the Westbank and Gaza and everything to do with persecution by the local population. This trend is not confined to just the Westbank and Gaza and is in fact a trend that is occurring across the entire Middle East where in the past 100 years the Christian population has decreased from 20% of the population to approximately 5% of the population.

[DSingularity]

If by persecution by the locals you mean the Jewish Israelis — sure. But if you are trying to imply that the Muslim Arabs persecuted the Christians get out of here.

By wide margins the European Christian crusaders killed more Arab Christians then any other ethnic group. Palestinian Christians and Muslims have coexisted for a long, long time. To the point that the holiest of Christian churches are often entrusted to Muslim custodianship. How else would you explain that?

[sudosysgen]

Indeed. The majority of Palestinian Christians left due to their ethnic cleansing by Israel in 1948.

It's not Hamas that destroyed a Christian church and orphanage a week ago. It was an Israeli bomb.

There were two or three attacks of Christians in Palestine by Muslims, however them being religiously motivated is doubtful and the perpetrators were condemned and prosecuted by everyone, even Hamas.

The vast majority of persecution of Christians in Palestine for their religion was by Jewish extremists, overwhelmingly. Let alone ethnic persecution of Christians.

[benja123]

The fact is Christians have been persecuted in the Middle East for 100s of years. Under the Ottoman Empire Christians (and any non Muslims) had to pay a Jizya tax - which is persecution (unless you believe it is okay to tax people for being another religion), moreover you had numerous massacres of Christian populations by the Ottoman Empire (one example of this is the Armenian genocide, but you also had cases of Greek, Maronites and other Christian group being murdered at a large scale). Now with that said, Europe was no better, and often worse when it came to its treatment of minorities at that time.

Regardless, the fact that historically Christians (and other minorities) were treated relatively well in the Middle East does not change the reality that for the past 100 years Christians and other minorities are facing massive persecution in the Middle East and in some cases genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Some examples of persecution Christians currently face (by no means complete)

- In Egypt, Copts can not perform any repairs on their churches without government approval, moreover in the past 10 years alone 100s have been killed by mobs attacking them.

- In Saudi Arabia, Christians can not practice their religion in public.

- In Iran Christians that converted from Islam face the death penalty

- Turkey two Byzantine Era churches, Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Saviour, were just converted to mosques.

- In Gaza Christian business and places of worship are regularly attacked by Islamic extremists, often with tacit approval of the ruling Hamas.

And this is just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the type of persecution Christians face in the Middle East today.

Now let’s for a second talk about Jews of the Middle East. A 100 years ago the Jewish population in the Middle East (outside of Israel/Palestine) was nearly 1 million and yet today it numbers maybe a few 100.

Ask yourself where are the Jews of Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq etc? All had relatively large Jewish communities until recently. Persecution, violence and yes, ethnic cleansing is what decimated the Jewish population of the Middle East (outside of Israel).

The reality is, one of the few countries in the Middle East where religious minorities do not face any major persecution is Israel. Yes, you have had individual cases of extremists attacking minorities - but this is true for every country in the world, and when it does happen they are usually caught and brought to justice. This is why the fastest growing religious community in Israel is Islam and this is also why the Christian population in Israel is continuing to grow (unlike in the areas in the Westbank under the Palestinian Authority rule and Gaza under Hamas rule, where the Christian population is decreasing at an alarming rate). Does it mean Israel is perfect when it comes to how it treats minorities? Nope. But, when it comes to its treatment of minorities it is no where near as bad as the rest of the Middle East and is not much worse (and in some cases better) than the EU and the US.

[sudosysgen]

Have you ever been in Gaza or the Westbank?

How these places work is that if you leave, you can never come back.

These places are awful to live in. The only people that stay there stay because they don't have a choice or for ideological reasons. That's why Christians leave moreso, they often have family that left and can get refugee status more easily.

The trend of Christians leaving is a highly localized trend. The greatest number of Christians left not everywhere in the Middle East, but in Iraq, Syria, and, a while ago, Turkey.

The events in the last sixty years that contributed the most to Christian emigration were the Lebanese civil war, the Iraq war, the Syrian Civil War, and the Nakba of 1948.

[slg]

I'm not going to get that deep into politics here. You are basically arguing for a one state solution except it is Palestinian run instead of Israeli run. HN probably isn't the place to have that debate.

[sudosysgen]

I wouldn't care if it was Palestinian run or Israeli run, if it was one or two states, as long as its peaceful and democratic.

What I care about are factually wrong and misleading statements.

[belorn]

You would have land owned by Jewish Palestinians, land owned by non-Jewish Palestinians, and land cooperatively owned by both Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians. Jewish Palestinians plus non-Jewish Palestinians do not make up 100% of Palestinians, but rather the result of 100% minus land cooperatively owned by both Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians.

[sudosysgen]

You're confusing land and people here.

[belorn]

DSingularity above is talking about 2% owning 8% of the land, with "92% accept that so much of what is rightfully theirs would be forcefully taken from them".

If you are saying I am confusing land and people, what is the 2% and 8% number referring to in the above comment? People and land? If so, what people, and what land?

[DSingularity]

At the time of the British mandate the Jewish minority — 2% of the population — owned a total of 8% of the land. So, my point was, why do you blame the Arabs for not accepting the partition plan which came to impose a forceful transfer of land from the majority to the minority. When you consider the facts you can clearly see why the Palestinians opposed the initial partition plan of Palestine.

[belorn]

Yes, but then my initial comment above about the Jewish population and the arab population is not confusing land and people. The Jewish population owned 2%, and the arab population owned X amount of land, while Y amount of land was owned cooperatively by individuals of both. It would be interesting to know what X and Y is.

The partitioning of land was obviously unfair after world war 2. I doubt anyone actually disagree with it. Land getting repossessed and captured during wars is never fair, and it was not the only border change that occurred when the world war ended. The allies did not just keep the borders at they were at the beginning of ww2, through much of the land grabs has been mostly forgotten outside of people studying history. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the few remaining land conflicts from the war.