[joelbluminator]

> A colony is the establishment of a new state on or in territory occupied by someone else

That's you interpreting Balfour / Zionism the way you see fit, there were movements in Zionism that wanted to split the land, in fact the main movement wanted to split the land since 1937 for sure (agreeing to the Peel committee split plan) and maybe even before that. But the declaration itself just says - a national Jewish home in Palestine. There were unoccupied territories in Palestine 100 years ago. In fact there still are, even when this tiny land inhabits 15 million people and not just 1.5 millions like 100 years ago. If Balfour wanted to say explicitly that all of Palestine is to become Jewish he would have said so. It doesn't even say a state or a country, just a "national home". You're attributing to Balfour more than what was written.

[luffapi]

Those territories weren’t “unoccupied” though. They were occupied and not consulted in the formation of Israel. It really is the root of the issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Balfour_Declarati...

[joelbluminator]

Define unoccupied. It was scarcely populated, definitely then and definitely by today's standards, and the Palestinian national movement was only in it's infancy. Most Palestinian wanted to be part of Syria back then afaik. It wasn't inconceivable that two people can create two states there then, and still isn't now. So no, I don't buy that everything was a colonialist plot. Some Zionists saw it as an expansionist enterprise and some didn't. We know for sure that on 1937 Zionism was seeking a split to the land or at least willing to make it happen. If the Palestinian agreed to the Peel committee in 1937 which offered Israel a very small state we wouldn't have been having this discussion now.

[luffapi]

The estimate is around 700k people, of which a minority was Jewish:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...

Just because it wasn’t a dense urban area, it doesn’t mean it was “unoccupied”.

[joelbluminator]

700k is very thinly populated.

[luffapi]

Stealing sovereignty from one person is too much. Oppressing 700k is a crime against humanity.