To which my answer would be that recognition by the Israeli authorities of the wrongs that were done to the Arabs in and around 1948 by the Jews, might help the healing process, without seeking to turn the clock back. We have to move forward, with at least most of what we have now.
I was reminded of all this yesterday when clearing some stuff out of the bookcase, stuff which suggests that while population figures for inter-war Palestine are pretty rough, a reasonable overview is that at the end of this period, a period which saw considerable Jewish immigration, there were around a million Arabs in Palestine and around half a million Jews. Not exactly a vacant lot, waiting to be occupied.
The attached chart was taken from somewhere on http://www.mideastweb.org/, a site which could do with some technical attention, with the result that I am not now able to find out where it comes from or what it is for. But oddly, it is up and running enough to include advertisements which are clearly keyed to my own recent browsing activity. Someone out there is keeping an eye on me.
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