Fact #1: Jews have been living in Israel continuously for over 3,000 years

The Jewish people have maintained a well-documented, unbroken presence in Israel for well over 3,000 years, beginning in the 2nd millennium B.C.E., continuing under a long series of Jewish kingdoms and foreign rulers, and through to the modern State of Israel. Conquerors, diplomats, pilgrims and visitors throughout the millennia have left an abundance of references to the Jewish communities living there. Israel is filled with archaeological and historical sites, many of which testify to Jewish life over the centuries. Even the Muslim Qur’an refers to the Jewish people as the “Children of Israel”.

The historical Jewish right to a homeland in Palestine was first recognized by the modern international community (and by Great Britain, which had gained control of the region from the Ottoman Empire during World War I) in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the League of Nations Mandate of 1922. Both of these documents preceded the Nazi Holocaust by decades, thereby disproving more recent (yet widespread) claims according to which Israel's creation was justified not by thousands of years of Jewish history, but rather only by the Holocaust.

Israel has also always been central to the lives of religious Jews living outside of it, in the Jewish diaspora. Although the territories of the former Jewish kingdoms were renamed “Palaestina” by their Roman conquerors with the specific intention of erasing their Jewish significance, for nearly 2000 years Jews living in exile prayed 3 times a day, facing Jerusalem, in the hopes that they would one day return.

Despite all this, Palestinian leaders, university professors, religious figures, archaeologists, historians, school textbooks, music videos, and even the Palestinian National Charter, continually spread the fabrication that Jews have no historical connection to the land, and that any claimed history was invented in order to justify the creation of Israel.

 

“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

Fact #2: One quarter of Israeli citizens are not Jewish

Though Israel was envisioned by the founders of Zionism as a home for the Jewish people after two thousand years of statelessness and persecution, that vision also included coexistence with the local non-Jewish populations. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, specifically called for integration and warned against racism in his vision of the Jewish state. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, leader of the more nationalistic stream of Zionism, also advocated integrating the local Arab population as equals. In the years leading up to the creation of Israel, both Jews and Arabs who lived in the area benefitted greatly from the improving economy, social services and overall quality of life. In fact, many Arabs immigrated from surrounding areas in pursuit of these benefits.

When Israel was founded in 1948, its Declaration of Independence specifically called on its Arab inhabitants to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship”, and on the neighboring Arab countries to “establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help… for the advancement of the entire Middle East”.

Today, non-Jewish citizens of Israel constitute about 25% of the population, with 20% being Arabs. Arab Israelis have equal voting rights and their own political parties, serve on the Israeli Knesset, Cabinet, and Supreme Court; hold diplomaticpositions; actively participate in the Israeli music and arts scene; and represent Israel on the national soccer team, including winning the Israeli national championship. They are granted all fundamental civil liberties, including freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly, and in fact enjoy more civil rights than Arabs living in any other Middle Eastern country. Israel is also the only country in the Middle East where Arab homosexuals can live without fear of prosecution, which is why many Palestinian gays have fled for Israel. Many Arab Israelis have spoken out in favor of Israel, and against allegations of an Israeli apartheid. Such claims have also been refuted by many others, including by Richard Goldstone, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, who presided over the UN report concerning the 2009 Gaza war.

Arab Israelis are generally not required to serve in the military, though some do volunteer. Members of the Druze and Circassian communities are drafted like Jewish citizens, at the request of their own community leaders.

Discrimination against Arab citizens of  Israel does exist, though on a level comparable to that found in many other Western countries, and certainly far less than the discriminations to which Palestinians living in most Arab countries are subjected. In certain respects, Arab Israelis have more rights than some who live in Europe, such as the rights to wear hijabs.

As a general indicator, a recent Harvard study found that 77% of Arab Israelis would rather live in Israel than in any other country. Many Arabs have also stated that they would much rather live in Israel than under Palestinian rule.

 

“Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs... Palestine is not Rhodesia... 600,000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home.”

- Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organization (and later the first President of Israel), 1925

Fact #3: Israel has repeatedly accepted the two state solution

In 1947, the U.N. voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, in light of its recognition that both Jews and Arabs had legitimate claims to the land. The proposed partition included three areas: a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an internationally administered zone in Jerusalem. The Jewish population accepted, and reaffirmed their intention to coexist peacefully with the Arabs living in the area; the Arab population refused, and responded with riots and violence.

When Israel was established half a year later, its founders officially extended their “hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and [appealed] to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help [...] for the advancement of the entire Middle East”. Those countries responded by launching a war of annihilation on the newborn state. Decades later, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas acknowledged the Arab refusal to accept the 1947 partition plan as a "mistake".

In 1967, after defending itself against another war of annihilation, the Israeli government accepted UN Resolution 242 and voted unanimously to return the vast majority of territories it had captured (the Sinai Desert, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and West Bank) in exchange for peace. The Arab response was unequivocal: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it”.

In 2000, Israel made a series of two-state proposals which (contrary to popular myth) eventually included almost all of the West Bank (plus additional territory from Israel proper), the entire Gaza strip, Palestinian control over East Jerusalem, and a $30 billion solution for the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat not only refused – he made no counter-offer, abandoned negotiations, and immediatelybegan planning the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Arafat was heavily criticized for this, both by the American mediators and by fellow Arabs and Palestinians.

Those Arab countries that eventually came to accept Israel’s existence – Egypt (1979, despite widespread Arab opposition) and Jordan (1994) – signed peace treaties which have been mutually honored to this day.

 

“Since 1948, every time we've had something on the table we say no. Then we say yes. When we say yes, it's not on the table anymore. Then we have to deal with something less. Isn't it about time we say yes?”

- Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia

Fact #4: The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about the occupation - it's about the existence of Israel

The central issue in the Middle East conflict has never been Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – rather, it’s the very fact of Israel’s existence.

All major Palestinian organizations are centered around the goal of destroying Israel. The Palestinian National Charter (adopted in 1964 - three years before the Six Day War and the resulting occupation) declares its aim to be “the elimination of Zionism in Palestine”. The PLO's 10 Point Program of 1974 reaffirmed this as the organization's goal. The charters of Hamas and Hezbollah both explicitly state that their goal is to “obliterate” Israel. Even while supposedly negotiating for peace, Palestinian leaders have repeatedly stated that any peace agreement would only be a tactic towards the ultimate goal of eliminating Israel entirely. To this day, Palestinian media routinely broadcast the real Arab wish: to claim all of Israel, notjust the West Bank and Gaza.

Arab resistance to the Jewish presence before the occupation, and indeed before the creation of Israel itself, affected not only those Jews who were already living in the region but also European Jews who tried to flee the Nazis (most of whom had nowhere to go but Palestine) and who were prevented from entering due to Arab pressure on the British. These refusals resulted in large-scale tragedies such as the Struma affair.

Jews living elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa also suffered greatly from Arab opposition to the creation of Israel. In the 1940’s, Arab mobs attacked Jewish communities (some of which had existed for thousands of years, and had been older than Islam itself) in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Morocco and Egypt. In Yemen, the nearly 2000-year old Jewish community of Aden was completely destroyed. These persecutions culminated in the expulsion and/or flight of nearly one million Jewsfrom Arab lands.

When Israel was created in 1948, the armies of five Arab nations invaded with the explicit intention of annihilating it. In the 1967 Six Day War, Arab leaders were again open about their goal of completely eradicating Israel. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat consistently stated over the decades that his goal was the outright elimination of Israel. In recent years, the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, along with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have continued in this vein by repeatedly declaring that their aim is not merely to end the occupation, but to destroy Israelentirely.

 

“The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.”

- Benjamin Netanyahu, 2006

Fact 5#6/7/8/9/10 click on the link bellow 

http://www.arabisraeliconflict.info/arab-israel-facts/fact-4-conflict-occupation