Hamas leader says 'we have the Israelis right where we want them' in leaked messages, WSJ reports

[AloeVera]

20. It's not that complex.

Yes, there are two sides. You presented one side and I the other, in response to your claim that the people in Gaza are descendants of those who just wanted to murder Jews.

The article is fairly balanced, that's why I used it.

The fact is that well over 200,000 Palestinians had already fled or were expelled prior to independence. Another 500,000 or so after. Violence and massacres instilling fear played a large part in that. Then they were not allowed to return and their lands and homes were confiscated by Israel. It's not that complex, really.

Yes, there were massacres by Arabs too. But they were the natives of the land defending against what they considered an invasion of people from Europe. As Ben-Gurion himself said,

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
— David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.”
David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

Ben Gurion also said in 1948: “The old will die and the young will forget.”

He was rather optimistic on that last quote.

As for those who stayed and are now citizens of Israel, there is plenty of evidence they are second-class citizens who can be stripped of citizenship for "breach of loyalty" ( thus ensuring dissent is squashed), and suffer the knowledge that half of their fellow citizens want them to leave or be expelled.