8 Views of WHO Owns the Land

Again, humans are committing slaughter and other injustices, 'bordering' on the ethically obscene...

Yes, bitter pun intended.

Masked Israeli settlers from the illegal Havat Gilad settlement throw stones at native Palestinian villagers
near Farata, east of the West Bank ciy of Nablus

Who really owns lands and territories and plots in which we all get buried on this small 3rd planet?

Currently many human leaders are fighting over land including Vladimir Putin versus Petro Poroshenko, Bashar al-Assad versus Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Mahmoud Abbas versus Benjamin Netanyahu (and Donald Trump).

And in the process, humans get killed, and violations of theft, lying, hate, revenge, injustice, inequality occur.

This week Muslim gunmen repeatedly riddled an Israeli car in which Rabbi Raziel Shevach was riding near his illegal settlement, the outpost of Havat Gilad, near Nablus. Rabbi Raziel Shevach a 35-year-old rabbi, father of 6 young children was killed.

Some of the Israeli youth are already calling for "Revenge."

And leaders of Palestine--HAMAS and Fatah--are already praising the killers of the rabbi.

Illegal alien settlement of Havat Gilad in Palestine

QUESTION: If illegal aliens steal your land, throw stones at you, even deny you your own country, do you have the right then to kill them?


VIEWS OF WHO OWNS THE LAND:

“According to Beinin and Hajjar, the Turkish census for 1878 listed 462,465 Turkish subjects in the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts: 403,795 Muslims (including Druze),
43,659 Christians
and 15,011 Jews.
In addition, there were at least 10,000 Jews with foreign citizenship
(recent immigrants to the country), and several thousand Muslim
Arab nomads (Bedouin) who were not counted as Ottoman subjects.”

“By 1946, Jews had purchased 6 to 8 percent of the total land area...” of Palestine. *

How then has a Jewish state, Israel defined by the current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, come to “own” most of this area and control all of the area?

How have Arabs such as Sari Nusseibeh, whose family has lived in the area since the 7th century, been left with no country?
(Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Nusseibeh)

It’s long and complicated, convoluted, hate-filled, prejudiced, violent, genocidal, discriminatory, unjust, unmerciful, unloving, and ungodly. Most people know of the Jewish side, how many of the Arabs sided with the Nazis!, how some fanatic Arabs repeatedly rioted and killed innocent Jewish civilians…

Not as many know of the Arab side, but one can read a moving account in Eli Chacour’s short autobiography, Blood Brothers, which tells of how his father emphasized that they as Christian Arabs should help and love the Jewish people.

But then the Jewish army kidnapped this loving man and a couple of his sons, blew up their church, and destroyed their town!

This unending conflict goes back thousands of years.

How can this question “Who Owns the Land?” be resolved?

How can contrary different religions, ideologies, and peoples get along?

HOW CAN HUMANS LEARN TO SHARE?

There are no easy answers.

In the last few thousand years this area, this land, has been ‘owned’ by the Phoenicians, Canaanites, Hebrews, Babylonians, Arabs, Turks, British, French, Jews, etc.

So who gets it now and upon what basis?

HERE ARE 8 POSSIBLE VIEWS OF LAND OWNERSHIP:

#1 Historic Right

#2 Worldview/Religious Claim

#3 Present Possession

#4 Military Might (The most popular view with most humans in most of history.)

#5 Best Use

#6 Diplomacy/Compromise

#7 Legal Claim

#8 Visitor Status (No one group, nationality, religion “owns” the land. Humans are merely visiting. We OUGHT to/must share.)


WHAT DO YOU THINK?



In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox