Your honourable Judge, Jury and Executioner, permit me to disagree with your credentials. You are not any of these. So let's clear this very mudied slate. I have time now and I will repond to your postulations.

Your main thesis is that Israel has a valid right to exist because Jews lived in the Ottoman empire at the time of it's demise (with the Armistice of Mudros in 1918 ). Correct?

1) On what precedents of International Law do you base this asssertion, namely that residence gives the right to new statehood?
2) Even if we were to accept your thesis (which I dont due to the total lack of supporting facts, contrary to your mantra that you have supplied them in more than sufficiency to prove your case) in which of the Ottoman administrative units were the Jews in the majority?
3) Why were they given a vast amount of territory greater that their "majority" territory?
4) Where do you get the statistic that the Arabs were given 99% of the Ottoman empire
5) What was the REAL legal basis for Israel's creation - the real source, not some acquired authority?
6) Did this source respect the promises made to the two parties in the current conflict?

Once these questions have been answered, it is quite clear that your thesis of justification for Israel's existence on the basis of residency of a small number of Jews owning some real estate, is completely irrelevant. Do you really want me to provide these answers to show that you "proof" of "validity" of Israel is in fact anything but proof or valid, or can we dispense with such a waste of time?

Instead, let me suggest that we get on with what might yet prove to be the fundmental issue in this conflict, namely justice as opposed dubious legality (of a State's existence based on an apallingly irresponsible execution of its mandatory responsibilities by the British).

For the record, based on the logic of the cause-and-effect principal, I trace this conflict back, not to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as you do, but to the British cock-up from 1916 (when they didnt even hold a mandate) until 1947. But that is something that no-one is likely to be able to unwind, at least not given the current power balance.

And that is why I maintain that the existence of the State of Israel should be acknowledged. Yes, you read correctly, and I have stated this before. We should not try to unravel (pre-)1948. But that does not mean that we should ignore history and start from the Arab-Israeli was onwards, as you do Baletesri. On the contrary!!! That would be a real travesty of justice.

Instead, the creation of the State of Israel was done with extreme prejudice to the rights of the ancestral land users, whether by totally legal processes or not. Now that REALLY IS one of the few indisputable facts.

Which means that, when we say that we cannot turn back the clock and make Israel disappear, the "Palestinians" have been subject to an injustice that has not yet been addresed. And if anyone cannot see the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as a direct Arab response to this injustice, then their sense of reality needs a serious makeover. So I disagree TOTALLY with you B on the reasons for the Palestinian pogrom.

So, here is my summary from what I have read:
1) The creation of the State of Israel followed "due process"
2) This "due process" stands on shaky legal ground since neither the League of Nations nor its successor, the UN, had any right to create international boundaries nor to take land from one people and give it to another group. However, this "shakiness" was not upheld in the International Court during 1948 treatment of the petition of the Arab countires.

[If anyone can find a good reference to this case in the International Court, I would be most grateful]

3) The fact that the creation of the State of Israel has a measure of legal underpinning does not mean that it was JUST. Were an Arab to say to me that the entire drama in the southern Levant from 1908 until the present day could be traced directly to injustices foisted on the Arab ancestral land occupiers, I would have great difficulty in proving them to be incorrect. This is NOT TO SAY that there were not items of justification in granting the Jews a homeland, e.g. the Holocaust, the pogroms througout the ages, and the bigotry that often surfaced when the Jews tried to make a life in someone else's country. But as I have stated before, two wrongs don't make a right, and compensation to the Jews does not detract from the fact that it was done at the expense, not of Jews in Mahanttan or Sydney or Johannesburg or Warsaw, but at the expense of Arabs in the southern Levant.

Given all of the above, where do I stand. Firstly, stop the Myths that try to show that the Zionists are pure law-respecting peace-loving people who only accepted what is rightfully theirs, both in 1948 and in 1967, and that the ancestral occupiers of the disputed territories are without legal backing and are only motivated by unjustified terrorist tendencies, with the Arabs never having made any serious effort to seek peaceful solutions to the conflict. That is simply not true.

So much for 1948. What happened then?

The ancestral owners got screwed yet further. Shall we start there? Or do you really want to go back to the shoddy research of Ms Peters? I am happy with either route.