I am slowly wrapping my brain around the Middle East situation and its long history. Most people are familiar with the Biblical history of the Jewish people in the region, but what is less familiar (at least to me) is what has been going on over the past two-hundred years or so.

A lot of talk show hosts insist that there was nothing called "Palestine" before the 1940s. Perhaps that is true in some sense. However, from the July 30, 1906 NYT comes this interesting one-paragraph story lifted from The British Weekly:

Some twenty years ago Palestine meant little to the majority of Jews. Now all is changing. Nearly every year fresh colonies have been established till now they number of thirty, and time is adding to their number and extent. One-third of Palestine proper is once again Jewish soil. So anxious are the Jews to again get possession that they endeavor to purchase all that comes into the market.

The last sentence is so very important. If it were true, it would suggest that the beginnings of the Jewish state had its roots in the free market. If Jewish settlers properly and legally purchased the land on which they were forming their settlements/colonies in the early 1900s, it is entirely possible that the two groups (Palestinians and Jews) could have peacefully co-existed even as the Jewish settlements/colonies grew.

On the other hand, much like there is concern in this country about foreigners "buying up" too much land, there could have been confrontations over time. One wonders if the first and second world wars hadn't occurred, along with the ever expanding pogroms and massacres of Jews around Europe (and European Russia) during the first half of the twentieth century, whether there would be a completely different situation in the Middle East today.