Currently the Jews own Israel unless someone can take it away.
The following are all technically incorrect. The name "Palestine" was not used until the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews out of Judea, Galilee, Samaria, and other adjacent territories. They renamed the area "Palestine" (English transliteration) after the Philistines, as a direct insult to the Jews, and to further alienate any Jewish claim to the land.
539BC -- Under Cyrus the Great, the Persians conquered Babylonia. The Jews were allowed to return to Judaea, a district in Palestine.
333BC -- Alexander the Great captures Palestine. His successors -- the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Syrian Seleucids -- tried without success to force Greek culture and religion on the people.
141-63BC -- The Jews revolted and established an independent state. This lasted until Pompey the Great conquered Palestine for Rome and made it a province of the Roman Empire ruled by Jewish kings. Rome ruled Palestine for about 700 years.
Also intersting how this skips from:
May 1999 -- Israelis elect a new Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, to lead them in the peace process with the Palestinians and neighbouring states.
To:
Sept 2000 -- Intense violence escalates. More than 400 people die in Israel in a matter of 14 weeks (380 Palestinians).
There's a lot of filler missing between these two dates, no?
Like:
* Barak offers 85%+ (I forget the exact number) of the West Bank & Gaza as a Palestinian state, as peice of land that comes within 9 miles of the Mediterranean (and of TelAviv). Arafat abruptly cancels teh talks and walks away.
* A controversy erupts when it's discovered that construction workers on the Temple Mount are destroying ancient artifacts from the Jewish Temple.
* The Al-Aqsa Intifada erupts - supposedly because there is one Jew in the world - Ariel Sharon - who is forbidden from visiting Judaism's holiest site - the Temple Mount - on fear of deadly Jihad. Even though he's visiting as a member of the Knesset investigating the destruction of ancient artifacts.
I've always marveled that this strip of desert is so important to these folks. You'd think that if they pooled their resources they could buy up some coastal land in, oh, say, Florida. Oh, yeah, they already did that. Seriously, it's unreal to be so attached to such marginal rocky scrub land...just unreal.