People have argued about the legitimacy of Israel in the land, pretty much officially since May 14, 1948, but the saga started way before. The 1917 Balfour Declaration followed by the 1920 San Remo Conference really made it clear that the land then known as “Palestine” belonged to the Jewish people. This led to the November 1947, United Nations vote to partition Palestine between Jews and Arabs. Palestine was only a name for a geographical area that comprised “Palestinian Jews” and “Palestinian Arabs” living in harmony or at the very least tolerating each other. And that was fine–not that I ever cared for the renaming of Eretz Yisrael to Palestine by the Romans in AD 135. But, for all intents and purposes, Palestine was just the name of a piece of land in the Middle East from AD 135 to 1948.

Eventually, it became a politically charged word, synonymous with the country of origin for a people known as the Palestinians. Yasir Arafat mastered that narrative to the day he died, and the baton was passed to Mahmoud Abbas who has shared the burden of promoting the same lies with Hamas. So, today, people around the world are buying into the narrative of “the Palestinian victims of occupation and ethnic cleansing by Israel.” It doesn’t matter if it is not true, it has become the new truth about the Middle East, and most people are OK with that. But, for those who really care about the truth, I would like to offer three reasons why Israel ownership of the whole Land is the only viable and legitimate solution.