Statute of limitations on land...

With the Pope touting the two state solution it brings up the larger issue of who has the right (if any such thing exists) to land?

How far back can we turn the clock to say, "they were here first"?

Whether its the Onideas, the Irish, Kurds, Palestinians, or the Bosnians, what is the statutes with regard to land claim?

The Turks weren't originally from Turkey, they were from Turkmenistain, they took what is now Turkey from the Greeks.

In Cal Thomas's op ed piece this morning, he points out that both the charter for Hesbola and Hamas call for the elimination of Isreal. There is nothing abmiguos about their objective. I can't see giving the Palestinians another acre of land until they come to heel.

because, at least to me, it always leads to the slippery slope.

First, as a realist, I note that every piece of land on earth has been conquered and re-conquered and then conquered again, so that no one has any "original" claim on the land. When Islamic armies captured Jerusalem in the early middle ages, it was a Christian and Jewish city they were "land grabbing." When Christians took it back a few centuries later, in a move West-hating historians refer to as a war of aggression, never noting that it was a war of re-taking the Holy Land, not just taking it, it became the Kingdom of Jerusalem and was a Christian city for some time. Then it was re-re-taken back, twice, by Islamic armies. And so on down to this very day.

So whose land is it? When does the clock start on historical grievances? If you have a claim on it from the 14th century, we have a claim on it from the 11th, but you have one from the 9th, but we have one from the 7th, and THEY have one from the 6th century b.c.e.

We've moved into a post-conquest and post-colonial era in the West, where we no longer believe it's acceptable to acquire land through armed conflict. That's a good thing. But it seems to me spectacularly misguided to think that then means we have to "undo" historical wrongs, as in giving the Onondaga Indians the land of Syracuse or returning Manhattan to the Mohicans.

Then again, I wouldn't mind going to Europe to claim the parts of England that the Normans pushed me out of in 1066, and to Ireland and the parts the Celts pushed me off in 620, and since I'm part Native American, I'll take some of America too, thanks.

..."justice" can be a very subjective thing. It appears that might does indeed make right. The other way to aquire land is by peaceful occupation.