In virtually every respect the Arabs have a PRIOR claim. They claim descent from Abraham, who is also "the Father of the Jewish people." But Hagar's son, Ishmael, from whom the Arabs descend, was born BEFORE Sarah's son, Isaac, from whom the Hebrew tribes came. Thus, at the first level, the Arabs have the first claim.

The Arabs did not leave the area--they continued to live there throughout Jewish history. The Torah, which is the official record of the Jews, contains many references to the Hagarites or Hagrites who were their neighbors. In fact, the Arabs have CONTINUOUSLY occupied the disputed land for about thirty-eight hundred years now, while the Jews lived there for a mere eighteen hundred years before being dispersed by the Romans, and have only returned to Palestine a little more than a century ago (and most of them much more recently than that). Thus, the Arab claim to the land is substantiated by their clear and continuous occupation, while the Jews must admit that they have lived 90% of the past two millennia elsewhere. This is a second point in favor of the Arab claim over the Jewish claim.

The modern record is too detailed and complicated to be fully reviewed here, but little more than a century ago the Arabs were indisputably in possession of the lands between the Mediterranean and Dead Seas. Since then, outside interference from Western Europe and (later) the US has implanted among them a foreign people, who call themselves Jews, but who are mostly Ashkenazi--of demonstrably European descent. It is these people, whose ancestors NEVER lived in the Middle East, who constitute the ruling class of modern Israel.

Do not be fooled by Jewish claims to "historical precedence"--they are simply untrue. The Israeli claim to the land is entirely a religious one. They assert that "God gave it to them."