Why the ‘Stolen Land’ Narrative Is Based on Historical Misunderstanding

Understanding how misrepresented history fuels a misleading view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

One of the most repeated and emotionally charged claims in the Israel-Palestine debate is the idea that Jews stole the land from an indigenous Arab population. This narrative has become deeply embedded in popular discourse, yet it is based on a limited and often incorrect understanding of historical events. When the facts are examined carefully, it becomes clear that the situation is far more complex. What many people believe about this region’s past simply does not align with the actual historical record.

Before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the land was under foreign control for centuries. It had not belonged to its people in the modern sense. Under the Ottomans and later the British, there was no sovereign nation of Palestine. There was no Palestinian prime minister, no elected government, no national flag, and no citizenship. Everyone who lived there was a subject of empire. First they were Ottoman subjects, then British subjects under the Mandate. The land was ruled, not owned by the people. Its governance and legal framework belonged to whichever imperial power controlled it at the time.

This is a crucial point that is often missed. Without a nation-state, the people of the region were residents or subjects, not citizens of a sovereign Palestinian country. The concept of national ownership in the way we understand it today simply did not apply. That is why the United Nations stepped in after World War II to propose a solution that would finally give the land back to the people who lived there. The 1947 UN Partition Plan aimed to create two independent nation-states, one Jewish and one Arab. It was a legal and diplomatic effort to grant self-determination to both populations who had no national sovereignty under empire.

The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan, despite the fact that the proposed Jewish state included difficult borders and excluded important religious sites. The Arab leadership rejected it entirely. They wanted all or nothing. Instead of building a future alongside a Jewish state, they chose war. This pattern repeated itself through the decades, as offers for peace and statehood were consistently declined when they included recognition of Jewish sovereignty. The refusal was not about borders or specific grievances. It was rooted in a rejection of the right of Jews to have any national presence at all.

Meanwhile, it is important to understand that Jews were not new arrivals. A continuous Jewish presence had existed in cities like Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias for centuries. These communities had deep roots in the land, maintaining religious and cultural life through every era of conquest and empire. Jewish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was not an invasion but a return to an ancestral homeland, supported by international agreements like the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate, both of which recognised the Jewish historical connection to the land.

At the same time, many Muslim Arabs also migrated into Palestine during the Ottoman and British periods. Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and other regions moved in, often seeking economic opportunities as Jewish investment and development brought jobs, modernisation, and agricultural growth. These movements are well documented and show that the population was far more fluid and dynamic than commonly portrayed. Far from being an uninterrupted native population displaced by outsiders, many Arabs who later identified as Palestinians were relatively recent arrivals themselves.

On the other side of the Arab world, roughly 750,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab and Muslim-majority countries between 1948 and the 1970s. These Jewish communities had lived in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya for centuries. They were stripped of their property, persecuted, and forced to flee. Most had nowhere else to go but Israel, which absorbed them as refugees. These Jews did not steal land from anyone. They had their own lands stolen and arrived in Israel to rebuild their lives.

The story that Israel is stolen land collapses when history is viewed in full. There was no Palestinian nation from which land could be stolen. There was empire. Jews were not foreigners. They had lived on the land for centuries and returned in increasing numbers with legal backing and international recognition. Arabs migrated into the land during the same period. Jews fleeing from Arab persecution came to Israel as their only refuge. The UN proposed a two-state solution to end imperial rule and give the land back to its people. The Jews said yes. The Arab leadership said no, and chose war.

This is not about denying Palestinian suffering. It is about understanding that history is not as simple as slogans. Truth matters. Jews were Palestinians, too. If we want justice or peace, we must first deal in facts. Only by recognising what really happened can we begin to have honest conversations about where we go from here.