The indigenous people of Palestine did not start this conflict. They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...
It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
Keep in mind that there is a state with a Palestinian majority population that came out of the division of the territory under the British Mandate system, that country of course is Jordan.
> It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
I think it's pretty clear that the Arab leaders at the time would never have accepted an independent Jewish state regardless of how fair the land division was.
There were plenty of Jews living on the land by the time of Israeli independence, land which had largely been acquired by purchases from Arab landowners.
> Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
Palestine was never a country prior to Israeli independence so that's probably not a realistic comparison either.
These arguments are not particularly helpful because you can easily make the case for either side being the indigenous people depending on how far you want to go back in history.
> They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
At this point the majority of Israelis were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship, so if you're suggesting the Jews all go back to Europe that isn't a realistic expectation, also many Jews were forced out of other middle east countries shortly after the founding of Israel. You can make these same arguments about many countries like the United States or Canada as well as being colonies that pushed out their indigenous people, but these arguments are not going to be particularly productive as nobody is expecting these countries to return all land to their indigenous populations either. By the way these Jews fleeing Eastern Europe prior to Israeli independence were largely purchasing the land from Arab landowners which is arguably better than them haven taken the land by force.