> lived in that region first

The whole premise/approach of "here first" is deeply flawed, and I think this blackly humorous cartoon [0] is a relevant critique of it.

Tying things back to earlier discussion, here's the thing: One can either say a place is a "liberal democracy" or it can disenfranchise people due to events thousands of years ago, but you cannot do both.

Democratically speaking, people whose lives are principally controlled by a government today deserve (for their hardship) a say in its operation today. What happened even a single generation ago is irrelevant to that relationship of duty and obligation.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

Hmm, you may or may not chuckle a little at the tale of a Jew and a Palestinian visiting sperm banks on either side of the wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvvfnjgZlM

Probably every single person in the region is a descendant of the Jewish people who "lived in that region first".

And if we go back further: If Abraham existed, then like 99.9% of all living humans are descendants of Abraham. Do they all have claim to Israel's land?

It doesn't make sense to look back that far.

Also a very large percentage of the current Jewish people in the region are descendants of European colonizers. The original Jews converted to Islam over thousands of years, then Jews from Europe came over just after WW2 (this was the Allied counter-proposal to the Holocaust) and said it's ours now.

>> Jewish people lived in that region first.

I'm going to skip over the obvious assertion that they weren't- Cainanites were in the promised land when they arrived - but instead focus on the "here first" doctrine.

Because if "here first" is the primary source of political legitimacy then that argument extends to lots of places. It would require that Texas should be part of Mexico, that current govts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are illegitimate, that all whites in South Africa should be disenfranchised, that most of Europe needs to redraw borders.

In other words, appealing to the political boundaries of a period thousands of years ago is not quite the killer argument it might appear to be.

(It does however support Greenlanders in their fight against US rhetoric. )

It's also fun that the people who advocate the right for Jews to "return" to Palestine because they were there 2000 years ago, are the same that deny the right of return of Palestinians to the land because "dude you lost it 80 years ago, you need to accept and give up".