1. See [link|http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M0082c.gif|http://www.un.org/D...s/M0082c.gif] and picture all the green and red as "Palestine". (Also see: [link|http://www.mideastweb.org/PalPop.htm|http://www.mideastweb.org/PalPop.htm] for population studies)
2. Did anyone really "rule"?
See: [link|http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/Leafcopy/557-0.htm|http://www.archivee...py/557-0.htm]
It was a very messy place.
3. From: [link|http://www.pij.org/zarticle.htm?aid=4247|http://www.pij.org/...htm?aid=4247]
>>>SNIP
First, as far back as the end of 1948, came the creation in
the Ministry of Finance of a special "Custodian of Abandoned
Property" mechanism. While in 1949 the name was changed to
the "Custodian of Absentee Property," the mechanism did not
deal only with property abandoned by refugees or with
properties which had really been abandoned. Those
Palestinians who had not left their homeland even for a
moment, but were absent by choice or by free will from certain
lands (perhaps in order to be on other lands which they
owned)--- all lost the lands from which they had been
"absent." One of the most famous examples of forced absence
was seen in the large villages of what is called "the
southern triangle" (in the eastern Sharon area of central
Israel, abutting the Jordanian border). The Arab lands there
became battlefields during the war and were divided.
In 1949, in the framework of the armistice with Jordan, these
villages were transferred to Israel and farmers found
consolation in having their fields united again within the
State of Israel. They were soon to find, however, that they
had the status of "present absentees." The fact that they had
not worked their fields in 1949 served as proof of the fact
that they did not meet the requirements of Israel's "Law of
Abandoned Property" of May 14, 1950. They were, accordingly,
declared "absentees" and temporarily forfeited their
ownership rights to the property.
This "blow" was not restricted to farmers in the area of
Tireh, Taibeh and Kufr Qassem, who were never to be able to
return to the property and land from which they had been
expelled during the fighting. The Law was applied generally
to almost every Arab settlement in Israel. Thousands who had
been in neighboring villages or at work in town, or even
visiting relatives in areas which looked safer as they were
further away from the fighting, became "present absentees."
The Law of Abandoned Property made nearly 20 percent of the
Arabs in Israel into absentees, regardless of their
citizenship.
>>>SNIP
That about cover it?