Great thread! So many are so ill informed of history over there. I did a long multi-part thing for another site back in September before what looked like 'the vote' back at that time and learned more in a week of research than I learned in over a decade of public school. There is just something wrong about that statement when that whole area figures so directly into so many things which directly touch us here.I love the maps by the way!I'd looked high and low for maps like that in Sept and had to settle on more modern ones that didn't convey the lay of things as well as those first couple do in your OP.The Jews deserve thier part of that land and the Palestinians deserve theirs. That WAS pretty much agreed all around in the 40's before Israel got spooked and declared statehood unilaterally... Well, it looks like they may finally get one last blow out of a war to settle scores that date back hundreds if not thousands of years.