Arabs claims on Israel

I find it hard to be terribly impressed by Arab claims on Israel. There have been Jews and Arabs in the Middle East since Babylon. Yet, the Arab world (a titanic swath of humanity from the Casbah to Indonesia) cannot find peace because a useless spit of land called Israel has fallen into the hands of the Jews. Does anybody find this argument persuasive?

In addition, there have been wars over territory since before Babylon. The Palestinians and the Israelis have fought repeatedly since 1948, and the Palestinians have yet to prevail. They have a choice. They can accept reality, or they can continue to beat their heads, and the heads of their children, against the same wall, generation after generation. How many people here who claim sympathy for the Arabs would be sympathetic to a similar Mexican movement to take back Texas? Or the notion that the entire Spanish speaking world cannot rest until the perfidy of the Alamo is righted? So why is the analogous argument from the Arab world so... respectable?

There are countless historical examples of territorial battles. From that perspective, Israel and Palestine's conflict is not in the least bit unique. What is different is that in all those analogous situations, responsible leaders and sensible people recognized that endless war can only make a bad situation worse. The plight of the Palestinians is largely the result of things they have done to themselves. They have chosen the absolutely worst way to respond to a military defeat that occurred sixty years ago. Sorry, but I don't find in that anything to support.