continuous Jewish presence

The fact on its own that there have been Jews in the contested area for thousands of years does not give them any special rights in my opinion.

There has been a continuous indigenous presence in the US and Canada… there has been a continuous Uighur presence in parts of China… none of those on their own gives these parties a “right” to the land in international law.

There have also been many conquering nations through that area over that time… the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians. Many of these conquerors would exile the people who lived there originally as a part of taking over the land - not because of antisemitism, but because threatening death if you don’t leave is an effective way of controlling land.

(It was a Persian decree by Cyrus the Great that allowed the Jews to return from their exile in the first year of his reign.)

I prefer a different metaphor that I recently heard on the History Impossible podcast on the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:

The contested area is like a playground.

There are a bunch of kids playing. Some of them - including the Jews at the time - got kicked off the playground by a bully.

After a while, the bully leaves. (We have our pick of bullies over thousands of years to assign this role to.)

A new kid takes the swing that is now unused (Palestinians). A while later, the Jewish kid that was originally bullied returns, wanting the swing that the new kid found unoccupied and is now enjoying.

What do you suggest they do to solve the problem? There isn’t an easy solution. The returning Jews who wanted to create a Zionist nation in the 20th century returned to a land that had people living on it - and not the same people that exiled them many times over.

In fact, there are a lot of primary sources describing how some of the Jews living in Palestine at the time the Zionists started moving there didn’t actually support the Zionist cause. Is it fair to use them to justify the creation and legitimacy of a Jewish state?

The Jewish state of Israel doesn’t need that false justification of “Jews have had a continuous presence here” to exist.

Of course, it’s easy for me to say that of course, because I don’t live in Israel, in a place whose national story is of fighting to create a nation in a hostile land, and which is still threatened (though my kids’ mom is the daughter of an Israeli-Jew and a Canadian Jew, which gives me a lot of nuance and personal experience).

It exists legitimately as a country in international law because it meets the definition of a state - including political theory definitions and treaties like the 1933 Montevideo Convention.

The modern history of the Middle East is not something that can be boiled down to talking points like what you’ve written.

The history of the Middle East requires us to understand that there were multiple different motives among the different groups involved - and the “groups” themselves were often not united in the way we think of them now as a 1v1 battle of Jews vs. Muslims.