So what is that statute of limitations? And isn’t it somewhat illogical for there to be two indigenous groups on a piece of land where one has been there far long and continuously so that, unlike the second group, its culture and religious festivals are tied specifically to that land (unlike the Arabs whose equivalents are tied to Arabia)? Indigenous is not synonymous with length of time, otherwise you need to tell us when Americans become the indigenous people in the US and whether it happens all at once or starts with the descendants of the original colonists and those of the immigrants from the late 19th must wait a few more centuries.

As to some of your comments, Arabic was spoken in the Arabian peninsula and did not evolve out of Aramaic. What is your source?

The “Semite” in antisemitism referred exclusively to Jews. It was a 19th century attempt to reposition old fashioned Jew hatred onto a (pseudo)scientific basis. The term never had anything to do with Arabs, a group which the Germans tended to romanticize as a warrior and exotic culture (compared especially to what they saw as indolent Turks).

As to the Palestinians, to borrow your phrase about pedantry, the area that became the Mandate for Palestine was for the first time in history delimited by the League of Mations in 1922 (because it was a Mandate, not a colony, it was not part of the British Empire, Britain administered the land and had to report back to the League annually).

It was the Jews back then who were called “Palestinians” (the Arabs mostly saw themselves as South Syrians and they called that separation their “Nakba” a phrase later reused to describe their Arab neighbors duplicity in setting them up and losing Israel’s war of independence and on to today’s meaning that it was all the Jews’ fault).

The Arabs later took on the name after the Jews adopted the term Israeli but the hidebound UNRWA still calls them Arabs of Palestine.

I think a lot of our discussion is beside the point as any peace will be determined not by history or legal right but when the Palestinians decide to forgo their phased solution ending in Israel’s destruction and instead acknowledges the rights of the Jewish people and agree to co-existence. At the rate their going, it’s hard to see it happening anytime soon.