As the story goes, in the years before and during World War II, Jews, seeking a refuge from persecution, began to resettle ancient Israel – a people in exile in a land without people. The Jewish Agency bought land, and hard work made scrub land bloom.

When Palestinian resistance to increasing Jewish immigration and the Zionist push for a Jewish state occasioned conflict and Britain wanted out, Jewish leaders accepted the United Nations partition and planned for peace, only to face attack by Arab countries. Jewish military experience and Arab disunity occasioned Israeli victory and Israel occupied conquered territory Palestinian residents had evacuated on their leaders’ orders. Despite wars and guerrilla attacks, Israel flourished. The Egyptian-Syrian attack in 1967 occasioned Israel’s control of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Sinai, and Golan Heights. Subsequently, to stop Hezbollah attacks, Israel invaded Lebanon, driving Yassir Arafat out of the Middle East.

The story continues: After the 1973 war, Israel made peace with Egypt, returning the Sinai. But Palestinian/Arab hostility prevented a peace agreement, justified continued occupation of Palestinian territory, and necessitated a large military and nuclear weapons. Israel sought peace, but the first Intifadah required harsh military controls. The second renewed hostilities, with suicide bombings killing many Israelis, obliging Israel to engage in military operations in the Occupied Territories, assassinations of terrorists, and construction of a security wall.

As repeated by a compliant American media, this story is embedded in the American consciousness – the lens through which developments are viewed. It dictates U.S. policy and the postures of virtually all U.S. politicians. Its incompleteness largely explains 57 years of American indifference to Palestinians’ plight. So, today, the focus is on the travail of Gaza settlers forced out; that their homes were built on land they knew was stolen from Palestinians is a hardly noticed footnote. That 100 times as many Palestinians have suffered evictions by Israelis, with no notice or compensation, is not noted at all.

Facts: Jewish immigrants did not come into a land without people. When Palestinians petitioned for a state following World War I, Jews were 11 percent of the Palatine Mandate population of 638,000. When Palestinians petitioned again after World War II (blocked by Harry Truman’s commitment to Zionist leaders), Jews were a third of the population, owning 6 percent of the land.

The partition was a consequence of Zionist terror; the King David Hotel was bombed and, in one night, railroad track was blown up in 150 places. The UN did not consult Palestinians in drawing the partition lines, which gave a third of the population 55 percent of the land. Palestinians appealed, but before the UN responded, Jewish leaders declared a state, which provoked Palestinians and other Arabs to take up arms.

The Israeli Defense Forces evicted Palestinians wholesale – by threat, by force, and by terror – 50-odd massacres, one of 254 villagers living at peace with Jewish neighbors. As Israelis advanced into territory the partition designated for a Palestinian state, Palestinians were ethnically cleansed there as well: partition borders had been agreed to only as an expediency. Palestinians were left with only 22 percent of the Mandate, and Israel denied Palestinian refugees’ return, in violation of international law. Israel soon passed a Catch-22 law that forfeited ownership of land unoccupied for a year.

So, in 1948, Palestinians had two major grievances: the Nakbah had taken most of Palestine’s territory and more than 500,000 Palestinians’ homes, businesses, farms, orchards and personal possessions had been stolen. The 1967 preventive Israeli attack, one of three wars of aggression against its neighbors, added control of the remainder of Palestine.

Subsequent confiscations of territory, including the West Bank’s aquifers and best land and land bordering East Jerusalem, Palestinians’ anticipated capital, and subsequent dispossessions, extensive settlements, violent repression, imprisonment, harassment, humiliation, suffering and, more recently, destruction of the Palestinian economy and state infrastructure have doubled those grievances. George W. Bush’s acquiescence in the illegal settlements and a wall that take 40 percent of the West Bank, leaving “Palestine” a segmented, unsustainable ghetto has left Palestinians powerless despairing, and angry. Half now subsist on one meal a day. Suicide bombings – terror -is the consequence of hatred and powerlessness.

As George Mitchell succinctly observed, the Israelis cannot have security and deny Palestinians a state, and Palestinians cannot have a state while denying Israelis’ security. Palestinians, occupied, are, of course, powerless to create a state. Sharon believes Israel can, with U.S. approval, have security, all of Jerusalem, and most of the West Bank.

Vacating the Gaza Strip is an economic and demographic necessity: making the Gaza a self-governing, closed ghetto saves money and assures, for awhile, a Jewish majority in Israel and the still occupied territories. This sustains the illusion that Israel is a democracy, despite nearly half its “citizens” being second-class or prisoners. Its vowed unilateral disengagement leaves Palestinian hopes for a viable state in a tatter of isolated, walled in, unsustainable bantustans on the poorer, less watered half of the 22 percent left for a state after 1948.

This is, all agree, a formula for continued conflict, increasing Islamic hostility toward the West, and increasing terror. Unless some miracle occurs, e.g. W. discovering that his favorite philosopher, Jesus, was into justice. Likelier would be Palestinians engaging in a collective fast to end the occupation that obliges the world to enforce UN Resolution 242 containing Israel within the 1948 Green Line.

William H. Slavick, a retired professor at the University of Southern Maine, is a founder of Maine for Peace and Justice in Israel/Palestine and long-time coordinator of Pax Christi Maine.