Question

Why have Arabs and Jews been in conflict over Palestine for thousands of yrs?

Answer 1

The question is based on a false premise. When the Islamic forces first took Palestine from the Byzantine Empire, they allowed Jews to settle in Jerusalem for the first time in hundreds of years, and they generally treated Jews in the region better than Christians had. The Crusaders reversed this, and when Saladin retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he again admitted Jews. Under Ottoman rule, Jews continued to be alternately welcomed and tolerated until the 20th century. The Ottomans generally saw Jewish settlement as an economic opportunity to help develop a relatively backward part of their empire. This only changed in the early 20th century with the huge influx of Jewish settlers driven out of Russia and then Western Europe. The rise of Arab resentment of Jewish refugee resettlement parallels the rise of anti-immigrant sentement in the US and Western Europe in the early 21st century in response to the waves of refugees sweeping north out of troubled lands to the south.