There is a very mistaken belief that the Jewish people were forced to abandon Israel and go into the "diaspora" by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. and did not return for 1,800 years when suddenly they "discovered" a homeland. This is simply not so. The truth is that Jews have maintained ties to Israel for an unbroken 3,700 years.

The Jewish people make their claim to the land of Israel based on four main points:
1) G-d directed them out of slavery in Egypt and into the land of Israel, giving the Jewish people dominion over the land. Even the Christian King James Bible states in Leviticus:

22: Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.

23: And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.

24: But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your G-d, which have separated you from other people.

For the non-religious reader, I offer the following - Joshua kicked ass. Israel exists. Get over it. The End.

2) Jewish people did settle into the land of Israel and did develop the land... the oldest still standing (albeit in ruins) city on earth is Jericho. Jericho was a city conquered by Joshua and his army...the Jewish people, who can claim "peoplehood status" from the moment Abraham listened to the voice of G-d and smashed every idol in his father's idol-making shop then left behind the ways of the idolators to become the father of the Jewish people as well as the father of Moslem people.

Abraham's wife was Sarah who was unable to conceive and it was by divine will that this was so. It was G-d's plan to have Sarah send her handmaid Hagar into Abraham's tent to conceive an "illegitimate" child by him. I put illegitimate in quotes because there is nothing illegitimate about the birth of Ishmael when it was always a part of G-d's plan. G-d promised that a great people would be born from Ishmael.

And then, G-d allowed Sarah and Abraham to have a child of their own and he was called Isaac. The Jewish people can trace their lineage henceforth all the way to Joseph who led the Jewish people to take refuge in Egypt where they ultimately became slaves of the Egyptians and then generations later, it fell to Moses to lead the Jewish people out of bondage... to the land promised to them by G-d and which was won in conquest by Joshua and his Jewish army. Joshua's skill and wisdom as a military leader was so profound that today's modern IDF (Israel Defense Forces) still study his tactics.

David would emerge as the King who united a people as "Israel" which had, since the time of Joshua, fallen into autonomous kingdoms of separate tribes. David united them and built Jerusalem as his capitol city and Jerusalem has been Israel's capitol ever since.

All major religious faiths recognize that several "Crusades" (European holy wars) have taken place against the inhabitants of the holy land. Fordham University publishes a chronological sourcebook or bibliography here. The slaughter of Jews began in the Crusaders' home countries and continued into the land of Israel. An account of one eyewitness to the slaughter can be found here.

The one fact pertinent to this discussion is that all histories of the Crusades and accounts given by all major faiths, including Islam, do recognize this slaughter of the Jews who were living in Israel at the time of the Crusades. Jews...living in Israel...at the time of the Crusades. Jews...living in Israel...at the time of the Crusades.

As bloodthirsty as the Crusaders were against the native inhabitants of the holy land, not every man, woman, and child perished. No Moslem or Arab will ever tell you that from the Crusades onward, no Moslem or Arab lived there ever again.

They were not the only survivors.

Just as the native Arab populations could not be completely wiped out by the Crusades, so did the Jewish people also survive. In the two centuries following the 12th century Crusades, the Jewish population in Israel rebounded and flourished, attracting large numbers of rabbis and pilgrims to Jerusalem and Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem, and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century (1800's) -years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel. The neighborhood of Mea Shearim, an ultra-orthodox Jewish community, has existed in Israel since the 1800's. 

When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab geographical zone, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Quran, rather it is called "the holy land" (al-Arad al-Muqaddash).

Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted: We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time.

In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank. 

3) the territory was captured in defensive wars.

Now, consider this. All the Arab nations mobilized for war against tiny Israel. Their communications, memoranda, troop photographs were confirmed by the Soviet Union to the United States. The U.S. government had heard from a distraught Israeli ambassador that this was so and that the Arab nations were launching a unified military strike within 48 hours with the sole aim of wiping Israel off the map. The United States asked Israel to WAIT before acting in its own national defense so that the USA could confer first with the Soviet Union to confirm the Arabs' plans to strike. It was confirmed.

If you knew that was coming at you, what would you do?

THE ARAB NATIONS GOT THEIR MUCH WISHED-FOR WAR IN 1967 AND THEY LOST. Israel defended its very survival and Israel won. It was not the first war Israel had to fight and it would not be the last (the Arab nations would attempt another war of annhiliation against Israel in 1973, launching it on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, and again the Arab nations would be defeated).

The Arab nations lost their wars against Israel. They made plain their absolute zeal and determination to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. And they lost.

What becomes of nations that lose wars? Oftentimes, they must in their defeat accept the loss of some territories. This is a fact and consequence of war.

Remember, it was not Israel that launched a war of aggression against every single one of her Arab neighbors so as to acquire territory. But as the victor in a war that had as its main purpose the destruction of Israel, Israel took control of some territories as a self-defense measure against the aggressors. 

And in the years since, what did the compassionate Islamic Arab kingdoms do for their "Palestinian" brethren? They forced them to live in refugee camps with poor sanitation and lack of educational and any other opportunities for the children of those camps who would be lied to by their mullahs and imams and ayatollahs and be told, "It is the Jews who force you to live this way. It is the Jews who must be exterminated."

Exactly how much of the gross national product of any of the oil-rich Arab nations was put to practical good use for the betterment of the lives of the Palestinian people? The Arab nations always did have the power to uplift their Palestinian brethren but they didn't do it.

What they DID do was to import Palestinians into Arab countries as a sort of indentured servant class, use them up for their labor, then deport them back to the refugee camps.

The Arab nations spit upon the honor of the Palestinians, treating them horribly, "...as bad as you Americans ever treated your black people," so said one Kuwaiti to me who bragged that his father's business could always get free labor by using Palestinians then dumping them and having them deported before wages were paid.

This was the brand of Islamic compassion shown to the Palestinians by their brother Arabs.

Oh, but when it came time to parade the sad pathetic woeful faces of Palestinian children before the world so as to use their existence as a public relations weapon against Israel, all of a sudden the Arab nations were brimming with compassion and care. And massive donations of billions of dollars to terrorist organizations whose only aim was death, not the uplifting of the Palestinian people.

The Arab nations always had the petro-billions to spend on terror but precious little on hope for the Palestinian people. At the time of his death, Yasser Arafat's personal Swiss bank accounts were measured in the billions of dollars. Not one of those dollars was used to buy a schoolbook for a Palestinian child or a sack of groceries for a Palestinian family. Arafat was a traitor to his own people. He enriched himself at the expense of their suffering.

When Israel agreed to all his demands so that a peace agreement might be reached at last that would allow the existence of a "Palestinian State," Arafat WALKED AWAY FROM THIS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY. A real country for his people would have dried up a substantital portion of the terrorist funding that was lining his personal bank accounts. He betrayed the Palestinian people more than any other individual in modern times. 

And so, there you have a very slimmed down telling of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. This is the truth that the enemies of truth do not wish for you to hear.

More resources: The Internet Jewish History Sourcebook; Jewish Virtual Library