I increasingly get the feeling the Zionist Israelis are perpetrating a giant con in their claim to Israel and their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Here is an article with some history of the region. It brings together threads I have seen running through other sources.

The War in Iraq and Its Correlationship with the Conflict in Palestine, Part I

Throughout history, the Canaanites were the first to settle the land, which was named after them: the Land of Cana'an. As such, the Cana'anites may be defined as the native and original owners of Palestine. Through thousands of years, they received an admixture of blood from each of the different invaders: Egyptians, Hyksos, Israelites, Persians, Philistines, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Crusaders and others. Each of these invaders came and left and none of them has any right to claim the land as its own. Those individuals, of the different invaders, who stayed, settled down and intermarried with the original native population, the Cana'anites, became an integral part of the natives.

In addition to the Cana'anites, two of the invaders, left a lasting mark in Palestine: The Philistines who gave their name to the land, and The Moslem Arabs who gave their religion and language to the majority of the indigenous population.

This is because both the Philistines and the Moslem Arabs have settled down as residents in the land in large numbers and intermarried with the native inhabitants, the Canaanites and whoever intermixed with them. "The position of the Arabs in Palestine is unique. Unlike all other foreign conquerors, they did not hold themselves aloof but, instead, made converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Cana'anites leave off and the Arabs begin." (...)

Alfred Gillaume, a British orientalist, argued that the Biblical promises were misunderstood and misinterpreted. According to Gillaume, "it is generally supposed that these [Biblical] promises were made to the Jews, and to the Jews alone. But that is not what the Bible says. The words 'to thy seed' inevitably include Arabs, both Moslems and Christians, who can claim descent from Abraham through his son Ishmael. Ishmael was the reputed father of a large number of Arab tribes, and Genesis records that Abraham becomes the father of many north Arabian tribes through his concubine Keturah. The descendants of Ishmael have every right to call and consider themselves of the seed of Abraham. Moreover, when the covenant of circumcision was made with Abraham (Genesis xvii) and the land of Canaan was promised as an everlasting possession, it was Ishmael who was circumcised. Isaac had not then been born."
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The source of this article is the Palestine Chronicle, which some may feel has an axe to grind. I'm not a Bible scholar. Actually I'm an atheist but, since the Zionists are making biblical claims, I will play the game and did some Googling on the Bible and the article's claim is correct. Check out Genesis 17. The Arabs claim Ishmael as their ancestor and the Bible seems to state pretty clearly that he was included in the covenant deal. Actually. it would appear that the Arabs entered the covenant deal first since Ishmael had his dick circumcised before Isaac.

The article also claims that the Palestinians are descendants of the original Canaanites. Their ancestors were there before the Israelites. And, to add to the irony, their ancestors were also the ancient Israelites.

Some of the articles I found also made the claim that the Ashkenazi Jews (the bulk of the Israelis) were, in fact, descended from the Khazars and had no link back to the Israelites. Recent genetic studies seem to say otherwise.

Studies Casting New Light On Origin of Europe's Jews
Stanford's Risch Puts Mythic Theory To Rest

Recent genetic testing methods are producing scientific evidence that is clarifying the origins of Ashkenazi Jewry.

Dr. Neil Risch, a researcher at the Department of Genetics at Stanford University, is at the forefront of a field that has brought evidence that may help to break the deadlock between historians who argue over the history and makeup of Ashkenazi Jewry.

"There has been a lot of debate about Ashkenazi history," Dr. Risch said. "There is a period of about 1,000 years, before the people settled in Eastern Europe, that's missing from the record." (...)

Dr. Harry Ostrer, a researcher in the Department of Genetics at New York University Medical School, contends that the Ashkenazi Jewish population is undoubtedly closer to other Jewish populations, at least genetically, than it is to non-Jewish groups outside the Middle East. In a June study of Y- chromosome haplotypes, or genetic markers transmitted on the male line, Dr. Ostrer and a team of researchers concluded, "Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations [are] not significantly different from one another at the genetic level."

Another finding of Dr. Ostrer's study is that while the Ashkenazi Jews are not very close genetically to European gentiles, they are genetically close to some Arab groups. Reinforcing this evidence is a study by Aravinda Chakravarti, director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, who found that a certain genetic mutation causing deafness, DFNB1, affects Jews, Palestinians and other groups of the Mediterranean. Recognizing the historical ramifications of this study, Dr. Ostrer pointed out that Jews and Palestinians probably had common ancestors not so long ago. "It's commonly believed among historians that many of the people that became Palestinian Arabs were once Jewish," he said.

The researcher went on to underscore the social irony of such a situation. "The Arabs don't happen to 'remember' that anymore," he said, pointing to the hostilities of Arab groups toward Israel. He was also able, however, to see the situation from the opposite perspective. "Conversely, maybe if the Israelis 'remembered' [that the Arabs used to be Jews], they'd be nicer to them."
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One would think.