Comment by JumpCrisscross
2 days ago
> At some point, all land has been taken either by direct force, or by the threat of force
You're broadly correct. But there is land that was settled within the historical record.
The Levant, obviously, is not that. It was settled prior to the historical record. It is the coast closest to our cradle of civilisation. Every human with ancestry outside Africa has some sort of claim to lineage to that land.
You're sort of making the point though.
'within the historical record' -- No one still makes a big deal about it because it happened long enough ago.
There are places that are not widely contested today, generally most of their present borders are assumed to be generally stable. Or places with obvious natural geographic bounds and mostly internal conflict through history.
Yet at some point were those places not battled over? Even the internal conflicts count, even if as a whole the majority of a country's population of today considers themselves of one people.
The regions that remain in conflict are considered such largely because of the people who have, at some point, lived in an area long enough for it to become a notable part of their history, they have not unified as a people OF a place, but as a distinct ethnic group (be that religious or otherwise) who happened to have at some time lived in some area.
They have all been 'wronged', and all* (generally an assumption but likely to be true) have 'wronged' others (at least in 'aggressive self defense' if not in some other way) at some point.
-- put into a metaphor --
There's a public park owned by the people (earth) which has a single tree that many children have made memories with. However two or more groups of childhood friends want to continue making memories with that tree and disagree with each other and how each other interact with the tree.
What is the solution?
The evil answer from a fiction writer is to destroy the tree to remove the problem. However that does not make a right.
Using any method to give the tree to one group would be a wrong to the other groups.
The groups cannot agree on how to share, nor how to all be full adults and make memories with the tree in peaceful coexistence.
Thus, lacking an accepted answer, the problem remains unresolved.