This would be fair if not for the special circumstances surrounding Jewish nationalism and the establishment of Israel.
Actually that would be unfair and is in fact a crime under international law, regardless of the context, being persecuted does not give one licence to prosecute other people.
it's entirely fair that, in an area where Jews had been settling for generations already
Through conquer and through arms, This is an important distinction. They were not settling there peacefully or with consent of the majority of the indigenous population, they were settling there in cooperation with the natives enemies. Moreover they have not been settling there for "generations" Most Jews in Israel in the 1940s weren't actually born there. in the 1920s the number of Jews to Arabs was approximately one to nine.
Jewish-majority areas be given to a Jewish state and Arab-majority areas be given an Arab state.
I agree, with the obvious distinction that this only applies to people who are natives of the area and not settlers who are only there through murder and guns. The number of indigenous Palestinian Jews who lived in Palestine is in fact very small and we know that they like the overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide initially opposed the Zionist movement. But of course if they wanted autonomy then they like British/French/German/Polish/Iraqi/Morocan/American Jews, are entitled to the same rights under the same principle so long as it is expressed in such a way where it does not significantly affect the rights of others.
But this again highlights the inherent injustice of Zionism in Palestine, the whole plan of Jewish settlers was to "colonize" Palestine, prevent Palestinian self determination until they had enough Jews in Palestine to constitute a majority then ask for self determination and democracy, of course this was shortsighted, not enough Jews ended up settling Palestine and the number of Arabs proved highly inconvenient, so they openly started talking about population transfer. This was not a hidden plan. Palestinians opposed Zionism as soon as it started, the first ever poll by Americans of Arab public opinion before Congress adopted the racist Balfour declaration had this to say:
In his address of July 4, 1918, President Wilson laid down the following principle as one of the four great "ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting": "The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement or of political relationship upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery." If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine-nearly nine-tenths of the whole-are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine was more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the peoples' rights, though it kept within the forms of law.
Moreover leading up to 1948, the Arabs still made up the overwhelming majority of the population (70%) and they owned the overwhelming majority of territory, Jews were concentrated in Major settlements from which they left to conquer all surrounding districts in which Jews made up a minority.
There was not a single district where Jews owned more land than arabs:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ine_Land_ownership_by_sub-district_(1945).jpg
See this map that shows demographic distribution:
Palestine's Population Distribution Per District as of 1946 - Palestine Remembered
As I said in most areas Arabs owned the majority of the territory and were the majority population except in major settlements that had a highly concentrated number of Jewish settlers. Like Tel Aviv for example. And in the 1940s even after the war started the Jewish population were in fact offered "complete autonomy" by Arabs in the areas "they predominate". Zionists back then just as Israelis today believed that the entire territory of Historic Palestine is Jewish and belongs to the Jews regardless of whether or not there are any Jews living there.
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