John, I'm writing on my iPad and it's not my most flexible of friends, but the computer is in another, depressing room I'd rather not use right now.
So, let me just address lightly, hoping not to increase the pain in your teeth.
#4. You write about land that Israel "has taken in recent expansion" and say that they have good reason. That may be perfectly good and true, but having motivation and reason is not the same as having a legal right to undertake an action. I have good reason to desire another lens, but as I can't justify the cost, does that imply, going by your statement, that I am morally free just to go steal one because "I have good reason" to desire it? Anyway, would you believe that building settlements is akin to building defensive, preemptive military outposts? Strikes me as far more a little matter of civilian expansion via land grab.
I don't think what you wrote there stands anything other than reading by a most sympathetic eye.
On #5, are you suggesting 1948 was a peaceful transfer of lands and ownership and control?
On #6, are you sure you can include the Russia/Ukraine problems? The others are purely religion-based, which has ultimately split communities as long as religion has flourished, just as with the ME fights between different flavours of Muslim. Without religious intolerance, there would have been no partition of India at Independence. But hey, even the Jews have their factions which probably drive much of the troubles, just as the Brexiteers are doing in a fairly non-religious country. People are very good at inciting civil wars, fratricide, if you like. Seems to be in our genes.
Rob: The current taking of the land isn't "legal," but on the other hand, in most cases, there's nobody on it. I urge you to go to Google Maps, type in "Israel," then expand the map until you're looking down at that point, about halfway up the coast line, where the former 1967 lines project west toward the coast. Then click on the satellite view, and check what you see. There are isolated small towns and villages perched on ridge tops, but the land in between populated spots is quite clearly desert. (And most of the towns are Arab.) Those black dots are pine-type desert trees. Then scan east, and look down at the land just above the Jordan Valley. That's some of the hardest desert on earth. There's nobody there. I've driven across it many times, but that's where you find "settlements," which most often are a few shacks and trailers sitting on a mountain top. No one was driven off -- but what the Palestinians don't want is the so-called right of possession ("possession is nine-tenths of the law.") Most of the land (not all) they are "grabbing" to use your phrase, has no one on it -- they are not driving Arabs off. And yes, most of it is taken to force the Israeli government to either leave them there, or to embarrass itself by taking them off it. There are a few places where land that was once open, but is on the former Jordanian side of the line ("The West Bank") is occupied by Jewish cities. Most of those are suburbs of either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv-Yaffa (Jafo.) What I'm trying to say is, in general, the Israelis did not take over Arab villages -- they built their own. There may have been some take-overs, but they were few. You can still see abandoned Arab villages in some places, one near a dig I visited last year, but you also see many many Arab villages all through the country. As far as your camera analogy is concerned, it wouldn't be right for you to take the camera. But what if the situation was this -- (and this is a somewhat realistic situation, which we could talk about in another thread, and which, IMHO, is an outlandish and outrageous situation) -- what if the camera was sitting there, unused and unguarded by anyone, and your family was literally starving to death, and you could save them by taking and using the camera. Would you take it? Or would you let the kids starve? For the Jews, holding onto the land is not an option -- it's an existential choice.
Of course I don't think 1948 was a peaceful transfer -- it was the end of a guerrilla war started by the Arabs, goaded on by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who during WWII was holed up in Berlin and who urged the extermination of the Jews -- and developed into a full-scale war between the Israelis and ALL of the surrounding Arab states, and some not even close. The Arabs lost. The Israelis didn't give the conquered land back. But the families of the Palestinians who didn't flee are still there, and for the most part, doing quite well, thank you.
The Russian Ukraine situation is different and difficult, and I don't know a lot about it, but I will say that Ukraine was absorbed into the Russian empire before there was a United States -- and the US fought a Civil War less than a hundred years after it became a country, when one of its main regions (the South) tried to leave. In other words, the Ukraine was a fundamental part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years, and its departure was traumatic for Russia. For more than that, I'd have to read a book. I do have a good friend who runs the only English language newspaper in Kiev.
I'll also add that I'm not blind to Palestinian problems -- I once told an Israeli Jewish friend that if he ever wondered what it was like to be black in America in the 1930s, all he'd have to do is see how his Jewish countrymen treat Palestinians. It can get pretty bad. But on the whole, the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians are ruled by vicious, greedy despots who take care of themselves before anyone else, and if they weren't there, I'm pretty sure that Palestine would be a peaceful federation of two states, and Israel would be run by a liberal socialist government rather than the current rightwing crazies. Hamas enables the Netanyahu government, and vice-versa, IMHO.
And for anyone curious, I'd like to point out that Jordan is effectively a Palestinian state -- the majority of its legislature is Palestinian, and the King is married to a Palestinian. His heirs will be half Palestinian. The great nightmare of the Israelis is that the West Bank becomes autonomous, but then voluntarily merges with Jordan, putting a major Arab country right back where it was before 1967, 12 miles from the Israeli coast.