This is a theoretical moral quandary I’ve tried to determine for myself and have yet to figure out:

How long is “long enough” between when one group forces another group out of its land and when the invading group should/can be accepted as the “rightful” group for that area?

I often point out that some Palestinian people who were forced out of their homes in the creation of Israel are still alive as reasoning for why it’s not right to have Israel exist where it is, so I know that “within a lifetime” is too short. At the same time, I also know that thousands of years (i.e. Israelite homeland) is too long to reclaim land, so I’ve narrowed it down (if you can call it that) to “more than a lifetime, less than a few millennia.”

What about a couple hundred years? Is it when everyone who originally lived on the land has grown old and died? When their children have? Grandchildren?

So much of human history is violence resulting in displacement. I feel like the line has historically been drawn at “when the original group is either wiped out or too weak to say anything anymore,” which is not the moral line for which I’m looking.

I’d be really interested to see what anyone else thinks on this.