This thread is inspired by something I read in Karl Sabbagh's book about Palestine(in which he looks at the history of the Palestinian people through the story of his own family).
In the last chapter, Sabbagh says that one of the things that would do the most to help end the conflict(aside from the obvious stuff like ending the Occupation, compensating the victims and at least symbolic Right of Return)would be for the Israelis to apologize to the Palestinians for, well, pretty much the whole thing, and to admit that the Palestinians do have a right to stay in the lands where they've lived and that their history there is valid.
This is a great idea, and there's no good reason for any Israeli of anyone who sees her or himself as "Pro-Israeli" to object to this. Like everyone else, Israelis now know that basically everything in the "national myth" of the country's founding was a lie(it wasn't ever "a land without a people", Jews and Arabs were NOT ancient enemies, and the Palestinian resistance to Zionism was never based on the European crime of antisemitism). They should just cop to this.
At the same time, another apology is needed, an apology to the OTHER innocent victims of 1948:
The Mizrahi.
For no good reason whatsoever, hatred against the Mizrahi(who WEREN'T Zionists, and who bore no responsibility for the crimes of Zionism) was whipped up in the Arab world, and all Arab countries deported the Mizrahim as a group, confiscating there homes and belongings and barring their return, leaving those people no alternative but to move to Israel and embrace the Zionist cause they'd previously never supported simply to survive, and to be treated as second-class citizens by Israel's Ashkenazim political and economic elite.
The Palestinians bear no responsibility for the suffering of the Mizrahi.
The Israeli political leadership, who provoked the Mizrahi expulsion and then crapped on the Mizrahim when they ended up in Israel, and the Arab governments who stupidly took the bait and expelled the Mizrahim, both owe those people apologies and compensation. Furthermore, the Arab countries that drove out the innocent Mizarhim should apologize for this completely unjustified act, should grant the Mizrahim the Right of Return and should launch a major campaign to eradicate prejudice against the Mizrahim.
If the Palestinians didn't deserve expulsion, neither did the Mizrahim, and both groups deserve remedy for their suffering. Collective punishment is collective punishment and was equally wrong in both cases.