I was reading the book Paris, 1919 last night about the discussions around the border between France and Germany.
Foch and others in the French government argued for outright annexation of the Saarland, that part of Germany west of the Rhine, and failing that a demilitarized zone protected by a multinational force.
Poincare and Clemenceau produced numerous arguments supporting France’s desire to establish the Rhine river as a physical boundary with Germany, one of which was the (relatively weak) historical claim that it had once been a part of France.
Lloyd George scoffed that by that logic, Italy should be able to lay claim to most of Europe as having once been a part of the Roman Empire.
That got me thinking about the claims one sometimes hears put forward regarding Israel’s “right to exist”, and by extension the outline of its borders. Any argument over a nation’s boundaries based on one historical claim can be countered by an argument favoring any other snapshot in time. There is a common sensical notion of self-determination, and preoponderance of historical fact, but self-determination can be undermined by subsidized migration.
There’s this dilemma, that so much of history has been wrought by force, and forced occupation for a long enough time itself constitutes preponderant historical fact.
Today they call it “changing the facts on the ground.”