Resolution 181 was the UN looking at a complicated situation that had arisen, an area that contained two different people who wanted to build a homeland there, and trying to figure out how to deal with it. It was accepted by the Jews, just as they had accepted even earlier plans that gave them even
less land. It was rejected by the Palestinians.
The Arab states instead attacked Israel, which is why additional land was gained in 1949. It's true that it was by force, but it's just as true that it was unequivocally a defensive war the Israel fought. If you launch a multi-state attack on another state and you lose, it makes sense you'd lose territory.
1967 is a more complicated story. Israel considers the things Egypt were doing to be tantamount to declaring war, so it launched a pre-emptive strike on Egypt. Israelis usually consider this a defensive war, though I think majority opinion outside of Israel is that it was an Israeli attack.
> Which after all was said and done, from the perspective of the vast bulk of the pre-1947 inhabitants -- amount to pretty much the same thing.
This is simply flattening the actual history. Look, there were legitimately two peoples on that land at the time. They both wanted a home state. One group, the Jews, agreed to every single compromise put forward. The other refused every single one, and with their neighboring friends, launched a war of annhilation against the Jews.
You can't refuse every single compromise without offering an alternative, launch a war to force your way, and then complain when you lose!
It's also worth noting that Arab countries controlled the WB and Gaza for twenty-something years after the founding of Israel. And yet none ever did anything to give Palestinians independence or create a Palestinian state on that land, the same land that everyone is shouting "free Palestine" about, including all those Arab countries.