No they were not.
That whole region was nothing but wasteland. Samuel Clemens wrote after his trip there in the late 1800's that he saw one person. A nomad passing through. No one gave one shit about the mosque there. And the Muslims didn't own the land. The British did.
Here is the breakdown:
71% owned by Great Britain
8.6% owned by Jews
3.3% owned by Arabs that lived there
16.9% owned by Arabs living elsewhere.
The Arab land was bought by the Jews at inflated prices, of course.
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Where the hell are all the Muslims? Does it look like it's swarming with Palestinians?