Debunking the claim that “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of Israel

[montelatici]

You are quoting from a Zionist propaganda document, not Resolution A/364. Quit making things up.

Now it's a Zionist propaganda document? Why would a resolution be more accurate on population counts?

Of course a Zionist propaganda site will not be objective, A/364 is based on a detailed Survey, called the Survey of Palestine that was commissioned by the UN and performed by the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. The Zionist site you link to is designed to justify, through lies, the eviction and expropriation of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine by the European Jews. If you are propagating Zionist lies and propaganda too appear "moderate" to the Zionists that post here, that's up to you, but the Zionists will not consider you in any different way. The facts are the facts, and they won't be found on partisan sites.

Despite it being a "Zionist propaganda site" in your terms - it also debunks the claim that there was massive Arab migration into Palestine and associated claim that the Palestinians are mostly immigrants not native people. I find it amusing that both sides claim it's wrong.

Official LON and UN documents debunk the Zionists claim that non-Jews immigrated to Palestine. They make it clear that the mass immigration/invasion of Palestine was Jewish. What's false is the claim that Jews did not displace the native population. If they hadn't, there would not have been a conflict. Ahad Ha'am (ne' Ginsburg) an early Zionist complained about the Jews driving off Arabs on lands they had used for pasteur and agriculture for centuries.

There was immigration on both sides - Jewish and Arabs, for different reasons. The origins of the conflict were not displacement but in having a Jewish state there in the first place. The Arabs were not willing to allow a Jewish state in Muslim lands. Arab population in Palestine increased at the same time Jewish population did - so how could there have been displacement? It only became displacement later when Israel innacted various laws that allowed them to more easily confiscate property and that made it more difficult for Palestinians to reclaim property and easier for Jews to reclaim property. But the immigration - on both sides, did not displace people.

There was hardly any non-Jew immigration to Palestine. Why do you keep repeating that lie? And, the Muslims and Christians rightfully did not want a foreign population to establish a state in the land they and their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years. The Palestinians were Muslims and Christians, they wanted a secular state.

"(b) IMMIGRATION AND NATURAL INCREASE

15. These changes in the population have been brought about by two forces: natural increase and immigration. The great increase in the Jewish population is due in the main to immigration. From 1920 to 1946, the total number of recorded Jewish immigrants into Palestine was about 376,000, or an average of over 8,000 per year. The flow has not been regular, however, being fairly high in 1924 to 1926, falling in the next few years (there was a net emigration in 1927) and rising to even higher levels between 1933 and 1936 as a result of the Nazi persecution in Europe. Between the census year of 1931 and the year 1936, the proportion of Jews to the total population rose from 18 per cent to nearly 30 per cent.

16. The Arab population has increased almost entirely as a result of an excess of births over deaths.

A/364 of 3 September 1947

 

[Coyote]

Now it's a Zionist propaganda document? Why would a resolution be more accurate on population counts?

Of course a Zionist propaganda site will not be objective, A/364 is based on a detailed Survey, called the Survey of Palestine that was commissioned by the UN and performed by the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. The Zionist site you link to is designed to justify, through lies, the eviction and expropriation of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine by the European Jews. If you are propagating Zionist lies and propaganda too appear "moderate" to the Zionists that post here, that's up to you, but the Zionists will not consider you in any different way. The facts are the facts, and they won't be found on partisan sites.

Despite it being a "Zionist propaganda site" in your terms - it also debunks the claim that there was massive Arab migration into Palestine and associated claim that the Palestinians are mostly immigrants not native people. I find it amusing that both sides claim it's wrong.

Official LON and UN documents debunk the Zionists claim that non-Jews immigrated to Palestine. They make it clear that the mass immigration/invasion of Palestine was Jewish. What's false is the claim that Jews did not displace the native population. If they hadn't, there would not have been a conflict. Ahad Ha'am (ne' Ginsburg) an early Zionist complained about the Jews driving off Arabs on lands they had used for pasteur and agriculture for centuries.

There was immigration on both sides - Jewish and Arabs, for different reasons. The origins of the conflict were not displacement but in having a Jewish state there in the first place. The Arabs were not willing to allow a Jewish state in Muslim lands. Arab population in Palestine increased at the same time Jewish population did - so how could there have been displacement? It only became displacement later when Israel innacted various laws that allowed them to more easily confiscate property and that made it more difficult for Palestinians to reclaim property and easier for Jews to reclaim property. But the immigration - on both sides, did not displace people.

There was hardly any non-Jew immigration to Palestine. Why do you keep repeating that lie? And, the Muslims and Christians rightfully did not want a foreign population to establish a state in the land they and their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years. The Palestinians were Muslims and Christians, they wanted a secular state.

"(b) IMMIGRATION AND NATURAL INCREASE

15. These changes in the population have been brought about by two forces: natural increase and immigration. The great increase in the Jewish population is due in the main to immigration. From 1920 to 1946, the total number of recorded Jewish immigrants into Palestine was about 376,000, or an average of over 8,000 per year. The flow has not been regular, however, being fairly high in 1924 to 1926, falling in the next few years (there was a net emigration in 1927) and rising to even higher levels between 1933 and 1936 as a result of the Nazi persecution in Europe. Between the census year of 1931 and the year 1936, the proportion of Jews to the total population rose from 18 per cent to nearly 30 per cent.

16. The Arab population has increased almost entirely as a result of an excess of births over deaths.

A/364 of 3 September 1947

The Palestinians were Muslims and Christians and JEWS among others. Why do you persistently leave out the Jews?

What evidence do you have that they wanted a secular state?

How is it that all of a sudden, after centuries there is an excess of births over deaths?

 

[theliq]

The Population of Palestine Prior to 1948

Major Conclusions


1. The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times, and the relative contributions of natural increase and immigration, imprecision in the counts and other issues.


2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid.


3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, more Arabs than had ever lived in Palestine before, and more Jews than had lived there since Roman times. Analysis of population by sub-districts shows that Arab population tended to increase the most between 1931 and 1948 in the same areas where there were large proportions of Jews. Therefore, Zionist immigration did not displace Arabs. For a detailed discussion that focuses on this myth, please refer to Zionism and its Impact.


4. Historic population data in Palestine during Ottoman times and during Mandatory times show significant discrepancies. For example, figures reported in Table A-1 for 1930 population of Arabs are about 100,000 too low according to census figures for 1931


5. It is not possible to estimate illegal Arab immigration directly, but apparently there was some immigration. The total Arab immigration to Palestine recorded or estimated by the Mandate government was in the neighborhood of 45,000. Illegal immigration that was not recorded would not register in the final population figures for 1945, because those figures were estimates. We simply do not know how many Arabs and Jews there were in Palestine before the declaration of the state of Israel. It is probable that there were about 100,000 Arab immigrants into Palestine. An unknown number may also have migrated internally, from the Arab areas in the West Bank that were formerly the centers of commercial activity and population to the coastal plain and Galilee. The Arab population increase of areas with large Jewish settlement was about 10% greater than that in areas without Jewish settlement. This effect cannot be totally separated from urbanization. A population of approximately 103,000 Bedouin (1922 estimate reported in the 1927-1929 reports of the Mandatory) may have been excluded or included in different population figures as the authorities and demographers saw fit. There is no way to know how many of these Bedouin made a permanent home in Palestine or how many became part of the city population in the course of industrialization between 1922 and 1948. However, the evidence indicates that they were in fact included in all the official population figures. This is shown by the fact that estimates of Muslim population that explicitly do not include Bedouin were significantly lower than the census figures, and by the fact that population growth is consistent with figures for natural increase if we assume that the Bedouin were included.


5. There are large discrepancies between official population figures and the number of Palestinian refugees - An analysis of population by subdistricts and villages, using the admittedly incomplete data of the Palestine Remembered Web site, shows that there were about 736,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs in the part of Palestine that was to become "Green Line Israel" in 1949. There would not have been more than 620,000 refugees in 1949 if these figures are correct, since the Israeli census showed 156,000 non-Jews living in Palestine in November 1948, of whom about 14,000 were Druze. The number of refugees reported by UNRWA in 1948 was 726,000. It might indicate that an unregistered and illegal population of 100,000 was included in the refugees, or it might be due to serious and systematic undercounting of Arab population by the Mandate authorities. McCarthy suggests that there was such undercounting, yet his figures for the total population of Palestine agree with projections based on official figures for 1945.


6. There are serious discrepancies in reporting of the number of refugees. In 1949, UNRWA reported 726,000 refugees. By 1950 they reported 914,000 according to one source (McCarthy), an increase of 26% that could not come either from births or further displacement of refugees, which were negligible.


7. The city of Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since about 1896 - The city of Jerusalem itself there was a Jewish majority since about 1896, but probably not before. The district of Jerusalem (as opposed to the city) comprised a very wide area in Ottoman and British times, in which there was a Muslim majority. This included Jericho, Bethlehem and other towns. Within the Jerusalem district, there was a subdistrict of Jerusalem that includes many of the immediate suburbs such as Eyn Karem, Beit Zeit etc. In that subdistrict, the Jews remained a minority , with only about 52,000 out of 132,000 persons in 1931 for example.



And on Mrs. Peters's claims:

The main flaw in Mrs. Peters's arguments, which Mr. Sanders seems to accept, is her statement (in Mr. Sanders's words) "that in 1893 about 92,000 non-Jews were living in the main area of Jewish settlement; alongside a Jewish population that she gives as just under 60,000." By 1947, she argues, the number of non-Jews in those areas had quintupled while in other areas of Palestine it only slightly more than doubled. This difference, in her view, can be accounted for only by the factor of Arab migration. But how did Mrs. Peters arrive at the number of the non-Jews in "the Jewish-settled areas" of Palestine for 1893? Her claim that there were about 92,000 non-Jews is made on page 250 of her book and the reader is referred there for the source to Appendix V. However, in the appendix no source is given. Only in the next appendix devoted to methodology does she claim that she used "Turkish census figures" (p. 427). But in the footnotes to chapters 10–12, where the composition of the Palestine population during the nineteenth century is discussed, no reference is made to the Ottoman archives where Mrs. Peters would, if she had consulted them, have found the returns of the Ottoman censuses of 1893 and 1915 that she uses in Appendix V.


The Ottoman census returns, in fact, were never published. Therefore Mrs. Peters could use them only by referring to a secondary source based on research in the Ottoman archives. And indeed that is the case with the article by Kemal Karpat quoted by Mrs. Peters and cited above. Karpat's figures are given, presumably as they appear in the Ottoman census returns, according to subdistricts (Kaza). It is impossible to ascertain from the figures he cites which of the Ottoman subdistricts of Palestine correspond to what Mrs. Peters defined as "the Jewish-settled areas" of Palestine. But one does find such a characterization of Ottoman subdistricts in the work by Vital Cuinet mentioned in Mr. Sanders's letter. And if one consults Cuinet's book to find where in Palestine, in 1893, 59,431 Jews (the number quoted by Mrs. Peters on page 251 of her book) were living, one finds that exactly the same number is given for the aggregate of Jews living in the seven subdistricts (Kaza) of Acre, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Nazareth, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Consequently, we now know precisely what Peters defines as "the Jewish-settled areas"; she is evidently referring to the seven Ottoman subdistricts mentioned by Cuinet.​

Now we must consider the number of non-Jews living in those areas. According to Mrs. Peters (again on page 251), and apparently Mr. Sanders accepts her view, they numbered about 92,300, of which nearly 38,000 were Christians (making the number of Muslims about 54,300). But the Ottoman census figures in Karpat's table (pages 262 and 271 of his article) give the number of Muslims as 158,379 and of the Christians as 39,884, making a total number of 198,263 non-Jews in "the Jewish settled areas." If we use Cuinet's own figures we still do not get an estimate of the non-Jewish population that brings us much closer to the number of non-Jews claimed by Mrs. Peters. According to Cuinet's data on the seven Ottoman subdistricts comprising "the Jewish-settled areas" we have 124,686 Muslims and 61,964 Christians, a total of 186,263 non-Jews.[3]​

Obviously, these figures are more than double the figure of 92,000 non-Jews given in Mrs. Peters's book. One could argue that the actual area defined by Mrs. Peters as "the Jewish-settled areas" is smaller than the total area covered by the seven subdistricts listed above, and the map published on page 246 of her book indicates such a possibility. But if this were the case, nowhere in her main text or in the methodological appendices (V and VI) did Mrs. Peters bother to explain to her readers how she managed to break down the Ottoman or Cuinet's figures into smaller units than subdistricts. As far as I know no figures for the units smaller than subdistricts (Nahia; the parallel of the French commune), covering the area of Ottoman Palestine, were ever published. Therefore I can't avoid the conclusion that Mrs. Peters's figures were, at best, based on guesswork and an extremely tendentious guesswork at that.​

I would add that even a superficial glance at Cuinet's figures should make any serious historian recoil from using them. While the official Ottoman figures for the Muslims are underestimated for the reasons I earlier explained, Cuinet's are much more so. As far as his figures for the Christians are concerned, their main flaws are not only their inflated character but also the distortion in the estimates he gives for the various Christian communities. First, Cuinet found hardly any Greek Orthodox Christians living in Palestine (450 in the Haifa subdistrict and 169 in the Jama'in subdistrict of the Nablus district). But by all other accounts, this community was the largest single Christian community living in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century; indeed, it is still the largest such community in the combined territory of present-day Israel, the occupied West Bank, and the Gaza strip.​

Secondly, Cuinet claimed that substantial numbers of Syrian Orthodox Christians (about seven thousand) were living throughout Palestine, whereas in fact this Christian community was hardly to be found in Palestine at all. Its only presence in the country was a small monastery in Jerusalem. And thirdly and most absurdly, Cuinet claimed that precisely five thousand Maronites, who amounted to 10 percent of the population of the district, were living in the district of Nablus. But as everyone knows Maronites were to be found in the Middle East only in Mount Lebanon. The only exceptions were a cluster of villages in Cyprus and one village and half a village in the upper-most Galilee in northern Palestine (Bir'am and Jish in Israel of today), a direct extension of the Lebanese stronghold. No Maronites were to be found in the Nablus district and no other writer claimed that they were. Cuinet's mistakes were deliberately made in order to prove that Palestine, as much as Lebanon and Syria, should be put under French protection. His attitude is well known and requires that his material be used with great caution.​

Since we are left with no sound basis for Mrs. Peters's figures for the population in the "Jewish-settled areas" in 1893, there is no need to account for the supposed quintupling of the Arab population in those areas by 1947; so dramatic an increase did not take place. It is true nevertheless that during the Mandatory period the Arab population of the coastal area of Palestine grew faster than it did in other areas. But this fact does not necessarily prove an Arab immigration into Palestine took place. More reasonably it confirms the very well-known fact that the coastal area attracted Arab villagers from the mountainous parts of Palestine who preferred the economic opportunities in the fast-growing areas of Jaffa and Haifa to the meager opportunities available in their villages.​

The coastal area had several main attractions for the Arab villagers. They found jobs in constructing, and later working in, the port of Haifa, the Iraq Petroleum Company refineries, the railway workshops, and the nascent Arab industries there. They also took part in the large-scale cultivation of the citrus groves between Haifa and Jaffa and found jobs connected with the shipment of citrus fruits from the Jaffa port. Contrary to what Mr. Pipes claims, all these developments had almost nothing to do with the growth of the Jewish National Home. The main foreign factor that brought them about was the Mandatory government. The Zionist settlers had a clearly stated policy against using Arab labor or investing in Arab industries. At the same time, the natural increase in the Palestinian Arab population I referred to is made clear in the statistical abstracts and quarterly surveys published by the Mandatory government in the years following the census of 1931.​

Why is the rightwing so intent on INSISTING that the Palestinians have no legitimacy?

1) The Ottoman census results were as good as any for that period and so would be close to the mark for actual population levels

2) And were do your "estimates" come from what is the source, let us see if you are using biased web sites for your information or valid unbiased ones ?

3) Correct it was Jewish displacement that took place instead, as in the west bank, Jerusalem and gaza when Jews were forcibly expelled

4) And the only example you give is for mandate period during a civil war/uprising proving that the arab muslims flood areas they want to steal. Just look at darfur and the former Yugoslavia

5) CORRECT because the arab muslims LIED and included the Jordanians in the numbers as they were also palestinians. Also the arab muslims over counted the refugees so they could get more money out of the UN to use to buy illegal weapons.

6) Because the arab muslims want more money for more illegal weapons, and have managed to wangle jobs in the infrastructure of UNWRA giving them the chance to manipulate figures. Just recently the UN has queried the numbers again and found major discrepancies between actual numbers and reported numbers

7) And were does this data come from as the Ottoman records show the Jews to have always had a majority in Jerusalem


The problem with Ottoman sources is you need to be very clear what areas they cover, which would explain the discrepancies between the various source's. One will use the villayat of Jerusalem for their data, another will use the sanjak of Jerusalem which is a different area all together. So the numbers will be different. You need the Ottoman maps and the details before you start delving into the data.

Here is a reliable source of population figures





CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Jerusalem After 1291

"...Present condition of the City: (1907 edition)

Jerusalem (El Quds) is the capital of a sanjak and the seat of a mutasarrif directly dependent on the Sublime Porte. In the administration of the sanjak the mutasarrif is assisted by a council called majlis ida ra; the city has a municipal government (majlis baladiye) presided over by a mayor. The total population is estimated at 66,000. The Turkish census of 1905, which counts only Ottoman subjects, gives these figures:
Jews, 45,000; Moslems, 8,000; Orthodox Christians, 6000; Latins, 2500; Armenians, 950; Protestants, 800; Melkites, 250; Copts, 150; Abyssinians, 100; Jacobites, 100; Catholic Syrians, 50. During the Nineteenth century large suburbs to the north and east have grown up, chiefly for the use of the Jewish colony. These suburbs contain nearly Half the present population...""

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Growth of Jerusalem 1838-Present

....... Jews Muslims Christians Total
1838 6,000 5,000 3,000 14,000
1844 7,120 5,760 3,390 16,270 ..... ..The First Official Ottoman Census
1876 12,000 7,560 5,470 25,030 .... .....Second """"""""""
1905 40,000 8,000 10,900 58,900 ....... Third/last, detailed in CathEncyc above
1948 99,320 36,680 31,300 167,300
1990 353,200 124,200 14,000 491,400
1992 385,000 150,000 15,000 550,000

http://www.testimony-magazine.org/jerusalem/bring.htm




change the .org to .net as the site has moved

Moron.........Just Synthetic Zionist Bullshit Figures

 

[Phoenall]

The Population of Palestine Prior to 1948

Major Conclusions


1. The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times, and the relative contributions of natural increase and immigration, imprecision in the counts and other issues.


2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid.


3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, more Arabs than had ever lived in Palestine before, and more Jews than had lived there since Roman times. Analysis of population by sub-districts shows that Arab population tended to increase the most between 1931 and 1948 in the same areas where there were large proportions of Jews. Therefore, Zionist immigration did not displace Arabs. For a detailed discussion that focuses on this myth, please refer to Zionism and its Impact.


4. Historic population data in Palestine during Ottoman times and during Mandatory times show significant discrepancies. For example, figures reported in Table A-1 for 1930 population of Arabs are about 100,000 too low according to census figures for 1931


5. It is not possible to estimate illegal Arab immigration directly, but apparently there was some immigration. The total Arab immigration to Palestine recorded or estimated by the Mandate government was in the neighborhood of 45,000. Illegal immigration that was not recorded would not register in the final population figures for 1945, because those figures were estimates. We simply do not know how many Arabs and Jews there were in Palestine before the declaration of the state of Israel. It is probable that there were about 100,000 Arab immigrants into Palestine. An unknown number may also have migrated internally, from the Arab areas in the West Bank that were formerly the centers of commercial activity and population to the coastal plain and Galilee. The Arab population increase of areas with large Jewish settlement was about 10% greater than that in areas without Jewish settlement. This effect cannot be totally separated from urbanization. A population of approximately 103,000 Bedouin (1922 estimate reported in the 1927-1929 reports of the Mandatory) may have been excluded or included in different population figures as the authorities and demographers saw fit. There is no way to know how many of these Bedouin made a permanent home in Palestine or how many became part of the city population in the course of industrialization between 1922 and 1948. However, the evidence indicates that they were in fact included in all the official population figures. This is shown by the fact that estimates of Muslim population that explicitly do not include Bedouin were significantly lower than the census figures, and by the fact that population growth is consistent with figures for natural increase if we assume that the Bedouin were included.


5. There are large discrepancies between official population figures and the number of Palestinian refugees - An analysis of population by subdistricts and villages, using the admittedly incomplete data of the Palestine Remembered Web site, shows that there were about 736,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs in the part of Palestine that was to become "Green Line Israel" in 1949. There would not have been more than 620,000 refugees in 1949 if these figures are correct, since the Israeli census showed 156,000 non-Jews living in Palestine in November 1948, of whom about 14,000 were Druze. The number of refugees reported by UNRWA in 1948 was 726,000. It might indicate that an unregistered and illegal population of 100,000 was included in the refugees, or it might be due to serious and systematic undercounting of Arab population by the Mandate authorities. McCarthy suggests that there was such undercounting, yet his figures for the total population of Palestine agree with projections based on official figures for 1945.


6. There are serious discrepancies in reporting of the number of refugees. In 1949, UNRWA reported 726,000 refugees. By 1950 they reported 914,000 according to one source (McCarthy), an increase of 26% that could not come either from births or further displacement of refugees, which were negligible.


7. The city of Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since about 1896 - The city of Jerusalem itself there was a Jewish majority since about 1896, but probably not before. The district of Jerusalem (as opposed to the city) comprised a very wide area in Ottoman and British times, in which there was a Muslim majority. This included Jericho, Bethlehem and other towns. Within the Jerusalem district, there was a subdistrict of Jerusalem that includes many of the immediate suburbs such as Eyn Karem, Beit Zeit etc. In that subdistrict, the Jews remained a minority , with only about 52,000 out of 132,000 persons in 1931 for example.



And on Mrs. Peters's claims:

The main flaw in Mrs. Peters's arguments, which Mr. Sanders seems to accept, is her statement (in Mr. Sanders's words) "that in 1893 about 92,000 non-Jews were living in the main area of Jewish settlement; alongside a Jewish population that she gives as just under 60,000." By 1947, she argues, the number of non-Jews in those areas had quintupled while in other areas of Palestine it only slightly more than doubled. This difference, in her view, can be accounted for only by the factor of Arab migration. But how did Mrs. Peters arrive at the number of the non-Jews in "the Jewish-settled areas" of Palestine for 1893? Her claim that there were about 92,000 non-Jews is made on page 250 of her book and the reader is referred there for the source to Appendix V. However, in the appendix no source is given. Only in the next appendix devoted to methodology does she claim that she used "Turkish census figures" (p. 427). But in the footnotes to chapters 10–12, where the composition of the Palestine population during the nineteenth century is discussed, no reference is made to the Ottoman archives where Mrs. Peters would, if she had consulted them, have found the returns of the Ottoman censuses of 1893 and 1915 that she uses in Appendix V.


The Ottoman census returns, in fact, were never published. Therefore Mrs. Peters could use them only by referring to a secondary source based on research in the Ottoman archives. And indeed that is the case with the article by Kemal Karpat quoted by Mrs. Peters and cited above. Karpat's figures are given, presumably as they appear in the Ottoman census returns, according to subdistricts (Kaza). It is impossible to ascertain from the figures he cites which of the Ottoman subdistricts of Palestine correspond to what Mrs. Peters defined as "the Jewish-settled areas" of Palestine. But one does find such a characterization of Ottoman subdistricts in the work by Vital Cuinet mentioned in Mr. Sanders's letter. And if one consults Cuinet's book to find where in Palestine, in 1893, 59,431 Jews (the number quoted by Mrs. Peters on page 251 of her book) were living, one finds that exactly the same number is given for the aggregate of Jews living in the seven subdistricts (Kaza) of Acre, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Nazareth, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Consequently, we now know precisely what Peters defines as "the Jewish-settled areas"; she is evidently referring to the seven Ottoman subdistricts mentioned by Cuinet.​

Now we must consider the number of non-Jews living in those areas. According to Mrs. Peters (again on page 251), and apparently Mr. Sanders accepts her view, they numbered about 92,300, of which nearly 38,000 were Christians (making the number of Muslims about 54,300). But the Ottoman census figures in Karpat's table (pages 262 and 271 of his article) give the number of Muslims as 158,379 and of the Christians as 39,884, making a total number of 198,263 non-Jews in "the Jewish settled areas." If we use Cuinet's own figures we still do not get an estimate of the non-Jewish population that brings us much closer to the number of non-Jews claimed by Mrs. Peters. According to Cuinet's data on the seven Ottoman subdistricts comprising "the Jewish-settled areas" we have 124,686 Muslims and 61,964 Christians, a total of 186,263 non-Jews.[3]​

Obviously, these figures are more than double the figure of 92,000 non-Jews given in Mrs. Peters's book. One could argue that the actual area defined by Mrs. Peters as "the Jewish-settled areas" is smaller than the total area covered by the seven subdistricts listed above, and the map published on page 246 of her book indicates such a possibility. But if this were the case, nowhere in her main text or in the methodological appendices (V and VI) did Mrs. Peters bother to explain to her readers how she managed to break down the Ottoman or Cuinet's figures into smaller units than subdistricts. As far as I know no figures for the units smaller than subdistricts (Nahia; the parallel of the French commune), covering the area of Ottoman Palestine, were ever published. Therefore I can't avoid the conclusion that Mrs. Peters's figures were, at best, based on guesswork and an extremely tendentious guesswork at that.​

I would add that even a superficial glance at Cuinet's figures should make any serious historian recoil from using them. While the official Ottoman figures for the Muslims are underestimated for the reasons I earlier explained, Cuinet's are much more so. As far as his figures for the Christians are concerned, their main flaws are not only their inflated character but also the distortion in the estimates he gives for the various Christian communities. First, Cuinet found hardly any Greek Orthodox Christians living in Palestine (450 in the Haifa subdistrict and 169 in the Jama'in subdistrict of the Nablus district). But by all other accounts, this community was the largest single Christian community living in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century; indeed, it is still the largest such community in the combined territory of present-day Israel, the occupied West Bank, and the Gaza strip.​

Secondly, Cuinet claimed that substantial numbers of Syrian Orthodox Christians (about seven thousand) were living throughout Palestine, whereas in fact this Christian community was hardly to be found in Palestine at all. Its only presence in the country was a small monastery in Jerusalem. And thirdly and most absurdly, Cuinet claimed that precisely five thousand Maronites, who amounted to 10 percent of the population of the district, were living in the district of Nablus. But as everyone knows Maronites were to be found in the Middle East only in Mount Lebanon. The only exceptions were a cluster of villages in Cyprus and one village and half a village in the upper-most Galilee in northern Palestine (Bir'am and Jish in Israel of today), a direct extension of the Lebanese stronghold. No Maronites were to be found in the Nablus district and no other writer claimed that they were. Cuinet's mistakes were deliberately made in order to prove that Palestine, as much as Lebanon and Syria, should be put under French protection. His attitude is well known and requires that his material be used with great caution.​

Since we are left with no sound basis for Mrs. Peters's figures for the population in the "Jewish-settled areas" in 1893, there is no need to account for the supposed quintupling of the Arab population in those areas by 1947; so dramatic an increase did not take place. It is true nevertheless that during the Mandatory period the Arab population of the coastal area of Palestine grew faster than it did in other areas. But this fact does not necessarily prove an Arab immigration into Palestine took place. More reasonably it confirms the very well-known fact that the coastal area attracted Arab villagers from the mountainous parts of Palestine who preferred the economic opportunities in the fast-growing areas of Jaffa and Haifa to the meager opportunities available in their villages.​

The coastal area had several main attractions for the Arab villagers. They found jobs in constructing, and later working in, the port of Haifa, the Iraq Petroleum Company refineries, the railway workshops, and the nascent Arab industries there. They also took part in the large-scale cultivation of the citrus groves between Haifa and Jaffa and found jobs connected with the shipment of citrus fruits from the Jaffa port. Contrary to what Mr. Pipes claims, all these developments had almost nothing to do with the growth of the Jewish National Home. The main foreign factor that brought them about was the Mandatory government. The Zionist settlers had a clearly stated policy against using Arab labor or investing in Arab industries. At the same time, the natural increase in the Palestinian Arab population I referred to is made clear in the statistical abstracts and quarterly surveys published by the Mandatory government in the years following the census of 1931.​

Why is the rightwing so intent on INSISTING that the Palestinians have no legitimacy?

1) The Ottoman census results were as good as any for that period and so would be close to the mark for actual population levels

2) And were do your "estimates" come from what is the source, let us see if you are using biased web sites for your information or valid unbiased ones ?

3) Correct it was Jewish displacement that took place instead, as in the west bank, Jerusalem and gaza when Jews were forcibly expelled

4) And the only example you give is for mandate period during a civil war/uprising proving that the arab muslims flood areas they want to steal. Just look at darfur and the former Yugoslavia

5) CORRECT because the arab muslims LIED and included the Jordanians in the numbers as they were also palestinians. Also the arab muslims over counted the refugees so they could get more money out of the UN to use to buy illegal weapons.

6) Because the arab muslims want more money for more illegal weapons, and have managed to wangle jobs in the infrastructure of UNWRA giving them the chance to manipulate figures. Just recently the UN has queried the numbers again and found major discrepancies between actual numbers and reported numbers

7) And were does this data come from as the Ottoman records show the Jews to have always had a majority in Jerusalem


The problem with Ottoman sources is you need to be very clear what areas they cover, which would explain the discrepancies between the various source's. One will use the villayat of Jerusalem for their data, another will use the sanjak of Jerusalem which is a different area all together. So the numbers will be different. You need the Ottoman maps and the details before you start delving into the data.

Here is a reliable source of population figures





CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Jerusalem After 1291

"...Present condition of the City: (1907 edition)

Jerusalem (El Quds) is the capital of a sanjak and the seat of a mutasarrif directly dependent on the Sublime Porte. In the administration of the sanjak the mutasarrif is assisted by a council called majlis ida ra; the city has a municipal government (majlis baladiye) presided over by a mayor. The total population is estimated at 66,000. The Turkish census of 1905, which counts only Ottoman subjects, gives these figures:
Jews, 45,000; Moslems, 8,000; Orthodox Christians, 6000; Latins, 2500; Armenians, 950; Protestants, 800; Melkites, 250; Copts, 150; Abyssinians, 100; Jacobites, 100; Catholic Syrians, 50. During the Nineteenth century large suburbs to the north and east have grown up, chiefly for the use of the Jewish colony. These suburbs contain nearly Half the present population...""

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Growth of Jerusalem 1838-Present

....... Jews Muslims Christians Total
1838 6,000 5,000 3,000 14,000
1844 7,120 5,760 3,390 16,270 ..... ..The First Official Ottoman Census
1876 12,000 7,560 5,470 25,030 .... .....Second """"""""""
1905 40,000 8,000 10,900 58,900 ....... Third/last, detailed in CathEncyc above
1948 99,320 36,680 31,300 167,300
1990 353,200 124,200 14,000 491,400
1992 385,000 150,000 15,000 550,000

http://www.testimony-magazine.org/jerusalem/bring.htm




change the .org to .net as the site has moved

Moron.........Just Synthetic Zionist Bullshit Figures

So now the Catholic church is plastic Zionists, you really are in trouble with those white powders clouding your mind. Next you will claim that the fatah leader who stated on camera that the palestinians are illegal immigrants is a plastic Zionist