i Jews like arab immigrated.
Europeans immigrated. The local population are/were predominately the same people that have always lived in Palestine. They were once Jews, Samaritans etc. Most converted to Christianity when Constantine became a Christian and Christianity became the state religion of the (Eastern) Roman Empire. After the Arab conquests most converted to Islam.
"Arab", as you know, is a cultural and linguistic denomination, not a racial or ethnic denomination. The only ethnic/racial Arabs are the people from the Arabian peninsula. A Tunisian is culturally an Arab, but racially and ethnically he/she is Berber, Phoenician, etc.
According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.
1. . 7th century. Palestine is under Bizantium rule. The majority of the population are Christians and Jews. Muslims are not found, as islam only appeared a couple of years ago. Arabs from the Arabic Desert invade Palestine in 634. The number of the troops fluctuated between 20,000 and 40,000 soldiers. After the conquest, the peasants, traders, women , craftsmen moved from Arabia Desert to the new conquered territories. However, Christians and Jews remain the absolute majority until the 1012, when Caliph Al Hakim in his edict orders the stubborn Christians and Jews either "embrace Islam"- or leave his dominions. The majoriy of the Christians and Jews refused - and were expelled. New wave of the immigrants from Arabia flew to the vacant land and entered into the vacant homes of the expelled Christians and Jews. Some years later, AlHakim cancelled his edict. A part of the Jews and Christians returned to Palestine - but of course, they did not get their properties back.
2. Arabs did not rule long in Palestine. Just some 300 years later, the Crusaders defeated them. Some 150 years later, the Turks ended what the Crusaders started: the Arab rule in Palestine came to the end. The Turkish era in Palestine began. The Ottoman Empire ruled over Palestine almost 600 years. The Turks did not like the idea of Palestine being Arabic and put quite serious restrictions on the Arab immigration to Palestine. They prefered to bring the Muslims from Turkey and from another parts of the Ottoman Empire. The result was that in 1917, when the British troops of the Gen. Allenby entered Pallestine, there were more than 500,000 MUSLIMS - but only 5,000 Arabs. Palestine at the beginning of the XXth century was Islamic- but not Arabic. The number of the Jews at that moment was 83,000. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks left and the massive Arab immigration to Pallestine started immediately. Now, it was already ARAB peasants, workers, officials, women , craftsmen, traders who flew to Palestine where there was a lot of free land and where, besides, the new job opprtunities appeared due to the acitivities of the Brits who started to build the new railroad, the new sea port in Heifa, and the new factories all over.
3. British Mandate. The total number of the Arabs who immigrated to Palestine during the British Mandate was over 500,000. The total number of the Jewish immigrants at the same period was 390,000.
The British Administration put restrictions on the Jewish immigration to Palestine, while allowing Arabs to enter Palestine freely. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. (John Hope Simpson, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, (London, 1930), p. 126.).
The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.( Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 291).
The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population. (Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 242).
The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes. By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.
In spite of all this, in Jerusalem the Jews were the total and absolute majority and in other big cities they were close to it. Arabs mainly lived in the agricultural areas.
The final population of Palestine in 1948 was 538,000 Jews and 1,200,000 Muslims of whom more than 90% were Arab immigrants from the neighbouring Arab countries.