There were some 300,000 Arabs there at the time, but most were not paying taxes and were dodging the Ottomans drafts. That's why the Otttomans solicited British investment and encouraged Russian Jews to immigrate, to build up the local economy and establish a tax base. Most of the Arabs hid out in the hills. Jews bought up swampland and other lands and relied on outside investment momey to develop the region. Nobody in their right minds would loan transient Arabs that kind of money. It must also be pointed out that the wealthy German Jewish bankers were not Zionists, and neither were many Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews.
FELIX WARBURG AND THE IMPACT OF NON-ZIONISTS ON
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY: 1923-1933
BY
Jeffrey Lawrence Levin
This thesis gives a decent overview of the history of Zionist versus Non-Zionist Jews and views of Palestine; don't have a link to any free pdfs of it, but maybe there is a free one somewhere, but I can't find it.
The settled population were farmers and shopkeepers not Bedouin... Mostly Muslim and Christian. The census takers didn't bother with the Bedouin.