Always been team Israel's ground rules that Palestine was never a nation just an undefined area in the M.E.
It was a population in constant flux with highs and lows throughout history but it never reached it occupational density of pre roman times after the diaspora. Even the arab muslims shunned the land because it was too harsh and not easily tamed.
The people who inhabited the region did exist, but arab muslims did not for 700 years after the diaspora. Then after holding control of a small part they were beaten and expelled by the Crusaders.
The census is correct but I wonder how many of those muslims were arab and how many were Turkish, Egyptian or Iranian all non arab muslims . I also wonder how many people were refused the right to fill in the census forms, or duplicated the forms. This happened in the Palestinian territories only a short time ago so that UNWRA could get more money for the terrorists.
A load of bullshit as usual.
Palestinians, people of the Roman provinces of Palestina have been of many religions ranging from those that worshiped the Roman religions, Judaism, Christianity and most recently Islam. They are the same people whatever the religion or language they speak.
In fact, Palestine has always been one of the most fertile of the Middle East and there were few areas not being cultivated in the late 1800s, as confirmed by Ahad Ha'am after one of his visits to the area in the late 1800s:
"We tend to believe abroad that Palestine is nowadays almost completely deserted, an uncultivated wilderness, and anyone can come there and buy as much land as his heart desires. But in reality this is not the case. It is difficult to find anywhere in the country Arab land which lies fallow."
David Goldberg The 1907 writings of one traveller to Palestine vividly describe the roots of the region s enmity Comment is free The Guardian
As far as the demographic make up prior to the 1850s and after we have confirmation of that to via the Mandatory's Interim Report of 1921, which confirms that there were but a handful of Jews in Palestine prior to 1850 and that the Muslims made up four fifths of the population in 1921.and that they were not Arabs (only Bedouins are pure Arabians), but of mixed race, which is what Palestinians have always been:
"Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or--a small number--are Protestants..... Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews"
. - See more at:
Mandate for Palestine - Interim report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations Balfour Declaration text 30 July 1921
From that same report we see this
Length of Recidence in Palestine
(p 87 & p 98)The pre-war population accounts for 9,473 persons, which is slightly less than one-third of the present population, whereas the rest are post-war immigrants. Some 10.000 persons settled since 1924, since the so called middle-class immigration.
| Length of residence in Years | Men | Women | Children | Total | % |
|---|
| 1 | 1504 | 1118 | 1746 | 4368 | 14,2 |
| 2 | 2406 | 2020 | 1575 | 6001 | 19,6 |
| 3 | 1311 | 913 | 1133 | 3357 | 11,5 |
| 4 | 695 | 556 | 720 | 1971 | 6,4 |
| 5 | 682 | 454 | 513 | 1649 | 5,4 |
| 6 | 856 | 403 | 390 | 1649 | 5,4 |
| 7 | 682 | 277 | 379 | 1358 | 4,3 |
| 8 | 139 | 45 | 261 | 445 | 1,5 |
| 9 | 39 | 10 | 200 | 249 | 0,8 |
| 10-13 | 237 | 218 | 893 | 1348 | 4,4 |
| 14-20 | 1882 | 1630 | 216 | 3728 | 12,1 |
| 21-29 | 864 | 800 | - | 1664 | 5,4 |
| Over 30 | 836 | 930 | - | 1766 | 5,8 |
| Unspecified | 336 | 281 | 350 | 967 | 3,2 |
| Total | 12469 | 9655 | 8376 | 30500 | 100 % |
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Whether there was significant Arab immigration into
Palestine after the beginning of Jewish settlement there in the late 19th century has become a matter of some controversy. According to
Martin Gilbert, 50,000 Arabs immigrated to
Mandatory Palestine from the neighboring lands between 1919 and 1939 "attracted by the improving agricultural conditions and growing job opportunities, most of them created by the Jews".
[47] The Arab population of Palestine doubled during the mandatory period from 670 000 in 1922 to over 1.2 million in 1948. The estimates on the scope of Arab immigration to Palestine during this period range from insignificant numbers to almost 300 000.[
citation needed] According to Itzhak Galnoor, although most of Arab population increase came from natural increase, the Arab immigration to Palestine was not insignificant. Based on his estimates approximately 100 000 Arabs immigrated to Palestine between 1922 and 1948.
[48]
The
1931 census of Palestine considered the question of illegal immigration since the previous
census in 1922.
[55] It estimated that unrecorded immigration during that period may have amounted to 9,000 Jews and 4,000 Arabs.
[55] It also gave the proportion of persons living in Palestine in 1931 who were born outside Palestine: Muslims, 2%; Christians, 20%; Jews, 58%
In a 1974 study, Bachi proposed an average of 900 per year for the number of Muslims who were detected as illegal immigrants but not deported.
[56] He noted the impossibility of estimating illegal immigration that was undetected, or the fraction of those persons who eventually departed.
[56] He suggested, though qualifying it as a "mere guess", that the unexplained increase in the Muslim population between 1922 and 1931 was due to a combination of unrecorded immigration (using the 1931 census report estimate) and undercounting in the 1922 census
Demographics of Palestine - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
