The Jews did not confiscate land; they bought it, usually paying off 1) the Turks 2) the absentee landowner 3) the tenant farmer. The local effendi made a killing off the Zionists.
The British did not favor the Jews; they may have made the Balfour Declaration, but during the mandate they reduced or cut off Jewish immigration, while allowing very large Arab immigration attracted by the economic development the Zionists brought.
The Zionists did not displace Arabs before 1948; on the contrary, they attracted Arabs. The Arab population of Palestine shot up by at least 300% in the period 1880 - 1948. When the Zionists started coming, Palestine was very sparsely populated.
Palestine was so badly misruled in the 19th century, that its population, usually reckoned at only 300,000 in 1800, was actually shrinking during most of the nineteenth century. The local peasants were constantly forced into being nomads due to confiscatory taxes, extortion, and usury of the effendi class. As the British Consul in Palestine noted in 1857,
"The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population..."
Mark Twain visited the Valley of Jezreel in 1867 and noted,
"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent -- not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation." |
