Plus if there were 700,000 Arabs by 1914, why numbers did not change that much by 1947, and before over 500,000 as some claimed were booted-out in 1948? What happened to the "natural growth"?
There were over 600,000 Arabs in 1914, fewer than 600,000 in 1922 (population declined during WWI), and 1.2 million Arabs in the Mandate of Palestine in 1947 (not counting illegals, who judging from the refugee figures, must have been over 100,000). This was a much faster rate of growth than in Syria or other parts of the Levant. Since the rate of growth was also much faster in areas of Jewish settlement than in Arab areas (for example, the Arab population of Haifa tripled from 1922 to 1947, while the population of Nablus rose 50% in the same period), it is reasonable to conclude that much of the growth was due to immigration for economic reasons. This is certainly confirmed by anecdotal evidence from people living in Haifa at the time.
How much of the immigration was from other sections of the Mandate, and how much was over the border is hard to say because the British did not track it (they didn't even count people coming from Transjordan as immigrants until 1938). The British also encouraged Arabs to immigrate at certain times, such as the Syrians they brought in from the Houran during WWII.
One more point to note: the Arab refugees from Palestine got their own special UN body, UNWRA, with its own special definition of refugee: anyone who had lived in Palestine for at least two years. The regular UN refugee body, UNHCR, defines refugees as having fled from a place of permanent, defined as, at least 20 years residence. Why did UNWRA need a new definition? |
