Population of Palestine pre-Isra'El:
mideastweb.org
pnic.gov.ps
"Major Conclusions
1. The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times, and the relative contributions of natural increase and immigration, imprecision in the counts and other issues.
2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid.
3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, more Arabs than had ever lived in Palestine before, and more Jews than had lived there since Roman times. Analysis of population by subdistricts shows that Arab population tended to increase the most between 1931 and 1948 in the same areas where there were large proportions of Jews. Therefore, Zionist immigration did not displace Arabs. For a detailed discussion that focuses on this myth, please refer to Zionism and its Impact.
4. Historic population data in Palestine during Ottoman times and during Mandatory times show significant discrepancies. For example, figures reported by Rodinson for 1930 population of Arabs are about 100,000 too low according to census figures for 1931
5. It is not possible to estimate illegal Arab immigration directly, but apparently there was some immigration. The total Arab immigration to Palestine recorded or estimated by the Mandate government was in the neighborhood of 45,000. Illegal immigration that was not recorded would not register in the final population figures for 1945, because those figures were estimates. We simply do not know how many Arabs and Jews there were in Palestine before the declaration of the state of Israel. It is probable that there were about 100,000 Arab immigrants into Palestine. An unknown number may also have migrated internally, from the Arab areas in the West Bank that were formerly the centers of commercial activity and population to the coastal plain and Galilee. The Arab population increase of areas with large Jewish settlement was about 10% greater than that in areas without Jewish settlement. This effect cannot be totally separated from urbanization. A population of approximately 103,000 Bedouin (1922 estimate reported in the 1927-1929 reports of the Mandatory) may have been excluded or included in different population figures as the authorities and demographers saw fit. There is no way to know how many of these Bedouin made a permanent home in Palestine or how many became part of the city population in the course of industrialization between 1922 and 1948. However, the evidence indicates that they were in fact included in all the official population figures. This is shown by the fact that estimates of Muslim population that explicitly do not include Bedouin were significantly lower than the census figures, and by the fact that population growth is consistent with figures for natural increase if we assume that the Bedouin were included.
5. There are large discrepancies between official population figures and the number of Palestinian refugees - An analysis of population by subdistricts and villages, using the data of the Palestine Remembered Web site, shows that there were about 735,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs in Palestine in 1948. There would not have been more than 620,000 refugees in 1949 if these figures are correct, since the Israeli census showed 156,000 non-Jews living in Palestine in November 1948, of whom about 14,000 were Druze. The number of refugees reported by UNRWA in 1948 was 726,000. It might indicate that an unregistered and illegal population of 100,000 was included in the refugees, or it might be due to serious and systematic undercounting of Arab population by the Mandate authorities. McCarthy suggests that there was such undercounting, yet his figures for the total population of Palestine agree with projections based on official figures for 1945.
6. There are serious discrepancies in reporting of the number of refugees by UNRWA. In 1949, UNRWA reported 726,000 refugees. By 1950 they reported 914,000 according to one source (McCarthy), an increase of 26% that could not come either from births or further displacement of refugees, which were negligible.
7. The city of Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since about 1896 - The city of Jerusalem itself there was a Jewish majority since about 1896, but probably not before. The district of Jerusalem (as opposed to the city) comprised a very wide area in Ottoman and British times, in which there was a Muslim majority. This included Jericho, Bethlehem and other towns. Within the Jerusalem district, there was a subdistrict of Jerusalem that includes many of the immediate suburbs such as Eyn Karem, Beit Zeit etc. In that subdistrict, the Jews remained a minority , with only about 52,000 out of 132,000 persons in 1931 for example." |
