Arabs in "Palestine" Before 1948
How many Arabs lived in “Palestine” before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948?
A list of facts with historical sources:
🔸In
1867, Mark Twain wrote in The Innocents Abroad: "Stirring senses...
occur in this valley no more. There is not a solitary village throughout
its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction." He goes
on to describe Galilee, Judea, and around Jerusalem as deserts devoid of
population. And for the country as a whole: "Palestine sits in
sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has
withered its fields and fettered its energies... Palestine is desolate
and unlovely... It is hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land."
🔸In
1881 (the year designated by Arafat as the beginning of the Zionist
"invasion" and "displacement" of the local population), English
cartographer Arthur Penrhyn Stanley wrote: "In Judea it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there was no appearance of
life or habitation."
🔸By
the third quarter of the 19th century, the total population of the
entire country, Arabs and Jews, was only 400,000. Less than 3% of
today's figure.
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