Demographics of Palestine
Encyclopedia
The Demographics of Palestine refers to the demography
, or the statistical study of the population of Palestine
. Studies of the subject can cover a wide historical and geographical scope, with the definition of Palestine varying throughout the ages, and from scholar to scholar. Some studies cover the present demography of Palestinian territories
and its people
, while others attempt to determine population figures for the geographical region of Palestine in antiquity, which can include the area covered by modern day Israel
, the West Bank
, Gaza Strip
, Jordan
, and parts of Syria
and Lebanon
. This article will provide an overview to the different demographic studies related to both the geographical region in antiquity through to the present.
period, around AD 600" Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes: "... the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure." Reliable data on the population of Palestine in the pre-Muslim period, both in absolute terms and for the relative sizes of each community, do not exist.
The highest population of the 3rd–7th centuries probably occurred in the Byzantine period. Most scholars consider that the proportion of Jews decreased during these centuries. By counting settlements, Avi-Yonah estimated that Jews comprised half the population of the Galilee at the end of the 3rd century, and a quarter in the other parts of the country, but had declined to 10–15% of the total by 614. On the other hand, by counting churches and synagogues, Tsafrir estimated the Jewish fraction at 25% in the Byzantine period. Stemberger considers that Jews were the largest population group at the beginning of the 4th century, closely followed by the pagans. In contrast to Avi-Yonah, Schiffman estimated that Christians only became the majority of the country's population at the beginning of the 5th century.
in a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman Rule of Palestine reports:
In his paper 'Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects and Policy Implications' Sergio DellaPergola, drawing on the work of Bachi (1975), provides rough estimates of the population of Palestine west of the River Jordan by religion groups from the 1st century onwards summarised in the table below.
1. Figures in thousands.
According to Alexander Scholch, Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews
Figures from Ben-Arieh, in Scholch 1985, p. 388.
According to Ottoman
statistics studied by Justin McCarthy
, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.
, American author Mark Twain
wrote of his visit to Palestine in 1867: "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 -- Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition, it is dreamland."(Chapter 56) "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country". (Chapter 52) "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely. We never saw a human being on the whole route". (Chapter 49) "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. ...One may ride ten miles (16 km) hereabouts and not see ten human beings." ...these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness..."(Chapter 46)
These descriptions of the often quoted non-arable areas few people would inhabit are as Twain says, "by contrast" to the arable land, revealing a different picture of Palestinian agriculture at the time of his travels: "The narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that tower on either side"..."We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the Oriental city of Jaffa lies buried"
Bayard Taylor who wrote of the Jezreel Valley in 1852 ".. one of the richest districts in the world"..."The soil is a dark-brown loam, and, without manure, produces annually superb crops of wheat and barley." Laurence Oliphant wrote in 1887, again of the Valley of Jezreel "..a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands ... it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive"
Mason Martin, an American author who spent sixteen years as an analyst for the CIA, was critical of attempts to use Twain's humorous writing as a literal description of Palestine at that time. She writes that "Twain's descriptions are high in Israeli government press handouts that present a case for Israel's redemption of a land that had previously been empty and barren. His gross characterizations of the land and the people in the time before mass Jewish immigration are also often used by US propagandists for Israel." For example she noted that Twain described the Samaritans of Nablus at length without mentioning the much larger Arab population at all. The Arab population of Nablus at the time was about 20,000.
During the 19th century, many residents and visitors attempted to estimate the population without recourse to official data, and came up with a large number of different values. Estimates that are reasonably reliable are only available for the final third of the century, from which period Ottoman population and taxation registers have been preserved.
After a visit to Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote:
In 1852 the American writer
Bayard Taylor
traveled across the Jezreel Valley
, which he described in his 1854 book The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain as: "one of the richest districts in the world.", while Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine's Valley of Esdraelon
was "a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive."
According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian, "wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
In 1856 H.B. Tristram said of Palestine "A few years ago the whole Ghor (Jordan Valley) was in the hands of the fellaheen, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture…The same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon where….land is going out of cultivation and whole villages rapidly disappeared….Since the year 1838, no less than twenty villages there have thus erased from the map, and the stationary population extirpated."
By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews
(UNSCOP report, including bedouin
).
, 50,000 Arabs immigrated to 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".
The overall assessment of several British reports was that the increase in the Arab population was primarily due to natural increase. These included the Hope Simpson report (1930), the Passfield White Paper (1930) the Peel Commission report (1937) and the Survey of Palestine (1945). The 1931 census of Palestine
considered the question of illegal immigration since the previous census in 1922
. It estimated that unrecorded immigration during that period may have amounted to 9000 Jews and 4000 Arabs. It also gave the fraction of persons living in Palestine in 1931 who were born outside Palestine: Muslims, 2%; Christians, 20%; Jews, 58%.
American economist Fred Gottheil argues that there likely was significant Arab immigration:
In a 1974 study, Bachi proposed an average of 900 for the number of Muslims who were detected as illegal immigrants but not deported. He noted the impossibility of estimating illegal immigration that was undetected, or the fraction of those persons who eventually departed. 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.
While noting the uncertainty of earlier data, Bachi also observed that the Muslim population growth in the 19th century appeared to be high by world standards:
McCarthy explains, "... evidence for Muslim immigration into Palestine is minimal. Because no Ottoman records of that immigration have yet been discovered, one is thrown back on demographic analysis to evaluate Muslim migration." McCarthy argues that there is no significant Arab immigration into mandatory Palestine:
McCarthy also concludes that there was no significant internal migration to Jewish areas attributable to better economic conditions:
Gad Gilbar has also concluded that the prosperity of Palestine in the 45–50 years before World War I was a result of the modernization and growth of the economy owing to its integration with the world economy and especially with the economies of Europe. Although the reasons for growth were exogenous to Palestine the bearers were not waves of Jewish immigration, foreign intervention nor Ottoman reforms but "primarily local Arab Muslims and Christians."
Demographer Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine.
Yehoshua Porath
believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:
Daniel Pipes
responded to Porath by granting that From Time Immemorial
quoted carelessly, used statistics sloppily, and ignored inconvenient facts. Nonetheless, he explained that:
s, and 4.3% "others". Among Jews, 68% were Sabras
(Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim
— 22% from Europe and the Americas
, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries
.
According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank
is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip
by another 1.4 million. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel's National Security there are 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. This study was criticised by demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who estimated 3.33 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined at the end of 2005.
According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in Israel and the Palestinian Territories stands at 9.8–10.8 million.
Jordan has a population of around 6,000,000 (2007 estimate). Palestinians constitute approximately half of this number.
Demography
Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
, or the statistical study of the population of Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. Studies of the subject can cover a wide historical and geographical scope, with the definition of Palestine varying throughout the ages, and from scholar to scholar. Some studies cover the present demography of Palestinian territories
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...
and its people
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
, while others attempt to determine population figures for the geographical region of Palestine in antiquity, which can include the area covered by modern day Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
, Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, and parts of Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
. This article will provide an overview to the different demographic studies related to both the geographical region in antiquity through to the present.
Early demographics
Modern estimates place the population of ancient Palestine at a maximum of around one million. According to Israeli archeologist Magen Broshi, "... the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period - the late ByzantineByzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
period, around AD 600" Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes: "... the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure." Reliable data on the population of Palestine in the pre-Muslim period, both in absolute terms and for the relative sizes of each community, do not exist.
The highest population of the 3rd–7th centuries probably occurred in the Byzantine period. Most scholars consider that the proportion of Jews decreased during these centuries. By counting settlements, Avi-Yonah estimated that Jews comprised half the population of the Galilee at the end of the 3rd century, and a quarter in the other parts of the country, but had declined to 10–15% of the total by 614. On the other hand, by counting churches and synagogues, Tsafrir estimated the Jewish fraction at 25% in the Byzantine period. Stemberger considers that Jews were the largest population group at the beginning of the 4th century, closely followed by the pagans. In contrast to Avi-Yonah, Schiffman estimated that Christians only became the majority of the country's population at the beginning of the 5th century.
Demographics in the Middle Ages
Demographics in the Ottoman period
In the middle of the first century of the Ottoman rule, i.e., 1550 CE, Bernard LewisBernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
in a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman Rule of Palestine reports:
From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, GazaGazaGaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
, SafedSafedSafed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
, NablusNablusNablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.Founded by the...
, RamleRamlaRamla , is a city in central Israel. The city is predominantly Jewish with a significant Arab minority. Ramla was founded circa 705–715 AD by the Umayyad Caliph Suleiman ibn Abed al-Malik after the Arab conquest of the region...
, and HebronHebronHebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.
In his paper 'Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects and Policy Implications' Sergio DellaPergola, drawing on the work of Bachi (1975), provides rough estimates of the population of Palestine west of the River Jordan by religion groups from the 1st century onwards summarised in the table below.
| Year | Jews | Christians | Muslims | Total1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First half 1st century CE | Majority | - | - | ~2,500² |
| 5th century | Minority | Majority | - | >1st century |
| End 12th century | Minority | Minority | Majority | >225 |
| 14th cent. before Black Death Black Death The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have... |
Minority | Minority | Majority | 225 |
| 14th cent. after Black Death | Minority | Minority | Majority | 150 |
| 1533–1539 | 5 | 6 | 145 | 157 |
| 1690–1691 | 2 | 11 | 219 | 232 |
| 1800 | 7 | 22 | 246 | 275 |
| 1890 | 43 | 57 | 432 | 532 |
| 1914 | 94 | 70 | 525 | 689 |
| 1922 | 84 | 71 | 589 | 752 |
| 1931 | 175 | 89 | 760 | 1,033 |
| 1947 | 630 | 143 | 1,181 | 1,970 |
1. Figures in thousands.
According to Alexander Scholch, Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews
| Qazas | Number of Towns and Villages |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muslims | Christians | Jews | Total | |||
| 1 | Jerusalem | |||||
| Jerusalem | 1 | 1,025 | 738 | 630 | 2,393 | |
| Countryside | 116 | 6,118 | 1,202 | 7,320 | ||
| 2 | Hebron | |||||
| Hebron | 1 | 2,800 | 200 | 3,000 | ||
| Countryside | 52 | 2,820 | 2,820 | |||
| 3 | Gaza | |||||
| Gaza | 1 | 2,690 | 65 | 2,755 | ||
| Countryside | 55 | 6,417 | |
|
6,417 | |
| 3 | Jaffa | |||||
| Jaffa | 3 | 865 | 266 | 1,131 | ||
| Ludd | . | 700 | 207 | 907 | ||
| Ramla | . | 675 | 250 | 925 | ||
| Countryside | 61 | 3,439 | 3,439 | |||
| 4 | Nablus | |||||
| Nablus | 1 | 1,356 | 108 | 14 | 1,478 | |
| Countryside | 176 | 13,022 | 202 | 13,224 | ||
| 5 | Jinin | |||||
| Jinin | 1 | 656 | 16 | 672 | ||
| Countryside | 39 | 2,120 | 17 | |
2,137 | |
| 6 | Ajlun | |||||
| Countryside | 97 | 1,599 | 137 | |
1,736 | |
| 7 | Salt | |||||
| Salt | 1 | 500 | 250 | 750 | ||
| Countryside | 12 | 685 | |
|
685 | |
| 8 | Akka | |||||
| Gaza | 1 | 547 | 210 | 6 | 763 | |
| Countryside | 34 | 1,768 | 1,021 | |
2,789 | |
| 9 | Haifa | |||||
| Haifa | 1 | 224 | 228 | 8 | 460 | |
| Countryside | 41 | 2,011 | 161 | |
2,171 | |
| 10 | Nazareth | |||||
| Nazareth | 1 | 275 | 1,073 | 1,348 | ||
| Countryside | 38 | 1,606 | 544 | |
2,150 | |
| 11 | Tiberias | |||||
| Tiberias | 1 | 159 | 66 | 400 | 625 | |
| Countryside | 7 | 507 | |
|
507 | |
| 12 | Safad | |||||
| Safad | 1 | 1,295 | 3 | 1,197 | 2,495 | |
| Countryside | 38 | 1,117 | 616 | |
1,733 | |
Figures from Ben-Arieh, in Scholch 1985, p. 388.
According to Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
statistics studied by Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy (American historian)
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies...
, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews. McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.
Travelers' impressions of 19th century Palestine
In Chapters 46, 39, 52 and 56 of his Innocents AbroadInnocents Abroad
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American...
, American author Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
wrote of his visit to Palestine in 1867: "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 -- Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition, it is dreamland."(Chapter 56) "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country". (Chapter 52) "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely. We never saw a human being on the whole route". (Chapter 49) "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. ...One may ride ten miles (16 km) hereabouts and not see ten human beings." ...these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness..."(Chapter 46)
These descriptions of the often quoted non-arable areas few people would inhabit are as Twain says, "by contrast" to the arable land, revealing a different picture of Palestinian agriculture at the time of his travels: "The narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that tower on either side"..."We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the Oriental city of Jaffa lies buried"
Bayard Taylor who wrote of the Jezreel Valley in 1852 ".. one of the richest districts in the world"..."The soil is a dark-brown loam, and, without manure, produces annually superb crops of wheat and barley." Laurence Oliphant wrote in 1887, again of the Valley of Jezreel "..a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands ... it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive"
Mason Martin, an American author who spent sixteen years as an analyst for the CIA, was critical of attempts to use Twain's humorous writing as a literal description of Palestine at that time. She writes that "Twain's descriptions are high in Israeli government press handouts that present a case for Israel's redemption of a land that had previously been empty and barren. His gross characterizations of the land and the people in the time before mass Jewish immigration are also often used by US propagandists for Israel." For example she noted that Twain described the Samaritans of Nablus at length without mentioning the much larger Arab population at all. The Arab population of Nablus at the time was about 20,000.
During the 19th century, many residents and visitors attempted to estimate the population without recourse to official data, and came up with a large number of different values. Estimates that are reasonably reliable are only available for the final third of the century, from which period Ottoman population and taxation registers have been preserved.
After a visit to Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote:
From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so. In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked. ... Many of our people who came to buy land have been in Eretz Israel for months, and have toured its length and width, without finding what they seek.
In 1852 the American writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor
Bayard Taylor was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author.-Life and work:...
traveled across the Jezreel Valley
Jezreel Valley
-Etymology:The Jezreel Valley takes its name from the ancient city of Jezreel which was located on a low hill overlooking the southern edge of the valley, though some scholars think that the name of the city originates from the name of the clan which founded it, and whose existence is mentioned in...
, which he described in his 1854 book The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain as: "one of the richest districts in the world.", while Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine's Valley of Esdraelon
Jezreel Valley
-Etymology:The Jezreel Valley takes its name from the ancient city of Jezreel which was located on a low hill overlooking the southern edge of the valley, though some scholars think that the name of the city originates from the name of the clan which founded it, and whose existence is mentioned in...
was "a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive."
According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian, "wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
In 1856 H.B. Tristram said of Palestine "A few years ago the whole Ghor (Jordan Valley) was in the hands of the fellaheen, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture…The same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon where….land is going out of cultivation and whole villages rapidly disappeared….Since the year 1838, no less than twenty villages there have thus erased from the map, and the stationary population extirpated."
British Mandate period 1918-1948
Official reports
In 1920, the League of Nations' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine:
There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. 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.
The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions. Jewish agricultural colonies were founded. They developed the culture of oranges and gave importance to the Jaffa orange trade. They cultivated the vine, and manufactured and exported wine. They drained swamps. They planted eucalyptus trees. They practised, with modern methods, all the processes of agriculture. There are at the present time 64 of these settlements, large and small, with a population of some 15,000.
By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
(UNSCOP report, including bedouin
Bedouin
The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...
).
The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine
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 GilbertMartin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE, PC is a British historian and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history...
, 50,000 Arabs immigrated to 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".
The overall assessment of several British reports was that the increase in the Arab population was primarily due to natural increase. These included the Hope Simpson report (1930), the Passfield White Paper (1930) the Peel Commission report (1937) and the Survey of Palestine (1945). The 1931 census of Palestine
1931 census of Palestine
The 1931 census of Palestine was the second census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine. It was carried out on 18 November 1931 under the direction of Major E. Mills. The first census had been conducted in 1922...
considered the question of illegal immigration since the previous census in 1922
1922 census of Palestine
The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922.The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality...
. It estimated that unrecorded immigration during that period may have amounted to 9000 Jews and 4000 Arabs. It also gave the fraction of persons living in Palestine in 1931 who were born outside Palestine: Muslims, 2%; Christians, 20%; Jews, 58%.
American economist Fred Gottheil argues that there likely was significant Arab immigration:
There is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses. The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography—or other demographic analyses based on very crude data—acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.
In a 1974 study, Bachi proposed an average of 900 for the number of Muslims who were detected as illegal immigrants but not deported. He noted the impossibility of estimating illegal immigration that was undetected, or the fraction of those persons who eventually departed. 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.
While noting the uncertainty of earlier data, Bachi also observed that the Muslim population growth in the 19th century appeared to be high by world standards:
"[B]etween 1800 and 1914, the Muslim population had a yearly average increase of an order of magnitude of roughly 6-7 per thousand. This can be compared to the very crude estimate of about 4 per thousand for the "less developed countries" of the world (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) between 1800 and 1910. It is possible that some part of the growth of the Muslim population was due to immigration. However, it seems likely that the dominant determinant of this modest growth was the beginning of some natural increase."
McCarthy explains, "... evidence for Muslim immigration into Palestine is minimal. Because no Ottoman records of that immigration have yet been discovered, one is thrown back on demographic analysis to evaluate Muslim migration." McCarthy argues that there is no significant Arab immigration into mandatory Palestine:
From analyses of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks, one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after the 1870s was small. Had there been a large group of Muslim immigrants their numbers would have caused an unusual increase in the population and this would have appeared in the calculated rate of increase from one registration list to another... Such an increase would have been easily noticed; it was not there.
The argument that Arab immigration somehow made up a large part of the Palestinian Arab population is thus statistically untenable. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters of Arabs who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.
McCarthy also concludes that there was no significant internal migration to Jewish areas attributable to better economic conditions:
Some areas of Palestine did experience greater population growth than others, but the explanation for this is simple. Radical economic change was occurring all over the Mediterranean Basin at the time. Improved transportation, greater mercantile activity, and greater industry had increased the chances for employment in cities, especially coastal cities... Differential population increase was occurring all over the Eastern Mediterranean, not just in Palestine... The increase in Muslim population had little or nothing to do with Jewish immigration. In fact the province that experienced the greatest Jewish population growth (by .035 annually), Jerusalem Sanjak, was the province with the lowest rate of growth of Muslim population (.009).
Gad Gilbar has also concluded that the prosperity of Palestine in the 45–50 years before World War I was a result of the modernization and growth of the economy owing to its integration with the world economy and especially with the economies of Europe. Although the reasons for growth were exogenous to Palestine the bearers were not waves of Jewish immigration, foreign intervention nor Ottoman reforms but "primarily local Arab Muslims and Christians."
Demographer Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine.
Yehoshua Porath
Yehoshua Porath
Yehoshua Porath is an Israeli historian and professor emeritus of Middle East history.-Academic career:Yehoshua Porath is a lecturer in the History of Muslim Countries at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of Palestinian nationalism.-Political views:Porath was on the...
believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:
As all the research by historian Fares Abdul Rahim and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no "natural" increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth. ... No one would doubt that some migrant workers came to Palestine from Syria and Trans-Jordan and remained there. But one has to add to this that there were migrations in the opposite direction as well. For example, a tradition developed in Hebron to go to study and work in Cairo, with the result that a permanent community of Hebronites had been living in Cairo since the fifteenth century. Trans-Jordan exported unskilled casual labor to Palestine; but before 1948 its civil service attracted a good many educated Palestinian Arabs who did not find work in Palestine itself. Demographically speaking, however, neither movement of population was significant in comparison to the decisive factor of natural increase.
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
responded to Porath by granting that From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.According to the book a large...
quoted carelessly, used statistics sloppily, and ignored inconvenient facts. Nonetheless, he explained that:
Porath replied with an array of demographic data to support his position. He also wrote that Peters's demographic statistics were inexplicable:
Miss Peters's central thesis is that a substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century. She supports this argument with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer, including Porath.
...nowhere in her main text or in the methodological appendices (V and VI) did Mrs. Peters bother to explain to her readers how she managed to break down the Ottoman or Cuinet's figures into smaller units than subdistricts. As far as I know no figures for the units smaller than subdistricts (Nahia; the parallel of the French commune), covering the area of Ottoman Palestine, were ever published. Therefore I can't avoid the conclusion that Mrs. Peters's figures were, at best, based on guesswork and an extremely tendentious guesswork at that.
Current demographics
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% ArabArab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s, and 4.3% "others". Among Jews, 68% were Sabras
Sabra (person)
Sabra is a term used to describe a Jew born in Israeli territory; the term is also usually inclusive of Jews born during the period of the establishment of the state of Israel. The word "sabra" is Arabic and Hebrew. Immigrants to Palestine began using it in the early 1930s, according to the The...
(Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim
Oleh
Oleh may refer to:* Oleh, Nigeria* The Ukrainian version of the name Oleg* A Jew immigrating to Israel...
— 22% from Europe and the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
.
According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
by another 1.4 million. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel's National Security there are 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. This study was criticised by demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who estimated 3.33 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined at the end of 2005.
According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in Israel and the Palestinian Territories stands at 9.8–10.8 million.
Jordan has a population of around 6,000,000 (2007 estimate). Palestinians constitute approximately half of this number.