One of the most powerful and widespread arguments against Zionism and the State of Israel has been the claim that Jewish settlement in Palestine led directly to the displacement and exploitation of the land’s long-established Arab population. In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust and at the height of British attempts to divide the region into separate Arab and Jewish states, Jamal Husayni, spokesman for the effective government of Palestinian Arabs, forcefully raised this very argument against the Jewish national home:
”Is it in any way just, that the Arabs, who have lived on this land uninterruptedly for 1300 years, and whose lives are rooted in its soil, should be dispossessed by force, should be pushed aside, and should be blackmailed to enable the Zionist Jews to fashion a Jewish National Home on this land? That’s the problem…”
This was also the claim made by five Arab states to justify war against the State of Israel in 1948, just one day after it had declared its independence. According to this view, Jews had been absent from the land of Israel for too long to claim their right to return. In their absence, another group of people had come to occupy the land, and thus the Zionist movement could succeed only at this people’s expense. The West, embarrassed by the horrors of the Holocaust, had founded the State of Israel to clear its conscience, and the Arab residents of Palestine were forced to pay the price. The creation of the Jewish state was thus an outrage, according to this argument, because the very settlement of the land by Jews was illegitimate.
Yet the argument rests on an inaccurate description of the country’s history; namely, a mischaracterization of the demographics of Palestine before 1948. For a number of reasons, both political and environmental, the Arab population of Palestine had been in a constant state of flux for much of the region’s history. There was, of course, a small Arab population in Palestine that could trace its roots back for centuries. But overall, the Arab population, which had remained dormant for centuries, began to blossom only after the beginning of Jewish immigration and the subsequent improvements in economic conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural techniques. The idea of ”uninterrupted settlement…rooted in its soil” is thus inconsistent with history. It was put forward primarily in an attempt to delegitimize Jewish immigration.
This essay will explore the various reasons for the Arab population shifts over time, focusing mainly on the first half of the 20th century. Such an examination demonstrates that Jewish settlement in Palestine did not amount to the sudden disruption that Husayni and others claim, since there was no continuous national history or uniform population to disrupt. It also suggests that Jewish settlement was in many ways beneficial to the land and all of its inhabitants. In this light, it is clear that the two main tenets of the myth of Jewish ”colonialism” — that Zionism uprooted a long-established nation and led to its uniform exploitation — are ideologically motivated distortions.
Arab Demographics Prior to British Governance: Dramatic Underpopulation
From the period of the Crusades to the beginning of modern times, the population of Palestine remained at a near constant level. This apparent stability is significant, as populations naturally tend to increase over time. It is estimated that there were 205,000 people living in Palestine in the mid-1500s. By 1800, the population had only grown to 275,000, reflecting about a thousandth of a percent of average growth a year. By 1890, still before any significant Jewish immigration, the population had made a slightly larger jump, to 532,000. But even with this increase, the 19th century growth rate was still a small 0.7% per year. By comparison, in the 1940s the Muslim growth rate in the Middle East was closer to 3.07%.
