A number of factors account for this dramatic underpopulation, one of which is environmental. Many people fled the area as early as the fourteenth century as a result of the Black Plague. Starting shortly thereafter, many areas became swamp-infested and malarial, especially in the northern valleys. There is much evidence to suggest that, by the mid-nineteenth century, the region had become nearly uninhabitable.
Around this time, German Templars tried to settle the Kinrot Valley, where Jesus had lived, but were forced to leave due to the prevalence of malaria. Jewish settlers in the 1880s attempted to inhabit the Hula valley, but in some places child mortality rates were nearly 100% because of disease. The Talmud remarks, ”If the Garden of Eden is in the Land of Israel, Beit-Shean is its gateway.” But when the scholar H.B. Tristram visited the area in the 1860s, traveling in the footsteps of Jesus, he claimed, ”We saw not a tree….It is scarcely conceivable how any human beings can inhabit such sites; but such is the contrast, nowhere more settling than here, between ancient civilization and modern degradation.”
Mark Twain was disillusioned by his trip to the Holy Land. He wrote, ”Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes…desolate and unlovely…it is dreamland.”
British Control: Population Shifts and the Beginnings of Growth
As a result of the construction of railroad lines that led to the sea, the population of Haifa tripled and that of Jaffa more than doubled from 1880 to 1910. But while the population shifted toward these areas, the overall growth rates for the country stayed low. According to British investigations, there were 689,275 persons in Palestine in 1915, about 590,000 of whom were Arabs. Given a population in 1890 of 532,000 (473,000 Arab), this still represents only a 0.8% per year growth rate.
Soon afterward, during World War I, the Ottomans tried to muster troops from the region, prompting many of the upper classes to flee. It appears that the war prompted a massive flight, immediately followed by a huge influx. According to contemporary surveys, the Arab population declined by 35,000 during the years 1915 to 1919.
While many Arabs may have fled to escape the draft, others were expelled by force. To defend against the British, the Ottomans, still nominally in control, expelled both Jews and Arabs from cities across the coast on the assumption that their nationalistic intentions could lead them to sympathize with the British invaders. This effort was massive: 28,000 Arabs were forced out of Gaza alone.
By 1922, however, just three years later, the Arab population had increased by 80,000 above the 1919 level. After the war had ended and Britain had taken formal control of the area (with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire), Arab population rates recovered quickly and significantly. Many Arabs took advantage of the improved economic conditions that resulted from British administration, and by 1922, the population of Haifa — which had declined by 30% from 1915 to 1917 due to Ottoman expulsions — had become greater than it was before the war.
The Zionists, also eager to take advantage of this economic growth, had hoped that the British government, the country’s largest employer, would hire Jews in construction. But the British preferred cheaper foreign labor, and in the period leading up to 1922 they employed 15,000 foreigners (mostly from Egypt and Syria) and only 500 Jews. Despite this low employment rate, the Jewish population continued to grow through immigration. The increasing numbers of these two populations would soon lead to a significant clash.
Approaching 1948: Economic Growth and the Population Burst
After years of relative stagnation, the few decades leading up to 1948 saw significant growth in both Arab and Jewish populations. Had the Arab population remained at its pre-World War I growth rate (0.8%) after 1922, one would have expected a population of approximately 785,000 by 1947. But there were in fact between 1.2 and 1.3 million Arabs in all of Palestine by 1947. What could have caused this sudden burst?
