MenuBy Refaat M. Loubani
PUBLIC opinion has been led by the Zionist propaganda machine to believe that Palestine was a neglected desolate land without a people in need of a people without a country and that developments and progress were the result of Zionist Initiative.
As it will be proven below, this is not true.
The Holy Land, since the Crusader genocide, has been renowned for its olive groves and olive oil industry; and long before Zionist immigration began in 1920, Palestine was known as a citrus exporting country, famous for the Jaffa Orange. It is unknown when the citrus industry was first developed in Palestine but records shows that in 1912 ؟1913, the Arabs had exported 1,608,570 cases of oranges to Europe.
As regards the hill regions, the country is covered with olive orchards, vineyards and other deciduous fruit trees; while the lands in the South were used for the cultivation of grain, and those in the Jordan
Valley for the production of vegetables and fruits. Every inch of fertile soil was used to full capacity; and more and more rocky patches were being turned into orchards and groves.
In that regards, its worth quoting Ahad
Ha'Am, a leading Eastern European Jewish essayist who visited Palestine in
1891 for three months, when he tried to open many Jewish people eyes:
"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated." (Righteous Victims, p. 42)
Is it not ironic that Israel should today claim and take pride in the two principal agricultural industries, citrus and olives, started and developed over the centuries by the Arab victims of Israeli aggression?
Following is a list showing the major crops of Palestine before 1947 and the portion produced by Jews:
The total area planted with citrus before the British mandated terminated was 281,448 dunums, (1 dunum = 1,000 sq. meters) of which 139,728 dunums were owned by the Jews.
The export of oranges was as follows: -
| Period | Orange boxes exported* |
| 1908 - 1909 | 744,463 |
| 1910 - 1911 | 869,850 |
| 1912 - 1913 | 1,608,570 |
| 1938 - 1939 | 16,000,000 |
* A box of citrus on average contained 144 oranges.
Olives
During the 1944 - 1945, the area of the land planted with olives was 595,405
dunums, of which the Jews owned only 7,000 dunums or less than 1.2%.
In the year 1944 - 1945, the amount of olive produced was 75,341 tons. The number of fruitful olives trees was estimated to be 6,000,000 trees and each tree produces 2 kg. during the draught periods and 12 kg. in the fruitful periods, and an average of 7 kg. per year.
Other agricultural products
The breakdown of the other agricultural production in 1944 is as the following:
|
|
Palestinian |
Jewish |
Total |
||||||
| Dunums | Tons | Value* | Dunums | Tons | Value* | Dunums | Tons | Value* | |
|
Grains |
4,152,438 | 193,376 | 4,403,409 | 215,191 | 16,579 | 497,048 | 4,367,629 | 209,955 | 4,900,457 |
| Vegetables | 239,733 | 189,104 | 5,113,553 | 40,207 | 55,730 | 1,745,870 | 279,940 | 244,834 | 6,859,423 |
| Fodder | 23,970 | 20,827 | 156,847 | 119,578 | 176,525 | 951,178 | 143,543 | 197,352 | 1,108,025 |
| Fruits** | 355,709 | 73,320 | 3,139,374 | 37,217 | 21,398 | 1,379,620 | 392,926 | 94,718 | 4,518,994 |
| Olives | 592,546 | 78,287 | 3,320,320 | 7,587 | 1,182 | 53,235 | 600,133 | 79,469 | 3,373,555 |
| Melons | 120,304 | 135,634 | 969,630 | 5,675 | 7,193 | 83,975 | 125,979 | 142,827 | 1,053,605 |
| Total | 5,484,700 | 690,548 | 17,103,133 | 425,455 | 278,607 | 4,710,926 | 5,910,150 | 969,155 | 21,814,059 |
| Percentage | 92.8% | 71.25% | 78.40% | 7.20% | 28.75% | 21.60% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
Source: Survey of Palestine,
prepared by the British Mandate for the United Nations, p. 323-327
* Value in Palestinian Pound
** Non-citrus fruits. Note that Citrus production totaled of 248,274 dunums of
which 120,897 dunums were Jewish owned (Supplement
to Survey
of Palestine, p. 37)
Demographic Makeup & Land Ownership in 1947
At the end of World War I, Palestine was an Arab country similar to other parts of the Arab World. It had a population of
Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslims Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and
59,000 Jews (including many European Jews from the first and second
Aliyah). So the Jewish population of Palestine in 1914 made up under 8% of the
total population (Righteous
Victims, p. 83). It should noted that most Palestinian Jews (Yishuv) at the
time where mostly Hasidic Jews concentrating in and around Jerusalem, Safad, and
Jaffa, and only 12,000 of these Jews lived on the land as farmers.
The number of Jewish colonies in Palestine in 1914 was 47 colonies distributed as
follows:
| Region | No. of Zionist Colonies |
| Coastal Plain | 22 |
| Marj Bin Amir | 1 |
| Al Ghoar / Beisan Valley | 6 |
| Northern Galilee & Houleh | 5 |
| Southern Plain | 7 |
| Jerusalem Mountains | 2 |
| Careml or Haifa | 4 |
| Total | 47 |
This is against a total number of 21 cities and 949 towns and villages in the Arab area distributed as follows:
| District | No. of Cities | No. of Villages | Total |
| Galilee | 5 | 198 | 203 |
| Haifa | 1 | 52 | 53 |
| Nablus | 4 | 270 | 274 |
| Jaffa | 3 | 93 | 96 |
| Jerusalem | 5 | 272 | 277 |
| Gaza | 3 | 64 | 67 |
| Total | 21 | 949 | 970 |
As of 1918, Jewish land holdings amounted to 162,500 acres out of a total of 6,674,560 acres which is the total area of Palestine (27,009
Sq. Km.). This is equivalent to 2.4% of the total land area of Palestine. These consisted of holdings partly in the principal towns and partly in 47 Jewish settlements in different parts of the country. When the British mandate
was terminated in 1948 and the Jewish state came into existence, Jewish land holdings had increased to only 372,925 acres or 5.6% of the total land area of Palestine of 6,674,560 acres still an insignificant figure to justify the Israeli usurpation of
Palestine, click here for a map
illustrating Palestine's land ownership per district in 1945. On the other hand,
the Jewish population in Palestine jumped to 500,000 out of 1,700,000 (the total population of Palestine in
1948), which is still less than 30% of the total population of the country, click
here for a map illustrating Palestine's population distribution per district
in 1946.
|
Population |
Land Ownership (acres) |
|||
| Arabs | Jewish | Arabs | Jewish | |
| 1917 | 738,000 | 59,00 | 6,512,060 | 162,500 |
| 92% | 8% | 97.6% | 2.4% | |
| 1947 | 1,200,000 | 500,000 | 6,296,112 | 378,448 |
| 70% | 30% | 94.33% | 5.67% | |
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UN document dated 3 September 1947: "164. The Arab population, despite the strenuous efforts of Jews to acquire land in Palestine, at present remains in possession of approximately 85 per cent of the land. The provisions of the land transfer regulations of 1940, which gave effect to the 1939 White Paper policy, have SEVERELY RESTRICTED the Jewish efforts to ACQUIRE new land.”[source:unispal]
It should also be noted that the Zionist colonialist invaders actually stole tons of businesses and property from the Palestinians they killed, ethnically cleansed, and made refugees in 1948. For just one example see the Palestinian Abu Laban Orange Company in Jaffa (pronounced Yaffa in Arabic) that was stolen by Zionist colonialist criminals who based a large part of their early colonialist economy on profits made by stealing the Jaffa oranges (and other crops) from Palestinian businesses.
It is true however, that Palestine was not a desert before the beginning of the Zionist immigration. It was actually one of the most developped areas of the region. Nonetheless, it is also true that the Jews have redydanized entire regions like the Coastal plain which was one of the most underdevelopped region of Palestine at the end of the 19th century and which became the wealthiest one in the 1940's because the Jews settled mostly in this area.
"In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors." and other neighboring now Arabized, Arabic speaking Levantine peoples (like the Palestinians who are Levantine people that again Dr. Ariella Oppenheim proves are related to and descendants of the ancient, indigenous Canaanite people of Palestine: see the Jebusite Canaanites that Palestinians are descendants of). The "Bible" is corrupted and full of tons of errors, even secular academics and historians admit this the Canaanites were never killed off! As for your "6 Day war" comment the Zionists used a sneak attack against Egypt when half the Egyptian military was bogged down in a proxy civil war in North Yemen in 1967 (almost 70,000 Egyptian soldiers were based in and fighting in North Yemen during the "North Yemen Civil War" of 1962-1970. This included many elite Egyptian spell forces that had been sent to Yemen). The Zionists only won in 1967 because of their sneak attack with Egyptian forces away in Yemen, and also foreign support you Zionists got (see Holy Qur'an Surah 3:112), the Zionists were given and used top of the line French Dassault Mirage Fighter Jets. These French jets and all the Western colonialist backing was why they "won" at that time (they are losing now to Hezbollah, insha'Allah)! The Zionists are illegal occupiers of the whole land of Palestine; From The River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! Insha'Allah.
Quote- Results of a DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim appears to match historical accounts that Arab Israelis and Palestinians,[15][16] together as the one same population, represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times", albeit religiously first Christianized then largely Islamized, and all eventually culturally Arabized.[15] Referring to those of the Muslim faith more specifically, it reaffirmed that Palestinian "Muslim Arabs are descended from Christians and Jews who lived in the southern Levant, a region that includes Israel, Sinai and part of Jordan." Geneticist Michael Hammer praised "the study for 'focusing in detail on the Jewish and Palestinian populations.'"[15]
Also you Zionist white Ashkenazi Khazar "Jews" are in no way related to the "Israelites", you fool! Just one thing proving this is the fact that today's "Jews" are most closely related to the people North of the Fertile Crescent. "In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors." and other neighboring now Arabized, Arabic speaking Levantine peoples (like the Palestinians who are Levantine people that again Dr. Ariella Oppenheim proves are related to and descends of the ancient, indigenous Canaanite people of Palestine: see the Jebusite Canaanites that Palestinians are descendants of). The "Bible" is corrupted and full of tons of errors, even secular academics and historians admit this the Canaanites were never killed off! As for your "6 Day war" comment the Zionists used a sneak attack against Egypt when have the Egyptian military was bogged down in a proxy civil war in North Yemen in 1967. The Zionists only won because of foreign support they got (see Holy Qur'an Surah 3:112), the Zionists were given and used top of the line French Dassault Mirage Fighter Jets. These French jets and all the Western colonialist backing was why they "won" at that time (they are losing now to Hezbollah, insha'Allah)! The Zionists are illegal occupiers of the whole land of Palestine; From The River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! Insha'Allah.
“This total area of Jewish land represents 6.6% of the total area of Palestine.”