Palestine Before 1947 By Refaat M. Loubani

Palestine Before 1947 By Refaat M. Loubani

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Posted on November 7, 2001

By 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:

Citrus

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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