I have a question for the "experts". Who are the Palestinians? Are they mostly people who are descendants of people who lived in the region pre-20th century? Or is a substantial proportion of the the population descendants of arabs who moved to the region from neighboring regions?

I should probably add a little more to that post. I have read that many people moved to the region came their to take advantage of the economic opportunities created by jewish immigration to the region in the late 19th century, who were hoping to transform the region into a jewish homeland.

typo... came there (not came their)

damian, I realized you were talking about mcbry. I was coming to his defense. If you are really interested in the subject, you should read up on it so you can participate next time it springs up (and it certainly will). The internet is a great democratizer of information, as this thread shows - you don't need to spend thousands of dollars in tuition and books to have access to specialized information any more (for the most part). The vast majority of references made here have been to websites which you already have access to (unless you live in one of those countries that feels the need to protect you from 'bad' information).

As for myself, I read the Qu'ran one summer during college (just for kicks), was absolutely fascinated by it and Islam in general, and the BA in history I was pursuing immediately adopted an unofficial emphasis on Islamic Civilization after that. I was an Israeli partisan in my youth, until I started getting involved in Libertarianism (also during my college years) and observed a few debates such as these on Libertarian email lists. I saw that there was clearly another side to the story, and thought it pretty odd that I'd never been exposed to it until I was about 20. I considered converting to Islam for awhile, but was never been able to get with the official doctrine on a few key points and have obviously developed some Christanarchopacifist sympathies in the intervening years (hence the username).

Putin, was your undergrad in Polisci as well?

spyman,

The argument you've read was largely spawned by a book called "From Time Immemorial" by an American journalist named Joan Peters. Written in the '80s, it claimed that Palestine was almost completely devoid of people in the 1880s when the first Jewish settlers started to arrive. Nearly all the Palestinians who lived there by 1948 were alleged to've been immigrants from neighboring Arab lands who moved in just to mooch off the Jewish settlers. The claim is ridiculous, easily refuted by a quick check of Ottoman census records. She made up (or was fed) many of the claims, selectively cited others, and once this was all exposed many of the pro-Israel pundits who had initially lauded the book had to hang their head in shame. The whole thing was discussed briefly by the professor of my Introduction to Historiography (the study of historical methodology) class in the late '90s as an object lesson in the perils of journalists and other amateurs getting involved in historical research without any background in the subject they were investigating.

Interestingly, the whole argument mirrors a similar one developed in South Africa in earlier years - that there were no black Africans living in the southern tip of Africa until after the Portuguese got there in the 16th century.

The argument I believe in that Batu people did not live in the Southern tip of Africa. But rather that the region was inhabited by San people. Is this false?

@dannyboi
"Nuke Israel- especially after today's deliberate demolition of a hotel for 20 homes inside the proposed Palestinian state- why did we stop hitler?"

Why would you want to nuke 1.2 million arabs?


"Israel never existed as a proper state til it's creation, same as Palestine so research some more"
Which is historically incorrect. Historically speaking, Israel existed as a state more than 2000 years ago.

Well I see that according to wikipedia this is false, which has Bantu people living in the region from around 1000 AD. It is true I did read that about the tip of South Africa - I think the book was the Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom (I think that was the book), which while it was an interesting read did ring a few "bullshit" alarm bells for me on some points.

I seem to recall hearing a specific claim that it was completely uninhabited, but I (or whoever I heard this from) could have been mistaken.

Correction: "that it was *claimed to be* completely uninhabited"

Okay let's say "Time Immemorial" is an exaggeration. Is the claim partially true? Was their substantial immigration non-jewish immigration to the region?

Still on the question of South Africa - immigration of Europeans from the 16th century is still a long time. How long do people have to live in a region before they can claim some right to live in that region?

"Who are the Palestinians? Are they mostly people who are descendants of people who lived in the region pre-20th century? Or is a substantial proportion of the the population descendants of arabs who moved to the region from neighboring regions?"

Most travelogues/eye-witness accounts of Palestine during the 19th century claim the land was very sparsely populated (including Mark Twain)t. Population only started to increase in the late 1800s, not coincidentally when the first aliyah arrived. Plus, the Arabs of the region tended to be nomadic, so they didn't establish many settled communities.

This is a helpful exchange on the topic. The fact is, the Arab population grew by over 250,000 in about a decade (1931-1941), according to British Mandate sources. The dispute is not whether this increase took place but whether it was due to natural causes (lower death rate) or immigration.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/mar/27/mrs-peterss-palestine-an-exchange/

Here's a short article which claims that the increase was due to immigration.
http://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine

"Putin, was your undergrad in Polisci as well?"

Yes. My undergraduate advisor was a Middle East specialist, Yemen in particular. I took a course on Comparative Middle East politics and a research seminar on the Arab-Israeli conflict, both with my advisor. He was fond of Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim, and introduced me to Finkelstein's work.

"The claim is ridiculous, easily refuted by a quick check of Ottoman census records."

Peters' critics admit that the Ottoman records undercount the Arab population.

Here's what Porath, a staunch critic of Peters, says about the Ottoman census.

"I never claimed, however, that the 1893 Ottoman census figure of the number of Jews living in Palestine (9,817) is correct; nor do I accept that the Ottoman figure for the Muslims (371,959), also cited by Mrs. Peters from an article by K. Karpat,1 is correct. As all students of Ottoman history know, only after 1909 did the “Young Turks” government begin to draft Christian and Jewish subjects of the Ottoman Empire into the army. Therefore, until that date, it was mainly the Muslims who had good reason not to register their names with the census authorities or, for that matter, with any other official authorities, since registration made them easy prey for the draft officers. The same fear prompted them to avoid the land registers too—with disastrous results for their property rights.

As a result the official Ottoman figure for the Christian population (42,689) looks fairly accurate, whereas the figure for the Muslims is underestimated."

I just read the www.meforum.org article. It strikes me as a compelling argument.
If there was substantial investment in the region, surely there would have been substantial immigration to region? And not just jewish. No?

This is a very good piece on 'From Time Immemorial' by Noam Chomsky (apparently a transcription of a lecture):

http://www.chomsky.info/books/power01.htm

It paints a pretty bleak picture of academic freedom in America - stuff like this is one of the reasons I never went on to grad school.

I am going to fall asleep before I get through the whole thing, but this:

http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

appears to be a good general survey of the issue thus far.

Your links were interesting Tolstoy. The second seemed to be a very even-handed discussion of the topic of the the changing demography of Israel/Palestine over the past 100 years or so.

maybe someone here could help me with my report i need to make for school?? :)

for the people that doesn't see the joke:
i see some posts here that are longer then my report needs to be...