Demographics of Palestine

The Demographics of Palestine refers to the demography, or the statistical study of the population of Palestine. Studies of the subject can cover a wide historical and geographical scope, with the definition of Palestine varying throughout the ages, and from scholar to scholar. Some studies cover the present demography of the State of Palestine or Palestinian territories and its people, while others attempt to determine population figures for the geographical region of Palestine in antiquity, which can include the area covered by modern day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, and parts of Syria and Lebanon. This article will provide an overview to the different demographic studies related to both the geographical region in antiquity through to the present and the political entity known as Palestine today, including the Palestinian people, half of whom live in the diaspora.

Contents 1 Early demographics 2 Demographics in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods 2.1 Travelers' impressions of 19th century Palestine 2.2 Official reports 3 The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine 4 Mandate period (1918-1948) 5 Current demographics 6 References

Early demographics

Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on 2 methods - censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settlement.

According to Joseph Jacobs, writing in the Jewish Encyclopedia^[1] (1901-1906), the Pentateuch contains a number of statements as to the number of Jews that left Egypt, the descendants of the seventy sons and grandsons of Jacob who took up their residence in that country. Altogether, including Levites, there were 611,730 males over twenty years of age, and therefore capable of bearing arms; this would imply a population of about 3,154,000. The Census of David is said to have recorded 1,300,000 males over twenty years of age, which would imply a population of over 5,000,000. The number of exiles who returned from Babylon is given at 42,360. Tacitus declares that Jerusalem at its fall contained 600,000 persons; Josephus, that there were as many as 1,100,000. According to Israeli archeologist Magen Broshi, "... the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period--the late Byzantine period, around AD 600"^[2] Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes: "... the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure."^[3]

Shmuel Katz writes:^[4]

When Jewish independence came to an end in the year 70, the population numbered, at a conservative estimate, some 5 million people. (By Josephus' figures, there were nearer 7 million.) Even sixty years after the destruction of the Temple, at the outbreak of the revolt led by Bar Kochba in 132, when large numbers had fled or been deported, the Jewish population of the country must have numbered at least 3 million, according to Dio Cassius' figures. Sixteen centuries later, when the practical possibility of the return to Zion appeared on the horizon, Palestine was a denuded, derelict, and depopulated country. The writings of travellers who visited Palestine in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century are filled with descriptions of its emptiness, its desolation. In 1738, Thomas Shaw wrote of the absence of people to fill - Palestine's fertile soil. In 1785, Constantine Francois Volney described the "rained" and "desolate" country. He had not seen the worst. Pilgrims and travellers continued to report in heartrending terms on its condition. Almost sixty years later, Alexander Keith, recalling Volney's description, wrote: "In his day the land had not fully reached its last degree of desolation and depopulation.^[5]

The table below represents estimates of the first century population of Palestine (as adapted from Byatt, 1973).

Authority	Jews	Total population1
Conder, C R[6]	-	6 million
Juster, J[7]	5 million	>5 million
Mazar, Benjamin[8]	-	>4 million
Klausner, Joseph[9]	3 million	3.5 million
Grant, Michael[10]	3 million	not given
Baron, Salo W[11]	2-2.5 million	2.5-3 million
Socin, A[12]	-	2.5-3 million
Lowdermilk, W C[13]	-	3 million
Avi-Yonah, M[14]	-	2.8 million
Glueck, N[15]	-	2.5 million
Beloch, K J[16]	2 million	not given
Grant, F C[17]	-	1.5-2.5 million
Byatt, A[18]	-	2.265 million
Daniel-Rops, H[19]	1.5 million	2 million
Derwacter, F M[20]	1 million	1.5 million
Pfeiffer, R H[21]	1 million	not given
Harnack, A[22]	500,000	not given
Jeremias, J[23]	500,000-600,000	not given
McCown, C C[24]	<500,000	<1 million

^1. There is no consensus on the population of Palestine in the first century of the Common Era; estimates range from under 1 million to 6 million.

Demographics in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods

In the middle of the first century of the Ottoman rule, i.e. 1550 CE, Bernard Lewis in a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman Rule of Palestine reports:^[25]

From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.

By Volney's estimates in 1785, there were no more than 200,000 people in the country.^[26]

In his paper 'Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects and Policy Implications'^[27] Sergio DellaPergola, drawing on the work of Bachi (1975), provides rough estimates of the population of Palestine west of the River Jordan by religion groups from the first century onwards summarised in the table below.

Year	Jews	Christians	Muslims	Total1
First half 1st century CE	Majority	-	-	~2,500²
5th century	Minority	Majority	-	>1st century
End 12th century	Minority	Minority	Majority	>225
14th cent. before Black Death	Minority	Minority	Majority	225
14th cent. after Black Death	Minority	Minority	Majority	150
1533-1539	5	6	145	157
1690-1691	2	11	219	232
1800	7	22	246	275
1890	43	57	432	532
1914	94	70	525	689
1922	84	71	589	752
1931	175	89	760	1,033
1947	630	143	1,181	1,970

^1. Figures in thousands. The total includes Druzes and other small religious minorities.
^2. There is no consensus on the population of Palestine in the first century of the Common Era; estimates range from under 1 million to 6 million.

According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews^[28]

	Qazas	Number of Towns and Villages	Number of Households
			Muslims	Christians	Jews	Total
1	Jerusalem
	Jerusalem	1	1,025	738	630	2,393
	Countryside	116	6,118	1,202	-	7,320
2	Hebron
	Hebron	1	2,800	-	200	3,000
	Countryside	52	2,820	-	-	2,820
3	Gaza
	Gaza	1	2,690	65	-	2,755
	Countryside	55	6,417	-	-	6,417
3	Jaffa
	Jaffa	3	865	266	-	1,131
	Ludd	.	700	207	-	907
	Ramla	.	675	250	-	925
	Countryside	61	3,439	-	-	3,439
4	Nablus
	Nablus	1	1,356	108	14	1,478
	Countryside	176	13,022	202	-	13,224
5	Jinin
	Jinin	1	656	16	-	672
	Countryside	39	2,120	17	-	2,137
6	Ajlun
	Countryside	97	1,599	137	-	1,736
7	Salt
	Salt	1	500	250	-	750
	Countryside	12	685	-	-	685
8	Akka
	Gaza	1	547	210	6	763
	Countryside	34	1,768	1,021	-	2,789
9	Haifa
	Haifa	1	224	228	8	460
	Countryside	41	2,011	161	-	2,171
10	Nazareth
	Nazareth	1	275	1,073	-	1,348
	Countryside	38	1,606	544	-	2,150
11	Tiberias
	Tiberias	1	159	66	400	625
	Countryside	7	507	-	-	507
12	Safad
	Safad	1	1,295	3	1,197	2,495
	Countryside	38	1,117	616	-	1,733

Figures from Ben-Arieh, in Scholch 1985, p. 388.

According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,^[29] the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.^[30] McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.^[31]

Travelers' impressions of 19th century Palestine

Alphonse de Lamartine visited Palestine in 1835, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence ... as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneam a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country ... the tomb of a whole people.^[32]

The satirist Mark Twain wrote a humorous account of his visit to Palestine in 1867, and wrote in chapters 46,49,52 and 56 of Innocents Abroad: "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely -- Palestine is no more of this workday world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition, it is dreamland."(Chapter 56)^[33] "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country". (Chapter 52)^[34] "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely. We never saw a human being on the whole route". (Chapter 49)^[35] "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. ...One may ride ten miles (16 km) hereabouts and not see ten human beings." ...these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness..."(Chapter 46)^[36]

"Innocents Abroad" was a literary satire which poked holes in the underpinnings of various popularly held theories, like manifest destiny. Twain held some of the usual colonialist and orientalist assumptions of the day, but he openly mocked Christian and Jewish claims to Arab-owned lands in Palestine.^[37]

Kathleen Christison, an American author who spent sixteen years as an analyst for the CIA, was critical of attempts to use Twain's humorous writing as a literal description of Palestine at that time. She writes that "Twain's descriptions are high in Israeli government press handouts that present a case for Israel's redemption of a land that had previously been empty and barren. His gross characterizations of the land and the people in the time before mass Jewish immigration are also often used by US propagandists for Israel."^[38] For example she noted that Twain described the Samaritans of Nablus at length without mentioning the much larger Arab population at all.^[39] The Arab population of Nablus at the time was about 20,000.^[40]

During the nineteenth century, many residents and visitors attempted to estimate the population without recourse to official data, and came up with a large number of different values. Estimates that are reasonably reliable are only available for the final third of the century, from which period Ottoman population and taxation registers have been preserved.^[41]

After a visit to Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha'am wrote:

From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so. In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked. ... Many of our people who came to buy land have been in Eretz Israel for months, and have toured its length and width, without finding what they seek.^[42]

In 1852 the American writer Bayard Taylor traveled across the Jezreel Valley, which he described in his 1854 book The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain as: "one of the richest districts in the world.",^[43] while Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine's Valley of Esdraelon was "a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive."^[44]

According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian, "wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."^[45]

In 1856 H.B. Tristram said of Palestine "A few years ago the whole Ghor (Jordan Valley) was in the hands of the fellaheen, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture…The same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon where….land is going out of cultivation and whole villages rapidly disappeared….Since the year 1838, no less than twenty villages there have thus erased from the map, and the stationary population extirpated."^[46]

According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian, "wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."^[47]

In 1946 Walter C. Lowdermilk, Assistant Chief of the United States Soil Conservation Service, compared the British Mandate of Palestine favorably to California:

The similarity of Southern California and Palestine is so close in climate, topography, soils and vegetation that the present condition of similarly placed areas in California is a reliable index of the early condition of the land of Palestine. Vegetation varied from desert scrub on lower slopes of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea, to luxuriant forests of Cedars of Lebanon on the flanks of Mount Hermon, similar to the desert vegetation from Coachella Valley below sea level in Southern California to pine and fir forests on lower slopes of Mt. Baldy (10,000 ft) in the San Gabriel Range. Rainfall favours Palestine, for Jaffa gets more rain (21.5 inches) per annum than Los Angeles (15.2 inches), and the Mt. Hermon mountain land mass gets up to 70 inches (1,800 mm) of rain while Mt. Baldy only 50 inches (1,300 mm). Other comparisons are striking. The region of the Jordan River, including Palestine and Trans-Jordan and the maritime slopes, is quite similar to California, but has an added advantage of its limestone country rock. The climates are alike, the natural vegetation, the physiographic features, except for the great limestone springs in Palestine. Similar crops may be grown. Differences are that soils of Palestine were uniformly better, that uplands have been badly eroded from misuse, and that slopes of Palestine favoured tree crops and were terraced where surface rock was ready at hand..".^[48]

Official reports

British consul James Finn noted in 1857 "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population."^[49]

The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission contains a description of conditions along Palestine's coastal plain in 1913: "The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]...Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen...The ploughs used were of wood...The yields were very poor...The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist...The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert...The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."^[50]

In 1920, the League of Nations' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were 700,000 people living in Palestine:

Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or--a small number--are Protestants. In 1921, a report on the Civil Administration of Palestine to the League of Nations said "underdeveloped and under-populated. The methods of agriculture are, for the most part, primitive; the area of land now cultivated could yield a far greater product. There are…large cultivable areas that are left untilled. The summits and slopes of the hills are admirably suited to the growth of trees, but there are no forests. Miles of sand dunes that could be redeemed, are untouched."^[51] The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.^[52]

By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).

The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine

Whether there was significant Arab immigration into Palestine after the beginning of Jewish settlement there in the late 19th century has become a matter of some controversy. The official British Census data for Palestine, the reports made by the Mandatory Administration to the League of Nations, the 1938 Palestine Partition Commission, Population expert A.M. Carr-Saunders, and the Anglo-American Committee concluded that Arab population growth was attributable to "natural increase", not to any substantial immigration.^[53]

According to Martin Gilbert, 50,000 Arabs immigrated to Palestine from the neighboring lands between 1919 and 1939 "attracted by the improving agricultural conditions and growing job opportunities, most of them created by the Jews".^[54]

American economist Fred Gottheil argues that there likely was significant Arab immigration:

There is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses. The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography—or other demographic analyses based on very crude data—acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.^[55]

Roberto Bachi has concluded that there was a small but significant unrecorded Muslim immigration into Palestine estimated at around 900 people per year or approximately 13,500 in total between 1931 and 1945.^[56]

McCarthy explains, "... evidence for Muslim immigration into Palestine is minimal. Because no Ottoman records of that immigration have yet been discovered, one is thrown back on demographic analysis to evaluate Muslim migration."^[56][57] McCarthy argues that there is no significant Arab immigration into mandatory Palestine:

From analyses of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks, one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after the 1870s was small. Had there been a large group of Muslim immigrants their numbers would have caused an unusual increase in the population and this would have appeared in the calculated rate of increase from one registration list to another... Such an increase would have been easily noticed; it was not there.^[57]

The argument that Arab immigration somehow made up a large part of the Palestinian Arab population is thus statistically untenable. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters of Arabs who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.^[58]

McCarthy also concludes that there was no significant internal migration to Jewish areas attributable to better economic conditions:

Some areas of Palestine did experience greater population growth than others, but the explanation for this is simple. Radical economic change was occurring all over the Mediterranean Basin at the time. Improved transportation, greater mercantile activity, and greater industry had increased the chances for employment in cities, especially coastal cities... Differential population increase was occurring all over the Eastern Mediterranean, not just in Palestine... The increase in Muslim population had little or nothing to do with Jewish immigration. In fact the province that experienced the greatest Jewish population growth (by .035 annually), Jerusalem Sanjak, was the province with the lowest rate of growth of Muslim population (.009).^[59]

Gad Gilbar has also concluded that the prosperity of the Palestine in the 45–50 years before World War I was a result of the modernization and growth of the economy owing to its integration with the world economy and especially with the economies of Europe. Although the reasons for growth were exogenous to Palestine the bearers were not waves of Jewish immigration, foreign intervention nor Ottoman reforms but "primarily local Arab Muslims and Christians."^[60]

Demographer Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine.^[61]

Yehoshua Porath believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:

As all the research by historian Fares Abdul Rahim and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no "natural" increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth. ... No one would doubt that some migrant workers came to Palestine from Syria and Trans-Jordan and remained there. But one has to add to this that there were migrations in the opposite direction as well. For example, a tradition developed in Hebron to go to study and work in Cairo, with the result that a permanent community of Hebronites had been living in Cairo since the fifteenth century. Trans-Jordan exported unskilled casual labor to Palestine; but before 1948 its civil service attracted a good many educated Palestinian Arabs who did not find work in Palestine itself. Demographically speaking, however, neither movement of population was significant in comparison to the decisive factor of natural increase.^[62]

Daniel Pipes responded to Porath by granting that From Time Immemorial quoted carelessly, used statistics sloppily, and ignored inconvenient facts. Nonetheless, he explained that:

Miss Peters's central thesis is that a substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century. She supports this argument with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer, including Professor Porath.

Professor Porath replied with an array of data culled from expert demographers to confirm his position. He also pointed out that Peters demographic statistics were inexplicable:

...nowhere in her main text or in the methodological appendices (V and VI) did Mrs. Peters bother to explain to her readers how she managed to break down the Ottoman or Cuinet's figures into smaller units than subdistricts. As far as I know no figures for the units smaller than subdistricts (Nahia; the parallel of the French commune), covering the area of Ottoman Palestine, were ever published. Therefore I can't avoid the conclusion that Mrs. Peters's figures were, at best, based on guesswork and an extremely tendentious guesswork at that.^[63]

Mandate period (1918-1948)

Current demographics

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others".^[64] Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim — 22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.^[65]

According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip by another 1.4 million. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel's National Security^[66] there are 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. This study was criticised by demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who estimated 3.33 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined at the end of 2005.^[67]

According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in Israel and the Palestinian Territories stands at 9.8-10.8 million.

Jordan has a population of around 6,000,000 (2007 estimate).^[68][69] Palestinians constitute approximately half of this number.^[70]

References