but Palestine has become the center of attraction for the whole Near East. Tens of thousands of Arabs enter illegally every year in search of work.” In a 1948 report from Mandatory Palestine, future U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy (who twenty years hence would be assassinated by a Palestinian) concurred: “The Jews point with pride to the fact th

Arabians are particularly conspicuous. The Jerusalem family called Al-Husseini claims to be descended from Hussein, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, implying roots in Arabia; the two dominant Palestinian politicians of the twentieth century, Amin al-Husseini and Yasir Arafat (birth name: Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudw

acquired that ethnicity via their contribution to the Zionist project. Officialdom both far away (such as Churchill and Roosevelt) or nearby understood this. Thus, C.S. Jarvis, British governor of the Sinai in 1922-36, noted the illegal Arab immigration coming not only “from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.” The price of real est

the Jewish philanthropist Edmund de copyright appears to have been the largest employer of Palestinian labor. Even that did not suffice, however, as Arieh L. Avneri of the Tabenkin Institute explains: “Palestine attracted not only Jews who came because of national motivation but also Arab immigrants from neighboring countries who hoped to find ea

This article seeks to restore the historical record by reviewing non-Jewish immigration to Palestine during the century from the 1840s until the creation of Israel in 1948; then it examines the fairytale that displaced that record. A future article will take up non-Jewish immigration since 1948 to the State of Israel Geography and religion explain