Second, it points to non-Jewish immigrants making up a majority of the West Bank and Gaza population. In the exaggerated wording of Fathi Hammad, a top Hamas figure, “half of Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half are Saudis.” Third, it undermines Palestinian claims to have lived in Palestine ever since antiquity, claims we now turn to by

Committee of Enquiry made no effort to estimate their numbers but vaguely noted that “inhabitants of neighboring countries, attracted by the high rates of wages offered for employment on military works, entered Palestine illegally in considerable numbers during the War.” Even more vaguely, the report continues For example, in 1942, Egyptian lab

Jarvis pointed to the economic attraction of Zionism: “it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” Winston Churchill concurred Why is there harsh injustice done if people [Zionists] come in and make a liveli

Muslim immigration was not entirely spontaneous. Fearing another Western-oriented, non-Muslim population like the Armenian one, Ottoman rulers encouraged Muslims to move to Palestine. Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909), once commented that “We cannot view Jewish immigration favorably. We could only open our borders to those who belong to the sa

Many invaders brought new cohorts of settlers, thereby adding new strata of population. For example, after Egypt’s conquest of Palestine in 1831, 6,000 Egyptian peasants moved to Palestine. Significantly, they maintained a cultural distinctiveness across nearly two centuries. The German Philip Baldensperger, a long-time resident of Palestine, obs