Evidence for Arab Migration
There are several problems associated with estimating Arab immigration into Palestine during the 1920s,
the principal one being that Arab migration flows were, in the main, illegal, and therefore unreported and unrecorded.[17] But they were not entirely unnoticed.
Demographer U.O. Schmelz's analysis of the Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron
kazas (Ottoman districts), by place of birth, showed that of those Arab Palestinians born outside their localities of residence,
approximately half represented intra-Palestine movementfrom areas of low-level economic activity to areas of higher-level activitywhile the other half represented Arab immigration into Palestine itself, 43 percent originating in Asia, 39 percent in Africa, and 20 percent in Turkey.
[18] Schmelz conjectured:
The above-average population growth of the Arab villages around the city of Jerusalem, with its Jewish majority, continued until the end of the mandatory period. This must have been dueas elsewhere in Palestine under similar conditionsto in-migrants attracted by economic opportunities, and to the beneficial effects of improved health services in reducing mortality
just as happened in other parts of Palestine around cities with a large Jewish population sector.
[19]
While Schmelz restricted his research of the 1905 Palestinian census to the official Ottoman registrations and used these registrations with only minor critical comment, he did acknowledge that "stable population models assume the absence of external migrations,
a condition which was obviously not met by all the subpopulations" that Schmelz enumerated.
[20]
Like U.O. Schmelz, Roberto Bachi expressed some reservation about the virtual non-existence of data and discussion concerning migration into and within Palestine. He writes:
Between 1800 and 1914, the Muslim population had a yearly average increase in the order of magnitude of roughly 6-7 per thousand. This can be compared to the very crude estimate of about 4 per thousand for the "less developed countries" of the world (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) between 1800 and 1910.
It is possible that part of the growth of the Muslim population was due to immigration.
[21]
Although Bachi did not pursue the linkage between undocumented immigration into Palestine and the 6 (or 7) to 4 per thousand differential in growth rates between Palestine and the other less developed countries (LDCs), the idea that at least one-third of Palestine's population growth may be attributed to immigration is
using Bachi's own growth rate differentialsnot an entirely unreasonable one.
Lacking verifiable evidence did not prevent Bachi from stating the obvious concerning internal migration within Palestine:
The great economic development of the coastal plainslargely due to Jewish immigrationwas accompanied both in 1922-1931 and in 1931-1944 by a much stronger increase of the Muslim and Christian populations in this region than that registered in other regions. This was probably due to two reasons: stronger decrease in mortality of the non-Jewish population in the neighborhood of Jewish areas and
internal migration toward the more developed zones.
[22]
In the footnote accompanying this quote, Bachi writes: "As no statistics are available for internal migration, this conclusion has been obtained from indirect evidence."
[23] Bachi's footnote is instructive. The "indirect evidence" he referred to no doubt included his understanding of the important role economics plays in explaining demographic movements.
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There has been unrecorded illegal immigration of both Jews and Arabs in the period since the census of 1931, but it is clear that, since it cannot be recorded, no estimate of its volume is possible.
[25]
The 1935 British report to the League of Nations noted that:
One thousand five hundred and fifty-seven persons (including 565 Jews) who, having made their way into the country surreptitiously, were later detected, were sentenced to imprisonment for their offence and recommended for deportation.
[26]
The number who "made their way into the country surreptitiously" and undetected was neither estimated nor mentioned.
Historian Gad Gilbar's observation on Ruth Kark's contribution to his edited volume
Ottoman Palestine, 1800-1914, touches on the issue of Arab immigration into and within Palestine. He relates her ideas in "The Rise and Decline of Coastal Towns in Palestine" to Charles Issawi's thesis concerning the role of minority groups and foreigners in the development of Middle Eastern towns. Explaining why no other Palestinian cities grew as rapidly as Jaffa and Haifa did during the final three decades of the Ottoman rule, Gilbar writes: "Both attracted population from the rural and urban surroundings and immigrants from outside Palestine."
[27]
***
This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Trans-Jordan and Syria, and 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.
[29]
