From: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: WHERE DO THE "palestinians" COME FROM?
Date: 5 Jan 1993 08:54:39 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: world
Reply-To: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.23.70

In article 134549F66204@BARILVM.BITNET, Shaul Wallach <F66204@BARILVM.BITNET> () writes:
>In article <4618@bimacs.BITNET>, ehrlich@bimacs.BITNET (Gideon Ehrlich) writes:

>>(Zeyd M. Ben-Halim) writes:

>>> Where do the palestinians come from?

>>From : Egypt , Syria , Afgahnistan, Iran, Magrab ( North Africa),
>>      Turky, Bosnia , Saudi-Arabia  ....

>>For more details look at : Britanica (1910) PALESTINE , population .

>>and at the new very detailed scientific book:

>> Prof.  DAVID GROSSMAN:  RURAL PROCESS-PATERN RELATIONSHIPS
>>        Published by Praeger   March 1992.

>>The book is based on both: written old sources and an extensive
>>researches in the area , aspecially in the samaria farms where the big
>>Egyptian mass population is located.
>>There are a lot of maps tables and diagrams.
>>A must for everyone interesting in the topic.

>>  Shalom     Gideon Ehrlich

>     Prof. Grossman's new book, based on earlier published work,
>does give details of Arab migration into Palestine, mainly from
>Egypt and Syria. However, Grossman makes no effort to estimate
>the size of this immigration as a fraction of the total Arab
>population, my guess being that the paucity of Ottoman population
>data simply does not allow such an estimate to be made.

I agree with that.  Another point (based on looking at the book but
not Grossman's earlier work) is that the nature of his investigation
necessarily concentrates his attention on recent immigrants.  He is
concerned with the processes of migration and settlement, with
particular emphasis on the social patterns underlying sedentation
and nomadisation.  The ordinary fellahin, who formed the bulk of
the rural population, are of less importance to his work and so
are given less attention.  This is not an accusation of bias; it
is important for readers to know that Grossman does not draw from
his own work the conclusions that Gideon does.

>    There are, however, some numerical data, and from them it
>can be surmised that a significant portion, though not necessarily
>a majority, of Palestinian Arabs are of relatively recent foreign
>origin, having immigrated during the Ottoman period or during
>British rule. 

You are correct in that it be surmised, but certainly Grossman's
book does not give strong evidence for it (except in a few areas
such as the northern Negev).  His work is primarily qualitative,
and the migratory movements he describes appear to account for
thousands out of a total of hundreds of thousands.  (I'm surmising
as well.)

>These include immigrants primarily from Transjordan,
>Syria and Egypt. Those refugees who came from Algeria, Circassia
>and Bosnia were significantly fewer, as Grossman states on p. 125.

>     Grossman (in GeoJournal 9:393-406 (1984)) found that the
>ruling families of most of the districts of Samaria traced their
>origins to Transjordan from the late 17th or early 18th centuries.
>This tallies with the traditions of other West Bank villagers, such
>as those of Beitin (Abdulla M. Lutfiyya, "Baytin: A Jordanian Village",
>Mouton, The Hague (1966)), that their ancestors immigrated from
>Transjordan. The causes of much of this immigration are rooted in
>intertribal warfare, which was common throughout the Ottoman rule.
>Grossman notes, however, that there was also emigration from Palestine
>to Transjordan during the same period, demonstrating the strong ties
>between the two regions. Many villagers whom Grossman interviewed
>in his own field work claimed that their ancestors came with the
>Muslim armies which conquered Palestine in 634 or with those of
>Salah ad-Din who defeated the Crusaders. However, he found also
>that these ancestors did not always settle immediately in
>Palestine but sometimes first in Transjordan for several
>generations before moving finally to Palestine.

His map of families claiming Egyptian descent is probably like you
would find if you drew a map of families in Vermont claiming
Armenian descent.  It doesn't indicate much about numbers.

>     The immigration from Syria, including the southern area of
>Hauran, is estimated to be smaller in importance. Unlike the
>immigration from Transjordan, it had economic causes as well,
>such as the migrant laborers from Hauran during the British
>Mandate. The two articles by E. Bromberger and P. J. Loftus in
>the June 1948 issue of Population Studies express differing
>opinions on the size of Arab immigration during the Mandatory
>period, an issue which has been discussed repeatedly on the net.
>On the basis of government statistics, Loftus concludes that
>only about 2,000 of those immigrants from Hauran who were
>registered stayed and that the rest were repatriated. 

Ok, but you are speaking of a small fraction of one percent of
the total population.

>However,
>immigration from Syria goes back much earlier than the British
>Mandate. This writer knew personally a Palestinian student here
>at Bar-Ilan from Jaljuliya (near Petah Tiqwa) whose family has
>lived for generations in Palestine and yet has distant relatives
>in Syria.

>     Immigration from Egypt was substantially larger than that
>from Syria and is dealt with by Grossman in detail in his book
>(pp. 104-109). He discerns three major waves of immigration
>during the late Ottoman period. The first occurred as a result
>of the plagues and droughts of the years 1783 to 1785, in which
>a traveller estimated that one sixth of the population left for
>Palestine and Syria. The next wave took place starting in 1831
>as a result of Muhammad Ali's taxation policies. Grossman
>(in GeoJournal, cited above) quotes a contemporary source to
>the effect that more than 6,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine
>in 1831 alone. 

Yes, but it is worth considering it as a percentage.  The number
of births in Palestine that year would have been much greater.

>               While occupying Palestine until 1840, Muhammad
>Ali encouraged Egyptian immigration, and after his retreat many
>of his officers and servants remained. The last wave occurred
>during the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, sources for
>which are given by Grossman (in GeoJournal, also in his Hebrew
>article in Cathedra 45:57-86 (1987)). Bromberger (in his article
>in Population Studies) also gives the translation of an Egyptian
>newspaper article of 1946 claiming that during World War II some
>3,000 women from the Sharqiyya district moved to Palestine for
>marriage because the bride-price there was higher. According to
>Grossman, the Egyptian immigrants settled mainly in the coastal
>plain (around Jaffo and its environs), but a sizeable part of them
>reached the villages in the hills of Samaria. They formed a
>significant proportion of the Beduin population in the Negev,
>one tribe of which was nearly 50% of Egyptian origin.

>     Grossman's sources include not only Zionist historians but
>Arab sources as well, such as "Biladuna Filastin" ("Palestine:
>Our Country") by M. al-Dabbagh (Beirut, 1965).

>     In summary, while the data presented by Grossman and others
>do not permit any reliable quantitative estimate of Arab immigration
>to Palestine in modern times, they do definitely indicate that it is
>not negligible at the very least.

No, it wasn't negligible.  On the other hand, Grossman's book most
definitely does not support Gideon's political purposes (which I 
consider racist).

>     Now to Zeyd M. Ben-Halim's questions:

>In article <1993Jan4.075958.1292@netcom.com>, zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M.
>Ben-Halim) writes:

>>And where do the jews come from?

>>Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria,
>>Morocco, France, Britain, USA, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Tukey.
>>What was your point again? :-)
>>
>>  ...
>>
>>>A must for everyone interesting in the topic.
>>So are the records of all the jewish immigrants to Palestine. Why is palestine
>>always empty so that all of these gentiles keep moving into it?

>     The point is not that Palestine was "always empty"; in fact it was
>always populated and had about 450,000 inhabitants at the end of the
>19th century before the large waves of Jewish immigration. However,
>the point is that its non-Jewish population was not a stable,
>homogeneous aborigine people who had always existed on the land,
>as some Arab historians maintain (and even identify the Palestinians
>with the ancient Canaanites or the Philistines). 

Claims such as those must be taken with very large grains of salt,
because it only takes very low rate of immigration to make a large
demographic change over many generations.  Thus, even if there was
a steady more-or-less stable population, immigration at the VERY
low rate of 1/114 per generation (maybe 1/2500 per year) is enough
to ensure that after 80 generations the average resident has more
half their ancestors (of 80 generations earlier) foreigners.
(This is based on a rather crude mathematical model; another
data point: 1/40 per generation -> 14%.)  So, even if one could 
correctly identify Canaanites with Palestinians (a very doubtful 
proposition) the average Palestinian would have only a minute fraction 
of Canaanite ancestors.  (In fact, just to mix things up a bit, 
I would expect the average Palestinian to have in their ancestry 
more Jews than Canaanites.)

Such calculations apply to the set of Jews also.  The fact is, most
people in the world today, including most Jews, have ancestors
from very many different places and cultures.   In which of those
many different places is it reasonable to look for ancient wrongs
that must be put right?  I have ancestors in Ireland, England, Wales,
Scotland, France, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, Ukraine, Czeckoslovakia
(remember that), Austria, Russia, and many other places.  I would
expect that quite a few of them lost their land by foul means; am
I permitted to seek out these injustices and correct them?  Note 
that I am talking of relatively recent (<600 years) ancestors from
whom I can prove actual descent.  

In order to make sense of claims of land rights residing with 
particular groups, one has to look beyond the nationality of one's 
ancestors and to things like continuum's of cultural identities.  
Frankly I can't see any objective value in such claims, neither 
Jewish nor Arab.  For me, someone who acquired land by fair means
a few generations ago, even if they had just moved from another 
place, has a right of occupancy which completely overwhelms that
of someone else who merely belongs to a group whose "ancestors"
(i.e., that fraction, perhaps small, of those ancestors thousands 
of years earlier with whom they have decided to identify) were
unjustly disenherited.

>                                                  As Grossman and
>others have shown, Palestine has been subject to significant
>population movements, both in and out, in recent historical
>times. The claim of an ancient historical connection still
>being advanced by some Palestinians accordingly loses much of
>its weight and thus detracts from their cause. 

You are right, but I don't think their cause requires such 
ancient connection.  I also think it is perverse when people
such as Gideon claim that some group does not have land rights
because they accepted permanent immigrants into their number,
and at the same time permit people who undergo a religious
ceremony to share the claimed land rights of another group.

To summarise my position, I find studies such as Grossman's very
interesting from an academic historical viewpoint.  Since I do
not believe in such a thing as "land rights due to ancient
possession" I don't accept any modern political weight for them,
one way or the other.

>                                               On historical
>connections see also what I wrote in soc.culture.arabic on
>Jan. 1, 1993.

Yes, very interesting.

>Shalom,

>Shaul Wallach

Brendan.