The solution to the "palesitinian problem"

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


Knowing that the Negev was most likely sparsely populated we can allow ourselves to ignore it, and even then comparing to the nations you mentioned it doesn't look very dense:

www.stockmapagency.com...
www.stockmapagency.com...
www.stockmapagency.com...

But what about what we don't know?

You keep adjusting those number as if numbers alone can provide you with the whole picture, problem is they can't. We don't know exactly where all the fertile lands were, and whether or not they were they only ones settled by the Arabs, we're not factoring in the large urban population (175,000/532,000, was it?), where the main routes went, etc.
The fact of the matter is we have no idea how Palestine would have looked like either on a density map, or to a traveler.
What we do know is that people came back from Palestine with stories of how desolate it was, even if those stories were exaggerated, that the British conception (born from sloppy and inaccurate census) was that nearly half of the population was nomadic (according to Peters' numbers, which are based on British sources), and we have first hand accounts of Jews saying that from abroad the land was thought to be nearly uninhabited.

So we're back to square one- What's more relevant to choosing Palestine as a destination for Zionism in the mid-late 19th century, what they knew about the place, or what they thought they knew?
And, since you keep steering back to that topic, I'll add this- I am in no way claiming that "The land was empty" and therefor the Palestinians have no claim to Palestine, I am simply contesting the claim that the Jews chose Palestine knowing they'd end up in the midst of a million Arabs, and chose to immigrate regardless.
If you had actually read my posts (in this thread or others) instead of guessing what I meant, you would know that.

The 1920's are a completely different story- the British mandate, the Balfour declaration, the Faisal-Weizmann agreement and how the French screwed it up, the carving up of borders, the rise of a local Arab nationality, etc...
You can't compare the two eras...