Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of Canaan was occupied by Canaanites.

"Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes."

The present-day Palestinians' ancestral heritage

"But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...And that parent tree was Canaanite...[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.] made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin."

The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine

"The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David's conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule."

More on Canaanite civilization

"Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE."

Under the provisions of the (Ottoman Land) 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine."

"Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880's...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it."

"Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said 'all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators'...The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation."

Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine."

The quote below (from "The Innocent Abroad" by Mark Twain describing his journey to Lebanon, Syria, and the Holy Land in 1867) has been widely circulated in Israeli text books and media outlets as facts about Palestine in the mid-19th century. As we will conclusively prove below, this quote was purposely taken out of context for the sole purpose of deceiving its readers into thinking that Palestine was empty, destitute, and barren desert; of course until Zionist/Israeli Jews "made" its desert bloom. Mark Twain wrote:

"..... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent mournful expanse.... a desolation.... we never saw a human being on the whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country." (Mark Twain, p. 361-362)

Before analyzing what Mark Twain wrote, the following facts should be noted:

* The arable land in Palestine is under 17% of the total land, click here to view Israel's profile at CIA's Worldfact Book.
* Mark Twain's visit occurred during the middle of the hot Mediterranean summer.
* Mark Twain visited the region soon after the hostilities between Christian and Muslims (mostly Druze) in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, where tens of thousands of Christian Arabs were massacred in 1861. This explains his apparent hostility and racist remarks against the Ottoman Turks and Arabs.
* His visit to Palestine was brief by all accounts, which encompassed only the Biblical areas already cited in the Bible.
* No statistical data whatsoever was provided by Mark Twain about Palestine's agriculture or demographic make up.
* Mark Twain always compared the region to American cities and fertile lands, which is clearly unfair. Both are in separate world, environment, government, ... etc., which is similar to comparing impoverished Africa with eastern Europe these days.

It is not only that Mark Twain described Palestine as barren desert, he extended this description to Greece, Lebanon, and Syria. He stated:

"From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw little but forbidden sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by three or four graceful columns of some ancient temples, lonely and deserted---a fitting symbol of desolation that has come upon all Greece in these latter ages. We saw no plowed fields, very few villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, apparently." (Mark Twain, p. 203)

"Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only used to the God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should think a Syrian would go wild with ecstasy when such a picture bursts upon him for the first time." (Mark Twain, p. 262)

From the above quote, the reader may get the impression that Greece is empty since he stated: "We saw no plowed fields, very few villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind," on the other hand, he contradict himself on the same page, he stated:

"The nation numbers only eight hundred thousand souls." (Mark Twain, p. 203)

As Mark Twain entered Nablus and Jaffa cities, he stated:

"The narrow canyon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, in under high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that tower on either side." (Mark Twain, p. 322)

"We came finally to the noble grove of orange trees in which the Oriental city of Jaffa lied buried." (Mark Twain, p. 360)

Conclusion

Mark Twain is a renowned American author whose contribution to American literature is immense. On the other hand, what he wrote is filled with dangerous stereotypes, emotions, and in many cases contradictions. So it is dangerous and misleading to quote him and make him an authority of the region solely based on the description of his trip. Israeli and Zionist propagandists are the best of spinning the facts to their advantage, and quoting Mark Twain out of context is classic in this matter.

Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314."