The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931 by Fred M. Gottheil In deep antiquity, particularly in Egypt, the early civilization where the arts were most strongly developed, the visualization was aspective: that is the artist, working in paint or low-relief sculpture. conveyed to his two-dimensional surface not so much what he saw as what he knew was there. Paul Johnson, The Renaissance alestinian demography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has never been just a matter of numbers. It has always been—and consciously so— a frontline weapon used in a life-and-death struggle for nationhood among two peoples living in what used to be known as Palestine, each having competing ideologies and competing claims to territorial inheritance and rights to national sovereignty. The problem with staking so much on so narrow a focus as past demography is that the data generated by demographers and others since the early nineteenth century are so lacking in precision that, in some matters of dispute concerning demography, "anyone's guess," as the saying goes, "is as good as any other." Or almost so. Of course, people still engaged in this high-stakes game of Palestinian demographic warfare will argue otherwise. With few exceptions, they insist that their own sources are superior, their own estimates more scientific, and their critics more ideological. There are really two issues—or two battlefronts—associated with estimating Pales- tinian demography. The first has to do with sheer numbers, i.e., measuring over time the size of Palestine's total and subgroup populations. The second battlefront is consider- ably more contentious. It is estimating the percentages of population growth among subgroups attributed to natural increase and to immigration. This immigration factor—or its ab- Fred M. Gottheit is a professor in the depart- s i n c e i s paramount. I f a significant per- ment of economics, University of Illinois. c e n t of a population is composed of recent Gottheit: Arab Immieration / 53 In the 1920s, Jewish immigration and British rule produced in Palestine a standard of living previously unknown in the Middle East. arrivals, then claims of historic tenancy are com- promised. This explains why Arab Palestinians and others use the term "intruder" to describe the Jewish population of Palestine. The impor- tance of Jewish immigration to the Jewish popu- lation of Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is undisputed. But Jewish claims to territorial inheritance and to national sovereignty lie elsewhere, in history rather than demography. On the other hand, for Arab Palestinians, the character of their demography is at the heart of their claim to territorial inheritance and na- tional sovereignty. Their contention, seen by them as being beyond dispute, is that Arab Palestinians have deep and timeless roots in that geography and that their own immi- gration into that geogra- phy has at no time been consequential. To chal- lenge that contention, then, is to challenge their self-selected criterion for sovereignty. That is to say, the character of Arab Pales- tinian demography is the single most important piece of evidence sup- porting the Arab Palestinian claim to territorial inheritance and national sovereignty. The Arab Palestinian population—large or small, growing or not—is determined, they insist, strictly by birth and death rates among Arab Palestinians in Palestine, that is, by natural increase alone. This view of their population origin is associ- ated with their still more insular view of "spatial stickiness," that is, their insistence as well that Arabs have not only been disinclined to migrate out of or into Palestine but also that Arab Pales- tinians have been disinclined to move from one region to another within Palestine. Before examining these contentions and the competing Arab Palestinian population esti- mates offered by scholars in a variety of disci- plines, e.g., economics, sociology, demography, and history. it may be useful to speculate on what anyone looking at late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Palestinian demography should expect to discover. DISPARITIES AND MIGRATION If you were asked to guess which of two corn farmers—a typical Iowa farm laborer or a typical Egyptian farm laborer—produced more corn per acre, the probability is high that you would choose the Iowa farmer. And the prob- ability is just as high that you would be right— and for the right reasons. Among the reasons you would offer to explain your choice are two: 1) the Iowa farmer has access to more capital, and 2) the level of technology used on the Iowa farm is considerably more advanced. This im- posing combination of more capital and higher levels of technology makes it no contest at all. Your reasoning—the cause-effect relation- ship between farm productivity. capital. and tech- nology—is mapped in Exhibit 1 (see page 55). The output curve Q measures the value of corn produced by a farm laborer working with differ- ent quantities of capital. The more capital used by the farm laborer, the higher is that laborer's productivity. For example, working with $200 of farm machinery, the farm laborer produces $50 worth of corn, point a. If the capital per laborer ratio increases from $200 to $250—economists call this increase "capital deepening"—the laborer's productivity increases from $50 to $60, point b. The curvature of Q—tlatteni.ng with capi- tal deepening—is explained by the law of dimin- ishing returns. Beyond some point, the produc- tivity gains generated by capital deepening rap- idly approach zero. But that is not the end of the story. More advanced farm technology can shift the output curve upward from Q to Q'. That is to say, still using $200 of capital but this time in a qualita- tively superior form of technology generates not $50 but $70 worth of corn, point c. Some changes in technology can produce very dramatic changes in productivity. Compare, for example, the productivity of a $1.000 computer printer to the productivity generated by $1,000 worth of pen and ink. 54 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY WINTER 2003 Exhibit 1 The moral is simple enough. The more economies engage in capital deepening and technological change, the more they will ex- perience increasing labor productivity. Higher levels of labor productivity make higher wage rates more affordable and also increase levels of employment. Imagine, then, two adjacent economies, one heavily involved in capital deepening and techno- logical change, the other reluctant or u n - able to change its technology or levels of capital deepening. The consequences are inevitable. The productivity gap between the two economies widens, creating the incen- tives for labor mobility. MIGRATORY I M P U L S E S When dog bites man, it's not news. When man bites dog, it's news. Similarly, when consid- erable regional disparities in labor productivity. wage rates, and employment opportunities fail to generate labor mobility—particularly among regions in close proximity—it is newsworthy. That is to say, what really has to he explained is not why people move from less attractive economies to more attractive economies, but why they don't. Of course. not everybody moves. Lack of information as well as physical. legal. political, religious, and social barriers can work to impede movement. The elderly typically respond less to economic incentives than the young, and peoples' levels of energy and personal aspira- tions can differ markedly. These factors notwith- standing, it requires hardly a stretch of the imagi- nation to argue that the strength of the migra- tory impulse among populations is highly corre- lated with differentials in labor productivity and standards of living. Historical and contemporary evidence sup- porting migratory impulses, particularly among populations in the developing economies of the world, is overwhelming) While there is every 1O n June 20, 2002. there were 2.840,000 "migration" entries on the Internet (Googlc): 319.000 for Asian migration alone. $200 $ 2 5 0 Capital per worker reason to suspect specific estimates—the meth- odology used in tracking migrants is still fairly crude and in some cases politically motivated— the picture is nonetheless clear. Some migratory routes have become virtual highways. Since the mid-twentieth century, millions of North African and East European migrants have left their na- tive villages, towns, and cities for the more pro- ductive and higher-paying jobs in western E u - rope. The European Commission estimates that approximately one-half million migrants enter the European Union (EU) illegally each year, almost as many as enter legally.' Such migration (lows are anything but unique. In Asia, the higher- paying employment opportunities in the more industrially advanced economies of Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and South Korea have attracted an estimated 6.5 million Asian migrants from the less techno- logically developed economies.; Legal and ille- gal migrant workers in 1998 in Japan alone num- bered 1.35 million. The principal countries of ori- 282.100 for African migration. 291.0I1) for Middle Eastern mi- gration, 78,000 for Arab migration. and 69.000 for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development migration. The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United Nations have published extensively on the subject. 2 Reuters. June 18. 2002. 3 The Jakan° Pusf. Mar. 3. 2000. Gottheit: Arab Immigration / 55 Immigration equaled jobs. An Arab boatman, i n the employ of the Jewish Agency's immigration department, disembarks Jewish immigrants in H i * , 1935. gin were China (234,000 legal and 38,000 illegal) and the Philippines (84,000 legal, 43,000 it legal).4 Or consider the Indonesia-Malaysia connec- tion. In 2001. there were 850,000 Indonesians working legally in Malaysia. A n additional 350,000 to 400,000 were unauthorized.5 That is no surprise when you consider that Indone- sian migrants earned $2 per day in Malaysia compared to the $0.28 per day they would have earned in Indonesia .6 The migratory impulse is alive and well in the Americas for much the same reasons. The legal and illegal, daily and nightly trek north across the Rio Grande by Mexicans continues to be triggered by the glaring U.S.-Mexican 4 Peter Stalker, Growing Global Migratu,n and its Implica- tions far the United States (Washington: National Intelligence Council, Mar. 2tx11), p. 38, table 3, at http:/lwww.cia.gov/nic/ graphics/migration.pdf. 5 Migration News. Oct. 2001, p. 2.. at http://migration. ucdav is.eduimniarchive_mn/oct_2001-16mn.html. 6 nue !atom Post. Mar. 1 20110. wage disparities. A 1996 survey of 496 undocu- mented Mexican migrants to the United States showed that they averaged $278 per week com- pared to the $31 they had earned at their last Mexican job.' While there may be reason to question the specific numbers given for the Mexican migratory flows, particularly the ille- gal estimates, there is little justification to ques- tion the economic causes associated with the flow itself. In 1970s Africa, oil-rich Nigeria absorbed millions of legal and illegal African migrants seeking to escape the drought, famine, and pov- erty in their native Ghana, Niger, and Chad. The oil-price collapse in the 1980s forced Nigeria to reconsider its open-door immigration policy and by the mid-1980s, approximately 2 million of these migrants—one million from Ghana alone— were obliged to leave .8 These references to contemporary migra- tions are. of course, only the tip of the migra- tory iceberg. Adding up the world's total mi- grations generates impressive but not surpris- ing numbers. At the beginning of the twenty- first century, the total number of persons living outside of their countries of origin was esti- mated at over 150 million, of which some I00 million- 3 0 million undocumented—repre- sent migrant workers and their families.' What seems to make sense in explaining migratory flows for the rest of the world should make sense as well for the Middle East. And it does. According to the International Labour Or- ganization (ILO). Middle East migrant workers— moving within and beyond the Middle East— make up approximately 9 percent of the world's 100-million total.1D By 1987, as many as 1.6 mil- 7 Ibid. 8 Nicholas Van Hear, Consequences of the Forced Mass Repatriation of Migrant Communities: Recent Cases from West Africa and the Middle East tGcneva: U.N. Research Institute for Social Development. 19921. p. 1. 9 Patrick Taran and David Nil Addy. "Global Overview Trends in Labour Migration. Standards and Policies with Ref- erence to West Africa," 11_0 International Migration Policy Seminar fier West Africa. Dakar. Senegal. Dec. 18-21.2(x)1. al http://www.december18.netipaper35Dakar.hun. 10 Ibid. 56 f M I D D L E E A S T Q U A R T E R LY W I N T E R 2 0 0 3 lion Egyptians had emigrated to other Arab countries. Not surprising, their principal desti- nations of choice were oil-rich economies. Iraq hosted 43 percent, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, 39 percent.' The Kuwait war of 1990-1 brought about a dramatic shift in the hosting economies of Egypt's emigration. Iraq and Kuwait expelled most of their migrant populations during and following that war and by 2000, Saudi Arabia had become the single most important host of Egypt's now 2.7 million emigrants. absorb- ing as much as 34 percent of the total. Libya rose to second place among Arab-hosting economies with 12 percent and Jordan fol- lowed with fi percent.'' Arab Palestinians. it appears. were no less responsive than were Egyptians to the mieratory impulse. According to 1998 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates, there were 275,000 Arab Palestin- ians in Saudi Arabia, 38.000 in Kuwait (a dra- matic drop from the 400,000 recorded before the Kuwait war), 74,000 in Libya, and over 100,000 in other gulf countries.': Hundreds of thousands left the Middle Last entirely. Why should anyone suspect that Arab Pal- estinians would behave any differently than Egyptians. or Mexicans. or Ghanaians, or Mo- roccans. or Indonesians, or any other popu- lation facing regional inequalities in technol- ogy, productivity, income, and employment? That the pull effect of wage and employment disparities matters to Arab Palestinians is at- tested to not only by the size of their migra- tory flows but also by the fact that very few I1 The Central Agency fur Public Mobilization and Statistics. Calm, provide, these statistics at hnp://www,rreu.eutt.cglwww/ hontcpagc/pt rpi n/ceea.hun. 12 I L ( ) Migration Data Base, Egypt: Table 11. "Nationals Abroad by Ses and by Host Country. Absolute Numbers. 198h-2001." See-also "Egyptian Guest Workers in the Gulf." Migration News. July 1995. ;u http:l/migration.ucdavis.edu/ mrdarchise_mn/jul_1945-22111n.html. 13 Ahmad Sidiji al Dajani, The Future ri the l::ti/gel Palestin- ians in the Settlements rt,gteenernt (London: Palestinian Re- turn Center. Oct. 21000. at http://www.pre.nrg.ullcnglish/exi- pats•eng.htm, Arab Palestinians living in high-productiv- ity Israel were part of that flow. In fact, an esti- mated 40,000 Jordanians who entered Israel on tourist visas in 2000 have stayed on after their visas expired to take advantage of the higher- paying employment opportunities afforded them in Israel.' E C O N O M I C G R O W T H , 1922-1931 It would seem reasonable to suppose that for the same reasons Arab Palestinians and •other Middle East populations migrated from the less to the more attractive economies at the end of the twentieth century, they would have done the same during the early decades of the twentieth century. Two events distinguished the early years of twen- tieth-century Palestine from its Middle Eastern neighbors: I) the immi- gration into Palestine of European Jews, accom- panied b y European capital and European technology, and 2) the creation o f the British mandatory government in Palestine whose re- sponsibilities included the economic devel- opment of Palestine. As a result of the man- date conferred by the League of Nations. Brit- ish capital and British technology followed the British flag. These two events generated a momen- tum of economic activity that produced in Palestine a standard of living previously u n - known in the Middle East. Table 1 (see page 58) logs some of the critical factors contrib- uting to the economic dynamics in Palestine during the I 920s. 14 The Jerusalem, Post, July 4. 2001. Arab immigration into Palestine was largely illegal and unrecorded, but it did not go unnoticed. Gottheil: Arab Immigration / 57 Table 1: Selected Indicators of Capital Formation and Infrastructure Development, 1922-1931 Capital Stock' Capital Imports' Capital Deepeninge Consumption of Electricity' Telephone Lines Kilometers of Metalled Roads 1922 5,056 3.821 84.2 450 1924 6,541 5,522 90.3 3,526 580 1926 9,603 5,013 90.8 2,344 5,611 631 1928 12,022 2,891 98.6 2,974 8,780 706 1931 16,539 3225 95.2 9„.546 14557 922 Source: R. Szereszcwski. Essays on the Structure of the Jewish Economy in Palestine and Israel (Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel. 1968). pp. 60. 82; and S. Himadeh. Economic Organization of Palestine (Beirut: American University at Beirut. 1938). pp. 282. 565. (a) ' M K of real LP measured at 1936 prices (b) '000s LP. (c) real LP measured at 1936 prices. (d) units of KWH sold. (el kilometers of local telegraph and telephone lines. Capital stock grew at an annual rate of 14.1 percent. much of it a result of capital imports. The deepening of capital—capital stock per laborer—accompanied the growth of capital stock. The modernization process in the form of infrastructure development is illustrated by the growth o f road construction, electric power. and telephone communications.15 Table I represents the Palestinian version of both movements along the Qr curve of Exhibit 1 —capital deepening—and upward shifts in the curve which signal technological change. The results were dramatic. Real net domestic product per capita soared, doubling during 1922-31. from 19.4 LP (Palestine pounds) to 38.2 LP. The success of these beginnings of mod- ernization could not have been lost on Arab Palestinians nor on Arabs living in adjacent economies.16 Table 2 (see page 59) contrasts the standards of living enjoyed by Arab Pal- estinians t o the standards in other Middle East economies. 15 Roberto Bachi, The Population of Israel (Jerusalem: Insti- tute of Contemporary Jewry. Hebrew University. 1974 t. p. 45. 16 Ibid., p. 46 E V I D E N C E F O R A R A B M I G R AT I O N There are several problems associated with estimating Arab immigration into Palestine dur- ing the 1920s, the principal one being that Arab migration flows were, in the main, illegal, and therefore unreported and unrecorded.' But they were not entirely unnoticed. Demographer U.O. Schmelz's analysis of the Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron ka as (Ottoman districts), by place of birth. showed that of those Arab Pal- estinians born outside their localities of residence. approximately half represented inca-Palestine movement—from areas of low-level economic ac- tivity to areas of higher-level activity—while the other half represented Arab immigration into Pal- estine itself. 43 percent originating in Asia, 39 per- cent in Africa. and 20 percent in Turkey.18 17 A second issue contributing to the dearth of Arab migration data and analysis was that scholarly research and interest in the region focused on the more legal and documented. more preva- lent, and more politically significant Jewish immigration. While Arab immigration may have been obvious and even predictable. it would have been Icss noteworthy at the time. 18 I L O . Schmel,. "Population Characteristics of Jerusalem and Hebron Regions According to Ottoman Census of 1905." in 58 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY WINTER 2003 Table 2: Economic Performance and Standards of Living in Middle East Economies, 1932-1936 Per Industrial Per Capita Net Production Capita Daily Consumption Per Agricultural Incomes Wagesh of Foodstuflc' Workers Egypt 12 NA 16.0 90.1 Syria 13 50-31() 19,0 97.6 Iraq 10 40-60 13.8 932 Transjordan NA NA NA 90.1 Arab Palestinians 19 70-500 22.9 186.3 Source: E. Gottheit. "Arab Immigration Into Pre-State Israel: 1922-1931." Middle Eastern Studies. Oct. 1973. p. 320. (at British pound sterling. 1936: (h) in mils. 1933.5; ici International Units init. 1934-6: !d) lU. 1934-6. 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 hecn due—as elsewhere in Palestine under similar conditions—to in-migrants attracted by economic opportunities, and to the ben- eficial effects of improved health services in reducing mortality j u s t as happened in other parts o f Palestine around cities with a large Jewish population sector." 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 ab- sence of external migrations. t! condition which was o h r i o u . \ I V n o t m e r b y a l l t h e s r i b p o p u l u - lion.s" that Schmelz enumerated.' Gar G. (Bihar. ed.. Ottoman Palestine: iiWO.1914 (Leiden: Brill. 1991Jt. p. 42. 19 Ibid.. pp. 32-3. Emphasis added. 20 [hid.. p, (l . Emphasis added. Elsewhere, he grants that "the censuses were taken by teams of local rank!rims and other func- tionaries" and "that may have created conflicts of motive when the author airs. by threat of penalty. exacted reports from Meal dignitaries i the makhtarsr which the population may have had an interest in evading." (pp. 18-91. Like U.O. Schmelz. Roberto Bachi expressed some reservation about the virtual nonexistence of data and discussion concerning migration into and within Palestine. He writes: Between 1800 and 1914. the Muslim popu- lation had a yearly average increase in the order of magnitude of roughly 6-7 per thou- sand. This can be compared to the very crude estimate or about 4 per thousand for the "less developed countries'' of the world (in Asia. Africa and Latin America) between 1800 and 1 9 1 0 . I t i s possible t h a t p a r t o f the ,growth o f the M u s l i m population r a s due ter i m r n i g r a t i w l . ' ' Although Bachi did not pursue the linkage between undocumented immigration into Pales- tine and the 6 (or 7) to 4 per thousand differen- tial 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 differentials— not an entirely unreasonable one. Lack v e r i f i a b l e v e r i f i a b l eevidence did not prevent 21 Bachi. Population of israel. pp. 34-5. Emphasis added. Gottheil: Arab Inunigraf ion / 59 Economic magnet. Hai/a's train station square in 1934. The city became the rail and shipping hub for the interior of the country and much of the Levant. Bachi from stating the obvious concerning in- ternal migration within Palestine: The great economic development o f the coastal plains—largely due to Jewish immi- gration—was accompanied both in 1922- 1931 and in 1931-1944 by a much stronger increase of the Muslim and Christian popu- lations 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 ob- tained from indirect evidence."23 Bachi's foot- note is instructive. The "indirect evidence" he referred to no doubt included his understand- ing of the important role economics plays in ex- plaining demographic movements. While appre- ciating the value of Ottoman registrations and 22 Ibid., p. 51. Emphasis added. 23 Ibid. British mandatory government censuses in providing estimates of Palestinian demography, they were, in his judgment. still crude and incomplete. Reference to Arab immigra- tion into Palestine during the 1920s is made as well in the Brit- ish mandatory government's annual compilation of statistical data on population. The Pales- tine Blue Book, 1937, for ex- ample, provides time series de- mographic statistics whose an- nual estimates are based on ex- trapolations from its 1922 cen- sus.24 The footnote accompa- nying the table on population of Palestine reads: There has been unrecorded ille- gal 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 es- timate of its volume is possible.` 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 surrepti- tiously were later detected, were sentenced to imprisonment for their offence and recom- mended for deportation.'" 24 Palestine Blue Book. 1937 (Jerusalem: British Mandatory Government Printer. 1938), p. 140. 25 I b i d . Emphasis added. The Palestine Blue Book. /928 actually offers an estimate. It says: "The total population 816,064 is probably understated by 20.000-25,000 due to unrecorded immigration.' (p. 143.) Three years later, the Palestine Blue Book, 1931 uses the same estimate and the same wording but for a different size population: "The total population 946.463 is probably understated by 20.000-25.000 due to unrecorded im- migration." (p. 146.) By 1937, the estimate was dropped in favor of "no estimate of its volume is possible." 26 Report by Hi.c Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Ntaioeec on the Administration o f Palestine and Trans-Jonlan fine the Year 1935 (London: His Majesty's Sta- tionary Office. n.d.). p. 14. 60 / M I D D L E EAST QUARTERLY W I N T E R 2003 The number who "made their way into the country surreptitiously" but undetected was nei- ther estimated nor mentioned. Historian Gad Gilbar's observation on Ruth Kark's contribution to his edited volume Otto - matt Palestine, 1800-1914, touches on the is- sue of Arab immigration into and within Pales- tine. He relates her ideas in "The Rise and De- cline of Coastal Towns in Palestine" to Charles Issawi's thesis concerning the role of minor- ity 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 de- cades of the Ottoman rule, Gilbar writes: "Both attracted population from the rural and urban surroundings and immigrants from outside Palestine."27 Each piece of the demographic puzzle by itself may reveal no identifiable picture. But given a multiplicity of such pieces. an image does begin to appear. The Royal Institute for International A ff a i r s adds another piece. Commenting on the growth of the Palestinian population during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s it reports: "The number of Arabs who have entered Palestine illegally from Syria and Transjordan is unknown. But prob- ably considerable."'s And C.S. Jarvis. gov- ernor of the Sinai from 1923-36, adds yet another: This illegal immigration was not only go- ing 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 Ar- abs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not he kept from going in to share that misery.'" 27 Gar G. Gilbar. -Economy and Society in Palestine at the Close of the Ottoman Period: A Diversity of Change.' in Ot6,- man Palestine. 1800-19/4. p. 3. 28 Great Britain and Palestine. /915-/945. Information Paper no. 20. 3d ed. (London: Royal Institute for International Affairs. 1946). p. 64. 29 C.S. Jarvis. "Palestine." United Empire (London). 28 (19371: 633. Feeding a new city. The Arab, farmers' market, in the stretch between Jaffa and Tel Anll', provisions the Jewish city. 1934. ESTIMATING REAL NUMBERS The derivation of Palestine migration esti- mates in this section is based on an uncompli- cated imputation theory. Migration becomes a residual claimant for numbers not explained by a population-estimating model based on known initial population stocks and known sets of birth and death rates for that population. In this way, expected population stocks can he derived for any set of subsequent years. The value of the model depends, of course, on the reliability of the estimates given for initial population stocks and for the rates associated with natural increase. Therein lies the problem with estimating Arab immigration into Palestine. The model itself may be simple and applicable, hut its usefulness—as with all estimating mod- els—is contingent upon the quality of the data inputs. That quality in the case of Palestinian migration is compromised by the explicit neglect of illegal entrants. if illegal migrants and subse- Gottheil: Arab Immigration / 61 _= r r Ineffective barrier. The Palestine-Syria border post and customs house at B'not Ytr'akov, by the Jordan river, 1937. 1922 .. 2.49 1927 ... 2.11) 1923 ... 2.15 1928 ... 2.34 1924 ... 2.47 1929.. 2.35 1925 ... 2.18 1930 ... 2.81 1926 ... 290 1931 ... 2.74 quently illegal residents escaped the census taker, how could the census account for them? It couldn't and didn't. It is not surprising then that the British cen- sus data produce an Arab Palestinian popula- tion growth for 1922-31 that turns out to be gen- erated by natural increase and legal migrations alone. Applying a 2.5 per annum growth rate3° to a population stock of 589,177 for 1922 gener- ates a 1931 population estimate of 735,799 or 97.6 percent of the 753,822 recorded in the 1931 census. Does the imputation model then "prove" that illegal immigration into Palestine was incon- sequential during 1922-31? Not at all. A foot- note accompanying the census's population time series acknowledges the presence in Palestine of illegal Arab immigration. But because it could not he recorded, no estimate of its numbers was included in the census count." Ignoring illegal migrants does not mean they don't exist. Setting illegal immigration into Palestine aside, the imputation model does generate sub- 31) The 2.5 growth rate is derived from the following table fur annual rates of natural increase of Muslim population: 31 Pulevtine Blue a w l , l937. p. 14f). stantial migrations of Arab Palestinians within Palestine itself and confirms what many demographers, historians, govern- ment administrators, and economists have alluded to: the migration of Arab Palestinians from villages, towns, and cities of low economic opportunity to villages, towns, and cities of higher eco- nomic opportunity. Which towns, villages, and cities offered the higher economic opportu- nity? Analyzing the 1922 and 1931 de- mographic data by sub-district and sepa- rating those sub-districts of Palestine that eventually became 1948 Israel—that is, sub-districts that had relatively large Jew- ish populations (with accompanying Jewish capi- tal and modern technology )—from those that were not designated as part of 1948 Israel, identified not only the direction of Arab Palestinian migra- tion within Palestine but its magnitude as well. 2 The Arab Palestinian populations within those sub-districts that eventually became Is- rael increased from 321,866 in 1922 to 463,288 in 1931 or by 141,422. Applying the 2.5 per annum natural rate of population growth to the 1922 Arab Palestinian population generates an ex- pected population size for 1931 o f 398.498 or 64.790 less than the actual population recorded in the British census. By imputation. this unac- counted population increase must have been ei- ther illegal immigration not accounted for in the British census and/or registered Arab Palestin- ians moving from outside the Jewish-identified sub-districts to those sub-districts so identified. This 1922-31 Arab migration into the Jewish sub- districts represented 11.8 percent of the total 1931 Arab population residing in those sub-districts and as much as 36.8 percent of its 1922-31 growth. That over I0 percent of the 1931 Arab Pal- estinian population in those sub-districts that 32 Fora suh-district by sub-district count of population and for the methodology used to separate subdivisions that became 1948 Israel and those that did not, sec Fred M. Gottheil,-Arab Immigration into Pre-State Israel: 1922-1931.-Middle F.a iren Studies. 9 119731: 315-24. The analysis here is n summary version of this article. 62 / M I D D L E EAST QUARTERLY W I N T E R 2003 eventually became Israel had immigrated to those sub-districts within the 1922-31 years is a datum of considerable significance. It is consistent with the fragmentary evidence of illegal migration to and within Palestine: it supports the idea of link- age between economic disparities and migratory impulses—a linkage universally accepted; it un- dercuts the thesis of "spatial stickiness" attrib- uted by some scholars to the Arab Palestinian population of the late nineteenth and early twen- tieth centuries; and it provides strong circum- stantial evidence that the illegal Arab immigra- tion into Palestine, like that within Palestine, was of consequence as well. DENYING THE EVIDENCE As compelling as the arguments and evi- dence supporting consequential illegal immigra- tion may be to some scholars, they are clearly unconvincing to others. The single most cited contemporary publication on Palestinian demog- raphy is Justin McCarthy's 1990 The Popula- tion trf Palestine. O f McCarthy's forty-three pages of descriptive analysis—supplemented by 188 pages of demographic tables copied directly from Ottoman, European. and Jewish source ma- terials—slightly more than one and a half pages are devoted to Arab immigration into and within Palestine during the Ottoman period, and a simi- lar one and a half pages are devoted to Arab immigration during the succeeding mandate pe- riod.i3 According to McCarthy, these few pages offer enough critical analysis to close the lid on the "infamous" immigration thesis. Consider first McCarthy's analysis of Arab immigration during the Ottoman period. That he finds no illegal immigration of consequence is not surprising because McCarthy uses official Ottoman registration lists that, by the nature of its classifications. take no account of the unre- ported. illegal immigration. That is to say, if you look in a haystack for a needle that wasn't put 33 Justin McCarthy, The Population of'Palestine (New York: Columbia University P . 1990). pp. 1'6-7. 33-4. there, the probability is high you won't find it. It is strange that the idea had not occurred to McCarthy. Choosing to focus on the official reg- istration lists allows him to write: From the analysis o f rates o f increase o f the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sonjaks ]Ottoman sub-provinces], are can say with certainty that M u s l i m immigration after 1870 was small." Reflecting elsewhere on the possibility that the immigration may have occurred over an extended period of time. McCarthy writes: "To postulate such an immigration ... stretches the limits of credulity."35 McCarthy's treatment of the linkage be- tween economic disparities and migration im- pulses appears to be even more disingenuous. He writes: "The question of the relative economic development of Palestine in Ottoman times is not a matter to be discussed here."' Nor is it considered anywhere else in. his book. That is to say, McCarthy does not contest the Inkage so much as ignore its relevance to the Palestinian situation,37 His dismissal of Arab immigration into Pal- estine during the mandate period is based on a set of assumptions concerning illegal immigra- tion that is both restrictive and unsubstantiated. He contends that even if the illegal immigrants were unreported on entry. their deaths in Pales- tine would have been registered. So too, he ar- gues, would their children born in Palestine. De- riving estimates based on such registrations, he arrives at this conclusion: immigration was mini- mal.3H But he provides no evidence to show that 34 Ibid., p. lb. Entphais added. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 The closest McCarthy gets to a linkage discussion is his insistence that the increase in Muslim population had little or nothing to du to ith Jewish immigration. His findings contradict those of Ruth Kai k. Charles Issawi, Roberto Bachi, 11.0. Schn,lz, Fred M. Cinttheil.:Ind Moshe Braver. among others. McCarthy chooses nt d to address their evidence and competing findings although he refers liberally to both Scttntelz's ;Intl B chi's research on other dentographic issues. 38 McCarthy. Population of Polestrne. p. 33. Gottheil: Arab immigration / 63 Consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine likely occurred under Ottoman and British rule. these supposed registrations of births and deaths were actually made. Had McCarthy considered the fact that detection of illegal immigration dur- ing the mandate period resulted in imprisonment and deportation and that immigrants, aware of this, may have avoided any formal registration of deaths and births, he would have had to revise his assessment of illegal immigration. Perhaps the more se- rious charge against McCarthy's analysis o f Arab immigration is his use o f Roberto Bachi's estimates. McCarthy's numbers are based, in part, on Bachi's reporting of 900 illegal Arab immi- grants per year over the period 193 l -45.3' But McCarthy misrepresents what Bachi's estimate is meant to show. Bachi is careful to identify his 900-per-year illegal Arab immigration estimate as only those discovered by the mandatory authorities. illegal Arab immigration that went undetected and unreported is not included. He writes: A detailed analysis presented in Appendix 6.5B on the basis of the registration of part of the illegal migratory traffic, discovered by the Palestine police, shows that legal movements (as reflected in Tables 9.4-9.7) constituted only a small fraction of total Muslim immigration." To emphasize this point. Bachi writes: "it is hardly credible that illegal movements which were actually discovered included all the illegal entrances which actually occurred, or even the majority of them."4' As a result, Bachi can only conclude that "in the present state of knowl- edge, we have been unable to even guess the 39 Ibid. 40 Bachi. Popu/iition of lcmel, p. 133. Emphasis added. 41 Ihid.. p. 389. size of total immigration."42 Such a cautionary comment finds no place in McCarthy's analysis or conclusions. Using Bachi's estimates inappropriately, deriving esti- mates based solely on registration lists, and ig- noring completely the linkages between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses. McCarthy confidently concludes, the vast majority of the Palestinians resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters who were living in Palestine before modern Jew- ish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daugh- ters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.'7 EVERY REASON TO BELIEVE Therein lies the ideological warfare concern- ing claims to territorial inheritance and national sovereignty. Contrary to McCarthy's Findings or wishes, there is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immi- gration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regiona