THE QUESTION OK PALESTINE 17 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right. [Emphasis added]11 That is, how ever, no mere expression o f an opinion; it was a statement o f policy that radically altered the course o f history, if not for the whole world, then certainly for the 700,000 Arabs and their descendants whose land was being pronounced upon. Later I shall be discussing the very source o f such power in statements like this; now, however, I want to gloss my earlier remark, that the contest has been between an allegedly “ higher” and a humble reality. A t roughly the moment that Balfour was writing his memo­ randum there were facts— and I m ean, in this instance, bodies that could be counted {as they were indeed counted by the British Census for Palestine in 1922)— about which there could be no debate on gross numerical issues, even though the qualitative issues were subject to interpretation. T he census, which is the only reliable source for the dem ographic realities o f that time that we have (and which despite its considerable undercounts has also been used consistently by Israeli histori­ ans), makes the 1914 population at “ 689,272 persons, o f whom no more ( and perhaps less) than 60,000 were Jew s.” The census further shows that by 1922 “ some 590,890 (78 per cent) were Muslim; 73,024 {9.6 per cent) were Christian, mostly A rab although some British and other Europeans were includ­ ed; less than 10,000 (1 per cent) were O ther; and 83,794 ( n per cent) were Jewish. O f the latter, perhaps two thirds were European immigrants and their offspring— some having ar­ rived late in the nineteenth century, others since the inception o f British rule.” A s I said earlier, by the end o f W orld W ar I] the non-Jewish proportion o f the population in Palestine was 70 percent, and o f the remaining 30 percent which made up the Jewish population, 70 percent were concentratcd not "on the land,” where the desert was supposedly being made to bloom , but in cities and villages.14 M oreover, British policy made Zionism its beneficiary, dem ographically speaking. The natur­ al increase in population is normally 1.5 percent a year, but the Jews in Palestine between 1922 and 1946 were increasing at an