THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE M Filastin is the westernmost of the provinces of Syria. In its greatest length from Rafh to the boundary of A! Lajjun (Legio) it would take a rider two days to travel over; and the like time to cross the province in its breadth from Yafa (Jaffa) to Riha (Jericho), Zugar (Segor, Zoar) and the country of Lot’s . people (Diyar Kaum Lot); A 1Jibal (the mountains of Edom) and Ash Sharah as far as Ailah— A] Jibal and Ash Sharah being two separate provinces, but lying contiguous one to the Other— are included in Filastin, and belong to its government. Filastin is watered by the rains and the dew. Its trees and its ploughed lands do not need artificial irrigation; and it is only in Nablus that you find the running waters applied to this purpose. Filastin is the most fertile of the Syrian provinces. Its capital and largest town is Ar Ramlah, but the Holy City (of Jerusalem) comes very near this last in size. In the province of Filastin, despite its small extent, there are about twenty mosques, with pulpits for the Friday prayer.5 In 1516, Palestine became a province o f the Ottom an Em pire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic. A century later the English poet G eorge Sandys spoke o f it as “ a land lhat flowed with milk and honey; in the midst as it were of the habitable world, and under a tem perate clime; adorned with beautiful mountains and luxurious vallies; ih e rocks producing excellent waters; and no part empty o f delight or profit,” 6 Such reports persist in profusion through the eight­ eenth and nineteenth centuries, not only in travelers’ accounts but, by the end of the nineteenth century, in scientific quarterly reports published by the (British) Palestine Exploration Fund. Despite the steady arrival in Palestine o f Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment o f Israel in the spring o f 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For exam ple, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total o f 1,033.314; in 1936, Jewish numbers had gone up to 384,078 and the total to 1,366,692; in 1946 there were 608,225 Jews in a tota! population o f [,9 12 ,112 .’ In all these statistics, “ natives” were easily distinguishable from the arriving colonists. But who were these natives?