ABSTRACT
In 1945 individual Jews owned 514,000 dunams of agricultural land in Palestine, 340,000 of which were in settlements that had been founded before First World War. In 1935 preparations were made to establish an agricultural settlement on the tract of land. The Arab owners, aware of the policy, have refrained from engaging tenant farmers to cultivate their lands. Instead they have been hiring agricultural laborers." The lands in the region were suitable for citriculture and most of the additional acquisitions for purposes of expansion were in the older citrus-growing moshavot. The Arabs never charged that the Jewish urban community in any way interfered with the development of the Arab towns or that it displaced Arabs from the existing towns. The reason no such charge was made was that the city plots sold to the Jews were sold by rich urban Arabs, who were often themselves the spokesmen of the Arab nationalist movement.
