This massive movement of Middle Easterners accounts for some unexpected developments. First, it explains the United Nations’ peculiar definition of Palestine refugees as “people whose normal place of residence was Palestine between 1 June 1946 and 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Re

British authorities paid minute attention to Jewish immigration but nearly ignored its non-Jewish counterpart, making numbers about the latter vague. As an example of this uninterest, a severe shortage of workers attracted thousands of illegal Egyptian and other Arab laborers during World War II, many of whom settled permanently without the authori

Egyptian immigration to Palestine increased after World War I, due in part to the jobs and the much higher standard of living, facilitated by improved security and transportation, especially a railroad link opened in 1918. Young men who successfully pursued opportunities in Palestine often sent for their families. In 1937, the Peel Commission heard

Such regional movement was generally unrestricted because, through the end of Ottoman rule in 1917, Palestine had no administrative definition nor boundaries but made up a small part of a large empire Indeed, this movement of peoples fit into a larger context; “before the signing of international agreements that defined national boundaries that r

raids and assaults by petty princes, the region suffered such notable invaders as Pharaoh Ramses II, Alexander the Great, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, King Richard the Lionheart, the Mongol Kitbuqa, the Ottoman Selim the Grim, Napoleon, General Edmund Allenby, and Gamal Abdel Nasser Jerusalem’s history exemplifies this history of conquest. “No o