"A land without a people for a people without a land."

Their strongest version

Ottoman Palestine was sparsely populated and underdeveloped compared to post-1948 development.

The response

The 1922 British census counted about 750,000 people in Palestine. The 1946 Anglo-American survey counted nearly 1.9 million. They had cities (Jaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Jerusalem), a press, citrus exports to Europe, schools, and courts. 'Sparsely populated' describes deserts, not a society whose orange crates reached London markets. The slogan survives because admitting the land had a people means admitting what happened to them in 1948 — the depopulation of over 400 villages and the exile of ~750,000 people that Israeli historians (Benny Morris, from IDF archives) documented decades ago.

Don’t