Defoliation Policy of Othman Turkey
Israel and Arabs
Only a few tens of thousands Arabs lived in Israel Before Jews started to rush into their own land, Israel around 1876.
There were thousands of Jews living along with thousands of Arabs in Israel before 1839 when British Consulate surveyed the populations of the Land in 1839.
Virtually the Land was waste land as the Bible prophesied many times ( Amos, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Isaiah)
...."But the Palestinian farmers had been cultivating the land for centuries before that"
--In the mid-1700s, British archaeologist Thomas Shaw wrote that the land in Palestine was "lacking in people to till its fertile soil." An eighteenth-century French author and historian, Count Constantine Frangois Volney, wrote of Palestine as the "ruined" and "desolate" land. In "Greater Syria," which included Palestine, Many parts ... lost almost all their peasantry. In others.... the recession was great but not so total.
--In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880`s, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation... Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of disfoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil
Carl Hermann Voss, "The Palestine Problem Today, Israel and Its Neighbors" (Boston, 1953), p. 13.
--The British Consul in Palestine reported in 1857 that
The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population....
--Professor Fred Gottheil pointed out: "a desolate country"; "wretched desolation and neglect"; "almost abandoned now" "unoccupied"; "uninhabited"; "thinly populated."
--In a book called Heth and Moab, Colonel C. R. Conder pronounced the Palestine of the 1880s "a ruined land." According to Conder, so far as the Arab race is concerned, it appears to be decreasing rather than otherwise.
Colonel C.R. Conder, Heth and Moab (London, 1883), pp. 380, 376
And:
a Saudi Arabian United Nations delegate in 1956 asserted that "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria."
In 1974, Syria`s President Assad, although a PLO supporter, incorporated both claims in a remarkable definition:
... Palestine is not only a part of our Arab homeland, but a basic part of southern Syria."
--Marie Syrkin, "Palestinian Nationalism: Its Development and Goal," in Michael Curtis et al., eds., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 200. Syrkin found that Haj Amin al-Husseini-the notorious Mufti of Jerusalem himself - "originally opposed the Palestine Mandate because it separated Palestine from Syria."
Stop digging in history books who`s the owner lakshmi because we both can find all we need to prove that the other side is wrong.We have two populations living there and it does not matter if they came from Russia or Turkey they are there and are condemned to live together side by side thus calls for free Palestine and annihilation of Israel are dangerous and stupid.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/ResponseDetails.jhtml?resNo=2420266&itemno=886373&cont=2
( This might have been moved now)
Other materials:
Thomas Shaw, Travels and Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (London, 1767), p. 331ff. De Haas notes: "Hasselquist, the Swedish botanist, munching some roasted ears of' green wheat which a shepherd generously shared with him, in the plain of Acre, reflected that the white bread of his northern homeland and the roasted wheat ears symbolized the difference between the two civilizations' Had he known that Mukaddasi boasted in the tenth century of the excellence Of Palestine's white bread he might have been still more impressed by the low estate to which the country had fallen in seven hundred years....
Hasselquist joined a party of four thousand pilgrims who went to Jericho under an escort of three hundred soldiers. He estimated that four thousand Christians, mostly of the eastern rites, entered Jaffa each year, and as many Jews. The Armenian Convent in Jerusalem alone could accommodate a thousand persons.
The botanist viewed the pilgrim tolls as the best resource of an uncultivated and uninhabited country. . ~ . Ramleh was a ruin." (Emphasis added.) De Haas, History, pp. 349, 358, 360, citing Frederich Hasselquist, Reise nach Palastina, etc., 1749-1752, pp. 139, 145-146, 190.
- Count Constantine F. Volney, Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, 1785 (London, 1788), Vol. 2, p. 147.
According to Volney, ". . . we with difficulty recognize Jerusalem.... remote from every road, it seems neither to have been calculated for a considerable mart of commerce, nor the centre of a great consumption.... [the population] is supposed to amount to twelve to fourteen thousand....
The second place deserving notice, is Bait-el-labm, or Bethlehem, ... The soil is the best in all these districts ... but as is the case everywhere else, cultivation is wanting. They reckon about six hundred men in this village capable Of bearing arms.... The third and last place of note is Habroun, or Hebron, the most powerful village in all this quarter, and able to arm eight or nine hundred men . . ."
W.M. Thomson
W.M. Thomson reiterated the Reverend Manning's observations: "How melancholy is this utter desolation! Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, seen everywhere else, appear to relieve the dull monotony....
Isaiah says that Sharon shall be wilderness, and the prediction has become a sad and impressive reality." Thomson, The Land and the Book (London: T. Nelsons & Sons, 1866), p. 506ff.
British Consulate Reports
Jerusalem consisted of "a large number of houses ... in a dilapidated and ruinous state," and "the masses really seem to be without any regular employment." The "masses" of Jerusalem were estimated at less than 15,000 inhabitants, of whom more than half the population were Jews.17
"Report of the Commerce of Jerusalem During the Year 1863," F.O. 195/808, May 1864. ". . . The population of the City of Jerusalem is computed at 15,000, of whom about 4,500 Moslem, 8,000 Jews, and the rest Christians of various denominations. . ." From A.H. Hyamson, ed., The British Consulate in Jerusalem, 2 vols. (London, 1939-1941), Vol. 2, p. 331
Tourists in 1817-1818
After a visit in 1817-1818, travelers reported that there was not "a single boat of any description on the lake [Tiberias]."
**James Mangles and the Honorable C.L. Irby, Travels in Egypt and Nubia (London, 1823), p. 295.
German Encyclopedia in 1827
In a German encyclopedia published in 1827, Palestine was depicted as "desolate and roamed through by Arab bands of robbers."14
Brockhaus, Alig. deutsch Real-Encyklopaedie, 7th ed. (Leipzig, 1827), Vol. VIII, p. 206
Mark Twain in 1867
Stirring scenes ... occur in the valley [Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent-not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. 22
“
They met together in full view of the pilgrims, after the battle, and took lunch, divided the baksheesh extorted in the season of danger and then accompanied the cavalcade home to the city! The nuisance of an Arab guard is one which is created by the sheikhs and the Bedouins together, for mutual profit...
Come to Galilee for that... these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms.... We reached Tabor safely .... We never saw a human being on the whole route
"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince ?It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land ? Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies ?
Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago ?
Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village ?Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth ?
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?" ? (The Innocents Abroad (New York 1966) - summary of Palestine visit)
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/guide.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/604628/posts
Israel was Wasteland around 1590 AD
In 1590 a "simple English visitor" to Jerusalem wrote, "Nothing there is to be scene but a little of the old walls, which is yet Remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and Weedes much like to a piece of Rank or moist Grounde
Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement, p. 86, cited in de Haas, History, p. 338.
At the time of Crusade ( 11-12 century AD)
The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks. They were unsuccessful though and on 15 July 1099 the crusaders entered the city.[16] Again, they proceeded to massacre the remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and pillaged or destroyed mosques and the city itself.[17]
One historian has written that the "isolation, alienation and fear"[1] felt by the Franks so far from home helps to explain the atrocities they committed, including the cannibalism which was recorded after the Siege of Maarat in 1098.[18]
As a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem at most 120,000 Franks (predominantly French-speaking Western Christians) ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians[19]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade
Other useful sites
http://www.nfuu.org/Palestineto1948.htm
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/coexistence.html
Bible Prophesy
Amos 9
14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.
15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.
Isaiah 49
19 For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.
20 The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell.
Ezekiel 36
6 Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in my fury, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen:
7 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I have lifted up mine hand, Surely the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame.
8 But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at hand to come.
9 For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown:
10 And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded:
Demographic Changes of Jerusalem
Population, The Demographic Changes are varying very much depending on who surveyed and claim the figures. Some figures shown during the Turkish, Othman Turkey Empire may reflect the figures where Jews and Non-Muslims had to pay much more taxes.
So, we can trust the figures recorded by British Consulate.
The important aspect of the Demographic changes is that
- Othman Turkey had the policy of Defoliation of Palestine
because
1) They feared the Rebellion in the region which was very frequent throughout the history.
2) Another reason may be because they knew that European countries will benefit from the prosperity of the Palestine with much more population and they feared the prosperity may bring another Crusade.
- Apart from Turkish policy, throughout the history since 16 century, the region of the Palestine had the low precipitation all the time
As you can read in the following:
For 1,800 years, it hardly ever rained in Israel. This was the barren land discovered by Mark Twain. So-called "Palestine" was a wasteland – few lived there. Beginning in A.D. 70 and lasting until the early 1900s – about 660,000 days – no rain. A survey of rainfall charts in Israel beginning in the early 1800s leading up to through the 1960s also confirms the severe drought ended when the Jews began to return. The heaviest periods of rainfall during that 150-year period came in and around 1948 and 1967 – the years of Israel's independence and its most stunning military victory.
http://destination-yisrael.biblesearchers.com/destination-
That was how the prophecy of the Bible was accomplished.
Population of Jerusalem