Tell Me Again, Who Made the Desert Bloom?

In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate au-thorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine.

The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.

http://tinyurl.com/ykyyaax

One of the subjects investigated in the Survey of Palestine is land use; specifically, which crops were Palestine’s leading agricultural products at the end of the British Mandate, and whose farms were producing them.

So, on the eve of the partition resolution, in which the United Na¬tions proposed to allocate 55 per¬cent of the land to Jewish Palestine (including those parts that produced most of Palestine’s leading crops, with the sole exception of the olive crop), and 45% to Arab Palestine, Palestinian Arabs were producing:

• 92% of Palestine’s grain
• 86% of its grapes
• 99% of its olives
• 77% of its vegetables
• 95% of its melons
• more than 99% of its tobacco
• and 60% of its bananas.

So, who made the desert bloom? The Palestinians made the desert bloom.

From Lawrence of Cyberia

[I congratulate Lawrence on this title]
http://tinyurl.com/ye4c4qu