1930s: The British Mandate over Palestine

The British administration brought a new element to Palestine, the rule of law, or at least attempts to enforce the rule of law. As virtually all Arab-Jewish crime and violence was initiated by the Arabs they saw the British as unfairly supporting the Jews. Saleh in "The Palestinian Issue" refers to these mob attack as 'uprisings' to infer they were political in nature

Its accepted by historians that the persecution of Jews by Muslims was less than that by Christians but there certainly is a documented history of sporadic attacks by Muslim mobs on Jewish communities throughout the Islamic empires. These did not warrant the term 'uprisings' and the British Mandate administrators did not recognise them as such.

Mohmsen Mohammed Saleh: 483,000 Jews migrated to Palesitne during the British Mandate period and by 1948 they were 646,000 (31.7% of the population) and controlled 6% of the land holding 291 settlements. All the land the Jews purchased was sold by Arabs or Ottomans. Every large landowner knew he was making his tenants, the long-term clients of his family, landless. The fellaheen had already been steadily losing "their" land due to debt, drought and poor farming practices. The patron-tenant relationship was a one-way power relationship.

At the end of the British Mandate period only 25% of the land was registered for private ownership

• 12% of the land was owned by Palestinian Arabs
• 7.5% of the land was owned by Jews