Arabs in Palestine?

[New U]

How many Arabs were there in Palestine when Jews arrived?
There were always a certain amount of Jews in the region but the first big immigration of Jews was at 1882, how many arabs were there at the time? how many of them were beduion, how many muslim?
I read in a few places that there were less 250,000 Arabs at the time and that more of them started immigrating into the region after the Jews.
If you can back this up this would be great, I need a valid website with the humane population by religion in the 1880's.

Please no opinionated comments, just simple facts.
Thanks.

Also is it a true fact that palestine was never an independent country? the last time it was independent was 2000 back when the Jews had it?

Thanks again
Brendan, might you know how I might be able to contact some college proffessor online? I mean like anybody specific u might know?

 

[Songbyrd11 JPA]

Define independent Country. The Crusaders had the area as a Christian state for a while in the middle ages.

Edit, try this web site, as it shows a historic look.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Arabs_in_Palestine.html

 

[Brendan O]

Don't trust ANY websites for a statistic like this and a topic as heated as this. Your best bet is to find a historian (a college professor would do just fine) who focuses on the Israeli-Palestine conflict and ask them for dependable sources. Good sources aren't that hard to find, but some people can't tell which ones are reliable.
There's too many biased people online and people who pick and choose which statistics to believe to get an accurate account for something like this.

EDIT: The edit in the post below proved my point. Anything about the "holy land" conflict called the jewish virtual library can not be trusted as an accurate representation of the facts. They have a clear bias. Even though what they state may be 100% accurate, you can't trust that it is.