Palestine before 1948
Palestine was not, as Zionism thought, a land without people for a people without a land. Zionists called Palestine a neglected and poor country, run down and undeveloped, and they labeled the Arabs occupying that land as unable or unwilling to expend the effort to improve and beautify it. They proclaimed that it was the Jews who "made the desert bloom", who converted the neglected country into a showcase. In reality, Palestine before Israel was a densely settled agrarian society with thousands of prosperous villages and a thriving trade in olive oil, pottery, soap etc. Nablus is an example of a beautiful town, with close connections to a number of villages with flourishing social and private relationships, that gave stability and structure to the society. Palestine was definitely not an empty land and not a neglected one. In fact, it was difficult to find any uncultivated land anywhere in the country. The bigger cities Acre, Haifa, Jaffa had all the amenities of other cities in the Middle East.
The following 9-minute video shows beautiful photographs of a flourishing land and its people, and also gives information about its economics, culture and educational standing. One cannot help but have respect for the the people and understanding for the pain caused by the loss of all they held dear. The entire structure of Middle Eastern Palestinian life was destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people of all social levels ended up in refugee camps together with several generations of their offspring, while the country itself ended up populated by a European people despising the former owners.
Palestine was a country where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together in peace. It was a "Homeland" for all its inhabitants.