"كتيّب سوريا (بما في ذلك فلسطين). لندن: إدارة استخبارات الأركان البحرية، يونيو ١٩١٩" [و‎‎٢‎٥‎٢] (٧٣٨/٥٠٨)

INHABITANTS
497
The population of Haifa is reported to be made up of ?
Moslems, more than one-half ; Jews, not more than 3,000 ;
Germans, possibly 800 ; Orthodox Greeks, 1,500 ; Latins,
600 ; the remainder, Maronite and United Greeks. According
to Ruppin, the population of Haifa had increased from 5,000,
in 1880, to 20,000, in 1915.
Settled people .—The population of Samaria and the districts
north of it presents much racial, religious and political
variety.
In the maritime plain there is a general Arab agricultural
population in the south. In the north, however, this has
been more largely intruded upon by the Jewish colonists
than elsewhere in Palestine, except perhaps the immediate
neighbourhood of Jaffa. The large Jew settlements of Khud-
heireh and Zimmarin, with their dependencies, own most of
the good land, leaving to the Arabs the marshy levels and
the foothills. But the prevalent malaria, affecting immigrants
more than natives, tends to thin out the Jews in certain,of
the colonies and to bring the Arabs back into vacated lands.
Climatic conditions have impaired the progress of the colonists,
especially at Khudheireh, and they are less far advanced than
those of Jaffa.
In the western valleys and on the plateau of Samaria, the
population is Arab agricultural, mixed with very few Chris
tians, even in Nablus town which is almost as exclusively
Moslem as Hebron. The Samaritans are a fast dying group
of under 200 souls all told, keeping closely to itself, mainly
in the south-western quarter of Nablus town.
On the eastern slopes and in the upper western Ghor are
some poor tribes, partly settled and partly tent-dwellers, but
all cultivators.
The hill belt from the sea along Carmel towards the Ghor
at Beisan is largely non-Moslem. The western part of Carmel
has a mixed urban population of native Christians, of German
colonists, of Jewish colonists, and of Druses ; Moslem Arabs
only become general in the eastern half of Carmel and in
J. Fuqu‘. Jenin and Beisan are almost entirely Moslem
SYRIA j j