That the PLO was not made up of " Syrian and Egyptian day labourers ". 700,000 Palestinains fled or were ousted during the 1947-49 conflict and around 200.00more after the 67 conflict. To try to say that there were no Palestinians in the PLO is an outright fabrication and a denial of the fact that their ranks were formed overwehelmingly from those people who had suffered these fates. The reference I made about Joan Peters was a direct reference to this denial of the Palestinian people as a people with historic ties and lives in Palestine for centuries , possibly millenia
From the Journal Reports of T.E. Lawrence for the Commissioner of British Mandates in former Ottoman Lands, 1918
"It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power in Palestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes. The Fatamids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds, and mercenaries of all kinds. The Mamelukes imported legions of Georgians and Circassians. Each monarch for his personal safety relied on great levies of slave warriors. Saladin, hard-pressed by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon district for their services.
Out of this human patch-work of Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Kalmucks, Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians, Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers, ne'er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders, slaves ... was formed that hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today "Levantine." ...
In the fourteenth century, drought caused the immigration into Palestine of eighteen thousand "tents" of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem south. Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their trail. ...
In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet [Muhammad] Ali colonized Jaffa, Nablus, and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies. Fourteen years later, Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and one thousand Jews and Maronites. He did not consider that there were any Arabs at all in that city."
From the Ottoman Census of 1850, prior to the rise of the zionist movement
Muslim citizens 403,795
Christian citizens 43,659
Jewish citizens 15,011
Jewish (foreign-born) Est. 5-10,000 (mostly Moroccan with dual citizenship)
Total Up to 472,465
From a report to the League of Nations "In 1920, the British Government's Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine. The drastic need for labor (for public projects) estimates the need for 450,000 Arab laborers from Egypt, 280,000 Arab laborers from Syria, 50-75,000 Arab laborers from Lebanon. It is assumed many will bring their families." - From League of Nations Archives, in the UN Library at Geneva.
In 1920, the Mandate included governance of today's Israel, Jordan, Gaza, Golan Heights, part of Southern Lebanon, and more of Egyptian lands.
Syria and Lebanon were under French Administration, Iraq had been formed from remnants of the former Babylonia, Kurdistan, parts formerly of Ottoman controlled Iran and was under joint French and British Administration. Iran was under French Administration.
From me, they are called quotation marks to connote fabrication.