The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small
tracts of arid land. "In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per
acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year,
rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."

By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres.
Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory
Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were
purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show
that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners,
not poor fellahin.

Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa.
As'ad elShuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman
Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land.  Even King Abdullah
leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist
movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to
Jews

The British allowed this because there were so few Arabs in the land of
Palestime and the living conditions were very poor. They believed that
by allowing Jews to buy land, money and jobs would be created. The Jews
were willing to work the land that the Arabs wanted no part of and they
did bring money and health care to the area. Around 1900 there were on
about 100,000 arabs there, when the Jews moved in Arabs from all over
the middle east move to Palestine to get a better life. By the way in
1923 Palestine was divided in to 2 states by the league of nations. One
state was Jordon and the other state was Israel, Israel included what
is now called the Gaza and the West Bank. All of the so called
Palestians living there are really Jordians, of citizens of other
middle east countries that move in after the Jews came. Also there were
300-400 thousand Arabs living there when Israel became a state. The
other Arab nations kick out 850,000 Jews from their countries, most of
them moved to Israel.