Hitchens ping. (I haven't had time to read it yet....and there's someone else I'm supposed to ping to Hitchens threads but I can't remember who & don't have time to look...SORRY, whoever you are!)
I hate to tell you, but you and Hitchens are a little confused.
Prior to the Zionist influx of the 1890's, the population of the Ottoman region of Palestine/Southern Syria was a little over 150,000. Few of the Arabs owned land because of Arab customs and Islamic restrictions on loans.
Most "Palestinian" Arabs are decended from the hundreds of Thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians, and Lebanese who migrated between 1890 and 1946 as Zionists and the British developed the land. The swaps were drained and became fertile farmland. Roads plumbing was built. Jobs were created. The British illegally restricted Jewish migration after 1927. Hence more ARabs than Jews settled the land from 1890 to 1946.
These landless tenant farmers may have worked olive-fields but they were new and did not own them.
The other issue is that the Arabs invaded occupied Israel in 631. Israelites lived in that land for almost 1800 years at this point. In 617, Jews and Samaritans were a majority. Under Arab rule, they were expelled, killed, and pressured to convert.
Who is the occupier?
Who is indigenous? It isn't people like Arafat who was born in Egypt.
This is one disappointing Hitchens-ping. He uses the very common Britishism "bullying Jews from Brooklyn" which manages to insult Jews & Americans in one sentence. Some day, when a Brit says "bullying Jews from Newport, Rhode Island" I'll rethink whether he is being anti-semitic or not.