The Palestinian Nakba - The Agricultural Activities - Desert Reclamation

These figures affirm that it was the Palestinians who cultivated the desert, not the Jews. The total land area in the Negev Desert under Jewish ownership did not exceed 11,000 dunams, whereas Palestinians planted grains (wheat and barley) in the same desert on an area exceeding 2.11 million dunams. (From the Ottoman period and through the early years of the British Mandate for Palestine, the size of a dunam was 919.3 square metres (9,895 sq ft), but in 1928, the metric dunam of 1,000 square metres (0.10 ha) was adopted, and this is still used.)