and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population. Citing as precedent the 1923 Greek and Turkish exchange, which addressed the constant friction between their minorities. While noting the absence of cultivable land to resettle the Arabs, which would necessitate the execution of large-scale plans for irrigation, water-storage, and development in Trans-Jordan, Beersheba and the Jordan Valley. The population exchange, if carried out, would have involved the transfer of up to 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews. Reactions The Arab reaction The entire spectrum of Palestinian Arab society rejected the partition plan. There was widespread public opposition including in the media and by religious figures. According to Henry Laurens, the Arabs saw the publication of the plan as a ringing disavowal of every key undertaking the Mandatory authorities had made since its inception, that there would be no separate Jewish state, no land expropriations and no expulsions of people. The proposed land swaps and population transfers were seen as annulling and inverting a century of economic development of the littoral region, with, apart from Jaffa and Gaza, Palestinians dispossessed of the essential rural and urban heritage that had evolved over the preceding century of coastal development. Jerusalem was placed outside the future Palestinian state. Palestinians were shocked both by the declaration their land would be divided, and that they themselves would be denied statehood (but only a union with Transjordan), while the Jewish state, extending over a third of the country, would absorb the whole of the Galilee, where an overwhelming percentage of the land was owned by Arabs and Jews had only a slender presence. In compensation, the Arabs were offered valuable areas to the east of Jordan and the southern portion of the Beisan sub-district where irrigation would have been possible. Indignation was widespread with Arabs complaining that the Plan had allotted to them "the barren mountains", while the Jews would receive most of the five cultivable plains, the maritime Plain, the Acre Plain, the Marj Ibn 'Amir, Al Huleh and the Jordan Valley For the Arabs, the plan envisaged giving Zionists the best land, with 82% of Palestine's principal export, citrus fruit, consigned to Jewish control. The idea of transfer of population met strong opposition. Under the Peel proposal, before transfer, there would be 1,250 Jews in the proposed Arab state, while there would