This is a well debunked Zionist myth now, since the early 1980s. Palestinian farmers privately owned and cultivated roughly 50% of the land for their own subsistence. As well there was more intensive production. Moreover, Palestine exported so many goods around the world that it had a trade imbalance in its favour and offset the weaker economic performance of inner Syria. It had three ports: Gaza, Jaffa and Haifa and was trading as far away as India, as well as throughout the Mediterranean. Palestine is the part of the Mediterranean cradle of civilization and one of the first places in the world where such things as agriculture, metallurgy and “civilization” emerged. Anywhere between 15,000 and 8,000 years ago.