Jewish and Arab populations at partition time

"By the mid-1890s - only a dozen years after the beginning of the First Aliyah - Jews were becoming an important part of the ethnic and religious mix of Palestine, especially in the area eventually partitioned by the United Nations for a Jewish state in 1947. At the time of the partition, there was a clear Jewish majority in the area (538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs, emphasis mine)...without any doubt, there was already a significant Jewish presence in that area (what is now central Israel) before the beginning of the twentieth century."

Source: Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2003.