The land was not stolen. It was for sale. By 1947, Jews held about 463,000 acres. Most of it bought. 73% of the plots were purchased from absentee landowners living in Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut. John Hope Simpson walked the country in 1930 and wrote the sentence the slogans cannot survive: the Jews paid high prices, and then paid tenants to whom they were under no legal obligation to pay a dime. In 1944 as the Holocaust raged, Jews were paying $1,000 to $1,100 an acre for sand and marsh. For comparison, Iowa black dirt that year was going for $110 an acre. King Abdullah later wrote in his memoirs that the Arabs were as prodigal in selling as they are in weeping. It was all the rage to sell worthless land to Jews for exorbitant prices. The mayors of Gaza and Jerusalem sold land to Jews. Members of the Muslim Supreme Council sold land to Jews. As’ad el-Shukairy, the father of the first PLO chairman, took Jewish money for land. The nationalism came after the check cleared.