This is from a Yahoo answers site.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080815183837AA0xe1l"In May, 1997, the Arab Israeli newspaper, Fasl al-Maqal published a list of 54 prominent Arab families that willingly sold land to Jews between 1918 and 1945. This was only a partial list of names found in an official British Mandate era document known to the Jordanians. Among these real estate sellers were the mayors and heads of Jerusalem, Gaza, and Jaffa. The infamous al-Husseini clan and As'ad el-Shuqeiri (father of PLO leader Ahmed Shuqeiri) took Jewish money for land. Many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews.
http://israelbehindthenews.com/Jun-02-97.htm#LandYour exact statistic, which (to my knowledge) is not claimed by authoritative Israeli sources, may be based on the British Peel Commission Report. (What is known is that there were more Arabs interested in selling for profit than there were Zionist funds available.)
"At the end of World War I, some of Palestine's land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. About 80% of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73% of Jewish plots were purchases from large landowners, not poor fellahin."
- The Peel Commission (1937)
Later, by 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres.
Most of this property -- 387,500 acres -- was purchased from Arabs. (The rest was comprised of approximately 45,000 acres acquired from the Mandatory Government and 30,000 acres were purchased from churches.)
"The Arab charge that the Jews have obtained too large a proportion of good land cannot be maintained. Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when purchased...there was at the time at least of earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.
"Jews paid more than $20 million (at 1936 rates) to Arab landowners, mostly estate holders...In 1944, Jews payed between $1000 and $1100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semi-arid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)"
- The Peel Commission's report in Land Ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948
The Peel Commission found the shortage was "due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population." The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine contributed to an improved standard of living, notably higher wages, and ample employment opportunities.
British government statistics prior to the establishment of the State of Israel concluded that 8.6% of the land area now known as Israel was owned by Jews; 3.3% by Arabs who remained there; 16.5% by Arabs who left the country. More than 70% of the land was owned by the British Government. Under international law, ownership passed to Israel in 1948. The public lands included most of the Negev Desert - half of Palestine's post-1922 total area.
Source: Survey of Palestine, 1946, British Mandate Government
It is a known fact that Jews avoided purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought out land that had NO tenants although such land was largely uncultivated or swampy. In 1920, David Ben-Gurion declared that "under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them." He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. "Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement," Ben-Gurion added, "should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price."
It was only after the Jews had bought all of this available land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.
"They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."
- John Hope Simpson, May 1930
"Peasants who did obtain title deeds or proof of registration under British rule through the 1921 Beisan Agreement . . . in northern Palestine, readily sold their newly allotted parcels to Jewish purchasers. Many other landowners who had acquired title deeds legally during the Ottoman period sold these lands to Jewish immigrants during the Mandate."
--- "Palestine's Rural Economy, 1917 - 1939" by Kenneth W. Stein
http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/rural_palestine...
During the same period, the British illegally created "Transjordan" (in 1922). In 1946, this was declared an additional new Arab state -- despite the fact that it had been carved out of 4/5 of the land mass that had been internationally designated to form the State of Israel.
"It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping."
-- from the memoirs of Transjordan's King Abdullah"
