According to the The Invention of the Jewish People:
During the Byzantine period, despite the persecutions, a good many synagogues were built. But after the Arab conquest, construction gradually came to an end, and Jewish prayer houses grew scarcer. It is reasonable to assume that a slow, moderate process of conversion took place in Palestine/Land of Israel, and accounted for the disappearance of the Jewish majority in the country.
But this is disputed by DanielPipes.org (Daniel Pipes is a pro-Israeli Zionist writer and member of the Middle East furam.) which says in a post:
More about the largely vacant desolate land of Israel "Palestine" in the 1800s - massive Arab immigration following Jews' return = the true origin of the (today's) so called "Palestinians"
How odd that such last names as al-Masri (the Egyptian,), al-Djazair (the Algerian), el-Mughrabi (the Moroccan), al-Yamani (the Yemenite) and even al-Afghani are so common among those claiming to be "Palestinians."
Today's Palestinians are immigrants from many nations:
"Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudaneese, Samaritans, Algerians, Motawila, Tartars, Hungarians, Scots, Navarese, Bretons, English, Franks, Ruthenians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Syrians, Persian Nestorians, Indians, Copts, Maronites, and many others." (DeHass, History, p. 258. John of Wurzburg list from Reinhold Rohricht edition, pp. 41, 69).
Are today's Palestinians immigrants from many nations?