What was Palestine like before Jewish immigration?

In the history of Jewish Palestine, the year 1881 inaugurated a new era. For many centuries, Jews from all over the diaspora had been “going up” to the Land of Israel, to live and die there, but the immigration of 1881 did not resemble any other. Inspired for the first time by an essentially modern national movement, this aliyah laid the foundations for the national rebirth of a Jewish society.