4IMMIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT DURING THE MANDATE PERIOD

“We had to go and leave behind everything, to shoulder just a knapsack and leave in exiles’ clothing.” These are the opening words of Uri Zvi Greenberg’s poem “The Necessity.” It explains immigration to Palestine as the result not of that country’s attraction but of the Diaspora’s expulsive power. “We had to leave. The ground screamed beneath our feet, the beds shook.” He goes on to describe his unrequited love for the country he has left:

We also had to hate what we had loved. We loved the forest, the stream, the well and the mill

We loved the falling leaves, the fish, the pail and the challah, and secretly we also loved the sound of their bells

And even the young ruffians with their white-blond hair.

And he concludes with his prophecy of the menacing destruction:

We had to go in pain from villages and look one more time with fiery tears at the houses

Knowing that one day they would be put to the brand.1

This poem, written in 1924, reveals the immigrants’ hidden pain and the powerful attraction of the world they have left behind. To understand immigration and settlement in the period between the two World Wars, we must bear in mind the opposing pull of two magnets: the profound connection to the physical-cultural homeland and the acknowledgment of the existential necessity of leaving home, family, culture. It is impossible to comprehend what was created in Palestine without understanding every immigrant’s psychological struggle of being pulled between these two magnets.

At the end of December 1919, the SS Ruslan anchored off Jaffa from Odessa, carrying 650 immigrants. The Ruslan later attained the status of an Israeli May-flower, for among its passengers were leading intellectuals from among the best of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, as well as a group of enthusiastic but penniless young people. This landing marked the beginning of the wave of immigration that went down in Zionist history as the Third Aliya (1919–1923), the first of three waves that arrived during the Mandate period. The others were the Fourth Aliya (1924–1929) and the Fifth Aliya (1932–1936).

The distinctions made among these aliyot reflected an awareness of the cyclic nature of immigration and the economic highs and lows that characterized it. Each aliya also had its own distinct image, based not on statistical facts but on impressions and public discourse. Thus the third was labeled the pioneering aliya and the fourth the middle class one, even though statistically the majority of immigrants of both aliyot were not pioneers—and, in fact, the Fourth Aliya included a greater number of pioneers than did the third. The Fifth Aliya entered Zionist consciousness as the German aliya, even though most of its immigrants—as with its predecessors—came from Eastern Europe.

The early 1920s were years of great hope: the Balfour Declaration set off currents of almost messianic enthusiasm among Russian Jewry. For the first time in its history, Zionism became a mass movement, as thousands of young people streamed into the Hechalutz (pioneer) movement, founded by Joseph Trumpeldor in the Crimea to train youngsters before they immigrated to Palestine. The Bolshevik Revolution and the brutal civil war that followed were accompanied by terrible pogroms throughout Ukraine, with estimates of Jewish dead ranging between 100,000 and 200,000.

The revolution led to tremendous enthusiasm among young Jews, who saw the Reds as defenders of the Jews against the Whites, who had fomented the anti-Jewish rioting. The revolutionary spirit inspired the idealism of the pioneers, but the pogroms heightened their awareness that this was not their revolution, and that they should implement their ideas of giving birth to a regime of equality and justice on earth in Palestine. In the sphere of ideas and ideals, world revolution competed with Zionism for the hearts and minds of the young. For the first half of the twentieth century, these two movements were the opposing focal attractions for Jewish youth.

The war and the revolution brought about far-reaching changes in Russian Jewry. The old shtetl was no more, and the lower middle classes to which the Jews belonged were eroded in Soviet Russia. Religious practice was forbidden and Zionists persecuted. In contrast to the people of the Second Aliya, who came from a traditional, stable, solidly grounded Jewish world, the Third Aliya immigrants grew up in the shattered remnants of that world. Most knew nothing of the traditional small town and received no Jewish education; their worldview combined Jewish nationalism with world reform. Young single people left their mark on this aliya; of 37,000 immigrants 14,000 were single. They had no possessions to speak of and were ready for hard physical labor and eager to build a new society in Palestine.

The early 1920s were also years of great belief in the “shortcut.” Just as the Soviets had leapfrogged the phase of capitalism—which according to Marxist theory should precede the revolution—and moved directly into a socialist society, so also could Palestine. Since Palestine lacked a modern, developed economy, industry was still in its infancy, an egalitarian, just society could be built from scratch, without enduring the trials and tribulations of capitalism. This belief, common among both the old-timers of the Second Aliya and the youngsters of the third, was based on the fact that backward Palestine was not an attractive prospect for the wealthy. In the early 1920s it seemed that the country would be built by national capital—money raised by Zionist institutions such as Keren Kayemet (Jewish National Fund) and Keren Hayesod (lit., foundation fund, devoted to building the country), which were at the disposal of the Zionist Organization—on national land, by camps of pioneers who would create the country according to their ideals. The Zionist movement had at its disposal legions of young, impoverished people who sought to build the country and rebuild their life and future in this new land. There were no other candidates available to create “the national home,” so the Zionist Organization was prepared to offer its capital to labor settlement. This was the basis of the alliance between the Zionist Organization led by Chaim Weizmann and the Palestine workers’ movement.

It soon turned out, however, that the amount of capital they managed to raise was far smaller than expected. During the 1920s the Zionist movement had only £600,000 a year at its disposal, an amount that was grossly insufficient to support mass settlement. Instead of extensive settlement on national land, the Third Aliya immigrants were compelled to earn their living in public works initiated by Herbert Samuel—that is, road building. Road work became legendary, but the mythology could not disguise the fact that the Zionist Organization lacked the financial capacity to settle the pioneers. In 1923, when work on the roads came to an end, the Third Aliya was in crisis.

The year 1924 brought the Fourth Aliya, the first wave of mass immigration in the history of Zionism. In 1925 the country absorbed 285 new immigrants per one thousand Jews already settled—a record that remained intact even during the years of mass immigration that followed the establishment of the State of Israel. In the space of two years, some 60,000 immigrants came to Palestine. This aliya reflected a fundamental change in Jewish migration in the world. In the United States amendments to the immigration laws effectively closed the gates of America to Jewish immigrants. The USSR, for its part, imposed even greater restrictions on immigration, then closed its gates completely at the end of the 1920s.

These two changes determined the sources of both Jewish migration and human capital in Palestine. The country became a main immigration destination for Jews—in the 1930s, the main destination. Poland, home to more than three million Jews, was the principal source of Jewish migrants. The laws introduced by Polish prime minister W™adis™aw Grabski to stabilize the Polish currency hurt the merchant class in the cities, most of whom were Jewish, and it was the instability of the Jewish middle class that led to the fourth wave of immigration. This time the immigrants included a large number of families, and their average age was slightly higher than in the Third Aliya. These middle-class immigrants gave the Fourth Aliya the image it had in the public mind.

Herbert Samuel decided that the Mandatory government would supervise immigration in accordance with the economic capacity criterion. The Zionist Executive accepted the principle that immigration must be controlled and limited lest the Jewish economy collapse, resulting in a deep crisis that might shake belief in the Jews’ ability to build the country. In fact, what restricted immigration in the 1920s was not the British but the Zionist Executive’s budgetary constraints. The Mandatory government designated four categories of immigrants. The first included people of means who were exempt from all restrictions. To be considered a person of means the candidate had to prove ownership of 500 (later 1,000) Palestine pounds by depositing the funds in a bank. The second category consisted of students or religious functionaries, who had to prove that their livelihood was assured. They were permitted to immigrate with no further restriction. In the third category were immediate relatives of residents of Palestine and returning residents. The former had to prove that their relatives were able to provide for them. These three categories were controlled solely by the Mandatory government.

The fourth category—workers—was the object of a struggle between the Zionist Executive and the government. The workers were impoverished young people who had to make a living in Palestine from their labor, and for whom the Zionist Organization had guaranteed work in the Jewish economy. However, the Zionist Executive and the Mandatory government had differing assessments of economic capacity. Every six months the executive submitted an assessment of the “schedule” (immigration quota), and the government would usually approve a number of immigration certificates far lower than the number requested. Until 1936 this was how immigration to Palestine was determined.

In the first two years of the Fourth Aliya, some 40 percent of immigrants and their families fell into the category of “people of means.” These were mainly lower middle class people who used a large portion of their assets to finance their immigration, but they considered themselves bourgeois and aspired to an urban lifestyle similar to the one they had had in Poland. Most members of this aliya went to Tel Aviv, which had enjoyed an unprecedented boom in construction, and also to Haifa and Jerusalem. If during the Third Aliya it had seemed that the country would be built with public capital and by socialist pioneers, now a new means of realizing Zionism appeared, in the shape of the middle class and the use of private capital. Whereas Zionist ideology viewed agricultural settlement as the heart of the enterprise, the majority of the aliya was now moving from the village to the city. Jewish Palestine had become unmistakably urban.

The aspiration that idealistic aliya would build an egalitarian society from scratch by turning to agriculture, thus changing the image of the Jew from trader and middleman to physical laborer, foundered due to limited national capital and the unexpected presence of private capital. The middle class Jew became a new candidate for building the country. The Fourth Aliya was the target of fierce criticism in the workers’ press, and Weizmann accused its members of having transferred Dzika and Nalewki Streets (Warsaw streets housing traders and peddlers) to Tel Aviv.2

The source of these vilifications was the dual disappointment of the failure to raise enough national capital and the arrival of an aliya whose characteristics did not meet the left’s idealistic expectations. The Fourth Aliya sparked a long debate between the socialists and the owners of private capital—those who demanded selective immigration of young people consistent with the pioneering model versus those who demanded immigration open to all, reflecting the structure of Jewish society in the Diaspora. Since the Zionist Organization did not control the aliya of people with means, in the end the debate was about whether the Zionist Organization would support urban or rural settlement. The Zionist budget devoted more than 30 percent of its resources to agricultural settlement, compared with less than 10 percent for urban settlement. This preference arose from the aspiration to establish a new Jewish people in Palestine, a people close to the soil. But it also derived from the desire to control relatively large tracts of land that would form a continuum of Jewish settlements—the foundation of sovereignty over the territory. It was far less expensive to absorb immigrants into the city than into rural areas. Urban settlement also made possible the absorption of many people who were not suited to physical labor and had no inclination to change their way of life. But from the Zionist standpoint the village was not only the romantic image of the new reality; it was also a vital factor in ensuring ownership of the country.

THE EMEK AND THE DEVELOPMENT
OF AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENT

The main settlement enterprise of the 1920s was that of the Jezreel Valley, which went down in Palestine settlement mythology as “the Emek” (valley). This strip of land, which ran from the coastal plain to the Jordan Valley and created a continuum with the Lower Galilee settlements of the early twentieth century, was purchased by the Zionist land agent Yehoshua Hankin without prior approval from the Zionist Organization. This act ignited a stormy debate in the Zionist Executive because it took a large bite out of the meager Zionist budget. The Emek became the site of the social and settlement experiments of this decade. It was there that the ideals of young people eager to reform the world came up against Zionist needs, and a synthesis between the two was created.

In 1920 the Joseph Trumpeldor Gedud Haʿavoda (Labor Battalion) was founded by members of the Russian Hechalutz movement. The transformation of the Gedud Haʿavoda into a commune took place during work on the roads, in a camp near Migdal. To provide for the workers’ domestic needs after an exhausting day’s work, the communal kitchen, laundry, and dining hall came into being. The work was done on contract by groups of laborers in which the strong covered for the weak and payment was distributed equally. The Gedud Haʿavoda was a non-selective body, open to any pioneer seeking to join.

At that historic moment, when it seemed that Utopia was being realized in Russia, these young people believed that they too were being given a chance to establish a “General Commune of Jewish Workers in Palestine” without private property, with one pocket for all. It was a socialism of poverty: shortages were acute, living conditions harsh, but the spiritual exaltation the pioneers derived from the sense that they were building a new society outweighed the difficulties and homesickness they faced. The feeling of togetherness, the ecstasy of dancing at night, compensated for the suffering and hardship. Uri Zvi Greenberg perpetuated the spirit of those days with the lines:

Remember, God

Those young men and women

With neither father nor mother here

Like an army in battle

And the hoe sliced

Like a sword through the flesh of Philistia

And the steamroller was led

Like the chariot of the Messiah . . .3

When settlement began in the Emek in 1922, the Gedud Haʿavoda was available for this work and founded two kibbutzim: Ein Harod and Tel Yosef. The kibbutz was the creative idea of Shlomo Lavi (Levkovich) of the Second Aliya. Levkovich developed the “big kvutza,” reminiscent of the thinking of French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. The kvutzot founded during the Second Aliya, Degania and Kinneret, were based upon an intimate, almost familial model. Once Degania had expanded to several dozen members, it split into Degania Alef and Degania Bet. Although the kvutza was supposed to be an extended family, in practice over-intimacy proved burdensome and created a great deal of friction, manifested in people leaving and damage to relationships. Lavi believed that the big kvutza would avoid invasion of privacy and enable different types of people to fit in. He foresaw kvutzot of one thousand men and women, a figure then considered delusional. Lavi sought to unite agriculture and industry under the kvutza’s roof, so that anyone could find suitable employment. He also believed that its large size would enable rational exploitation of the means of production and make the kvutza profitable. Its broad framework was even designed to facilitate cultural life. The Gedud Haʿavoda took upon itself the experiment of establishing the big kvutza.

Beit Alpha was founded to the east of Ein Harod and Tel Yosef with the participation of another Third Aliya organization, Hashomer Hatzaʿir. Whereas the Gedud Haʿavoda consisted mainly of eager but uneducated people from Russia, the Hashomer Hatzaʿir youngsters were from Galicia and Poland. They came from the upper middle class, had a high school education, and believed in anarchistic doctrines and Freudian psychoanalysis. During their first years in Palestine, they devoted much time to soul searching and seeking meaning. Settlement on the land of Beit Alpha, and later Merhavia and Mishmar Haʿemek, was part of their maturing out of adolescence and adapting to life in Palestine. They believed that prior indoctrination was a prerequisite for kibbutz membership and maintained a selective admissions policy. Several more kvutzot settled in the Emek; like the Hashomer Hatzaʿir kibbutzim, these were a sort of compromise between the narrow confines of the “small kvutza” like Degania and the “big kvutza” such as Ein Harod or Tel Yosef.

In the western Emek land was allocated for a different form of settlement, initiated by a group of Second Aliya veterans who had left Degania. They opposed the kvutza way of life, which they thought undermined both the natural family and the intimate relationship between farmers and their land, a relationship founded on the family land unit. They were the founders of the first moshav, Nahalal, which aimed to establish a group of smallholders rooted in soil that would be worked by the family. Nahalal was founded on the principle of mutual aid among members and on joint marketing of their produce. Its houses were built in a circle, close together, with fields behind each house. This arrangement created physical closeness between the families and preserved the spirit of a community whose members were responsible for one another.

All the forms of agricultural settlement in the Emek were grounded in the lesson learned by the Second Aliya: how to prevent farmers from being tempted to employ hired labor, which was an opening for Arab labor. Communal authority and landownership and total prohibition of hired labor were the checks designed to ensure the Zionist character of the settlement. In the 1920s the moshav was considered the ideological limit of labor settlement, beyond which, Ben-Gurion contended, lay capitalism.

The Gedud Haʿavoda and Hashomer Hatzaʿir were Zionist youth organizations that sought the pioneering venture and the socialist challenge. The innovative forms of settlement in the Emek enabled them to feel that they were participating in building a new world. In the early 1920s they believed that their idealism would give the entire Zionist enterprise a socialist disposition, but the Third Aliya crisis and the arrival of the Fourth Aliya made them realize that the Zionist enterprise could not avoid the capitalist stage of social and economic development. For many this was a breaking point. What should take precedence? Was realizing Zionism most important, even if that meant accepting some forms of capitalism, or was it preferable to immigrate to a place where a truly egalitarian society was being built? Some Gedud Haʿavoda members, led by Mendel Elkind, chose to return to the Soviet Union, hoping to establish the ideal society there, but the vast majority preferred the aims of Zionism. They shelved the establishment of the socialist society until a Jewish majority was attained in Palestine.

Meanwhile these young people’s idealism was harnessed to the most difficult of Zionist missions. Collectivist organization, internal discipline, and mobility all enabled settlement in remote, dangerous corners of the country where the climate was harsh. The kibbutzim spearheaded the Zionist enterprise all over Palestine. Zionism’s orientation toward real action, as opposed to just talk, fulfilled the aspirations of idealistic youth who wanted to dedicate their lives to society and the nation. Collective settlement gave the Zionist movement a superb mobilization tool that defined itself in socialist terms and placed itself at the disposal of the Zionist enterprise for all the “conquest” assignments. The more centralized and disciplined the kibbutz, the greater the willingness to enlist in national objectives.

This combination of socialist and nationalist yearning breathed a unique energy into the members of the kibbutzim, kvutzot and moshavim, making them into the pioneers of the Zionist enterprise, always at the disposal of the Haganah, the Histadrut, or the Zionist Executive. The pioneering ethos is linked with the figure of the kibbutz member, the tiller of the soil, who serves the nation day after day in his work on the nation’s land, in his willingness to live a life of poverty and privation and risk his and his family’s lives by settling in dangerous areas. The distribution of the kibbutzim along the length of the northern border, in the Beit Sheʾan Valley, and in the Negev desert made Jewish settlement geographically contiguous all over Palestine and ultimately determined the borders of the state.

Because of the financial constraints, agricultural settlement developed slowly. Until the end of the Mandate period, more Arab land was being offered for sale than Jews were able to purchase. Settlement in the Emek was followed by settlement in the Hefer Valley and then the Haifa Bay area. The great surges in settlement came after the 1937 Peel Commission report, which turned the spotlight on the connection between the future borders of the Jewish state and the geographic distribution of settlements. The Beit Sheʾan Valley, state land that had been given to the Bedouins in the area by Herbert Samuel, was now purchased from them by the Jewish National Fund, and settlement on it began quickly. Western Galilee and the northern border were also settled, with a combination of private (Nahariya) and collective settlements (Hanita, Shavei Zion, Yechiam). During the struggle against the British and after World War Two, eleven new locations were settled in the Negev, assisted by a pipe laid by the Mekorot Water Company. These dangerous areas, remote from concentrations of Jewish settlement, were settled by kibbutzim (see map 3).

In the 1920s the extent of labor settlement’s contribution to the Zionist enterprise was not yet clear. At the Fourteenth Zionist Congress in Vienna, Heschel Farbstein of the Mizrachi party, who considered himself a representative of the middle class, called the kibbutz members kest kinder, i.e., freeloaders living off the Zionist Organization’s meager funds—funds being withheld from thousands of Jews knocking on Palestine’s gates. In the late 1920s a committee of experts that examined the settlement situation handed down a deadly verdict, asserting that the kibbutz was a social framework unsuited to human desires, and especially to a Jew. Its verdict on the moshav was more lenient, since the moshav structure was more in line with traditional thinking. The debate on whether labor settlement was economically viable would continue for many years, and in fact has never ended. Per capita investment in the kibbutzim was far greater than in the cities, but it is doubtful whether it was greater than investment in the moshavot, which in the 1920s were flourishing and economically successful. They were offered as proof of the success of the privately owned farm—though the vast investments of Baron de Rothschild and the JCA before this success was achieved went unmentioned.

Tel Aviv now stood in contrast to the Emek as a model for absorption and building the country. From a small garden city of about 2,000, by 1925 it had become a vibrant township with a population of 34,000; by 1931 it had increased to 46,000. This rapid growth of the city in the sand dunes raised the fears of those who had expected that Zionism would not only bring the Jewish people from the Diaspora to Palestine but also create an essential change in the image of the Jew. With its land speculators and the raucous commerce of its streets, Tel Aviv seemed like Warsaw or Lvov transplanted into Palestine. It reflected the Jews’ tendency to choose city life, their avoidance of physical labor, and their desire for simply geographical—as opposed to revolutionary—change that would allow them to live among other Jews. One of Tel Aviv’s attractions was that it was almost completely a Jewish city. Yet its petit bourgeois urban image roused the fears of all who wanted to see the new Jew emerge. In a noted critical article on the Fourth Aliya, Chaim Arlosoroff claimed that it was not urban settlement—as populous as it might be—that would determine the country’s future, but agricultural settlement. He described settling on the land, with the tiller of the soil deeply rooted in it, in stark contrast with the unplanned aliya that perhaps provided a solution for the individual Jew but was of no help in shaping the Jewish nation in Palestine.4

Despite all the preaching, and the harsh economic crisis that beset Tel Aviv at the end of the Fourth Aliya—in which a third of the city’s workers became unemployed—in 1931 only 19 percent of the Jews in Palestine lived in agricultural settlements, and subsequently this figure dwindled. The three main cities—Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem—made up the main triangle of Jewish settlement. This configuration also reflected the fact that most of the capital used to build the country was private. In 1925 alone £2 million was invested in Tel Aviv, a sum that labor settlement could only dream of. Between 1918 and 1937, 75 million Palestine pounds in private capital were brought into the country, whereas only 20 million of national capital was raised. Given this reality there was a kind of “division of labor” between national capital, which went to places avoided by private capital, and private capital, which went into the cities and the coastal citrus plantations. The Tel Aviv model was appropriate for private capital, while the national capital went to the Emek.

In the late 1920s the Zionist enterprise in Palestine suffered the worst economic crisis it had ever experienced, which became a crisis of confidence in the Zionist movement’s ability to succeed as a settlement movement. Centered in Tel Aviv, the crisis was caused by the end of the flow of capital from Poland, which had been devalued as a result of economic developments in that country. Numerous immigrants went bankrupt and were unable to meet their commitments. In 1928 twice as many people left Palestine as immigrated to it. Economic recovery began in 1929 and gained momentum in 1931, after the publication of the MacDonald Letter.

Ever since the Second Aliya the Jewish settlers had searched for an agricultural product on which they could base their economy. Their experiments with field crops were unsuccessful. Then they pinned their hopes on viniculture, which also failed. Almond trees were planted, then uprooted. Experiments with growing tobacco in the 1920s failed too. What emerged as the “golden product” of the country’s agriculture was citrus fruit. The first to plant citrus were the Arabs of Jaffa, who created the “Jaffa oranges” brand. Jews began planting citrus groves during the Second Aliya, mainly in Petach Tikva and Rehovoth, and planting continued during the Mandate period. Both Jewish and Arab economies accelerated development of the citrus industry; only in 1931 did the acreage of Jewish plantations equal that of the Arabs. Citrus groves were concentrated mainly in the Samaria and Sharon regions, where groundwater had been discovered at an accessible depth, and the soil was suitable. The citrus industry, which in the 1930s was Palestine’s leading export and agricultural sector, was the result of private enterprise and private ownership.

Citrus production involved considerable risks. It depended on foreign market demand and was affected by economic changes in Europe. It was in constant competition with Spanish oranges. The uncontrolled planting of new citrus groves led to fears of surplus production, which were proved valid at the end of the period. After 1937 the industry was in crisis due to reduced demand, and when sea freight ceased during the World War, the growers needed government aid to maintain their plantations. But as long as the economic situation was fairly good and export continued, citrus was considered the success story of private farming in Palestine.

In contrast with Tel Aviv, which seemed to embody the Diaspora way of life, the citrus industry symbolized working the land, closeness to nature, the ultimate Palestine experience. As we have seen, Tel Aviv suffered widespread unemployment during the Fourth Aliya crisis, but the moshavot plantations flourished, unaffected. The problem was that the citrus-growing moshavot, particularly the largest, Petach Tikva, employed Arabs. As long as the labor movement was convinced that labor settlement would cover the country with socialist communities, it gave up fighting for Jewish labor in the old moshavot. But with the change of perspective following the Fourth Aliya, and more particularly given urban unemployment that mandated directing thousands of workers to the moshavot, the struggle for Jewish labor was renewed at the end of the 1920s.

For the labor movement this struggle, which strained farmer-worker relations but did not prevent hiring Arabs to pick fruit in the moshavot, was presented as evidence that private capital would not contribute to building the country and realizing Zionism. Its sole aim was profit, and the owners were not prepared to make the necessary financial sacrifice so that this capital could be used to build the country. The premise that Arab labor in the Jews’ fields represented the triumph of class egoism over the national interest was widely accepted among the Jewish population, even by those who did not share the left’s socialist perspective. Thus, for example, the National Farmers Union, composed of farmers from the newer moshavot in the Sharon area, whose groves had begun yielding fruit only in the 1930s, did not employ Arabs on principle since they identified with the workers’ nationalist arguments. On the other hand, the farmers in the older moshavot with a mixed workforce (approximately one third Jewish workers) claimed that the daily cost of a Jewish worker was twice that of an Arab worker, and in a sector built on export in an unprotected global market, Jewish farmers could not afford this disparity. This debate helped raise the prestige of the workers considered to be sacrificing themselves to build the country, in contrast with the poor image of the farmers, even though they worked the land and had settled the country.

Basing the moshavot economy on citrus was a different form of Baron de Rothschild’s concept from the Ottoman period: modern monoculture farming based on export. In 1936 citrus fruit accounted for more than 80 percent of exports from Palestine. Yet the drawbacks of this economy were essentially similar to those of viniculture: dependence on foreign markets, the need to employ numerous workers during the harvest season, and a sharp decrease in the need for labor in the off-seasons. Demand for large numbers of unskilled workers for short periods could not be the basis of a Jewish agricultural working class in the moshava. The number of Jewish workers living in the moshavot increased over the years, but most of them found work in construction, services, and agriculture-related industry. Urbanization of the moshavot reduced the importance of the farms in them and made it possible to consolidate the population of Jewish workers there, even though Arab workers continued to work in the citrus groves.

Labor settlement adopted a mixed farming model: field crops (mostly grains), orchards, vegetables, chickens, and dairy. The produce would enable the settlement to be self-sufficient and not dependent on the market, while any surplus would go to the cities, especially surplus dairy products. This farm model was intended to prevent large-scale employment of hired laborers during the busy seasons, and whenever necessary there was an internal mobilization of working hands in the kibbutz or moshav at harvest time. What was more, the supply of fresh produce to the cities made the Jewish city less dependent on the Arab economy. This approach led to the development of modern sophisticated agriculture that became vital for food supply after the establishment of the state. During the Mandate period, however, its profitability was debatable.

The majority of workers went to the city to find a livelihood. During the 1926–1928 crisis, some found work in the moshavot, but once the cities started to recover and building began again, the workers quickly left agriculture to work in construction. In an immigrant country, construction is one of the main drivers of the economy. Population increase and a rise in the standard of living mandate large-scale construction. The surge of the Fourth Aliya period (1924–1929) derived from construction projects, while the emergence from the crisis was marked by renewed immigration in 1931 and 1932 that brought with it renewed construction. Starting in 1932 voices were raised among the workers’ leadership complaining that people were leaving agriculture for construction work, which offered more than twice the daily wage. The shortage of Jewish workers in the moshavot continued until the end of the period of prosperity in 1936, but the citrus economy then entered a severe crisis from which it recovered only at the end of the World War.

The prosperity of the years between 1932 and 1936 marked a reversal of roles between Palestine and the Diaspora. In the 1920s the Zionist enterprise in Palestine was dependent on world Jewry for human resources, capital, and political influence. In 1931 the pressure exerted by world Jewry was one of the factors that led the British government to shelve the Passfield White Paper, giving the national home a respite. Although contributions to the Keren Hayesod did not meet expectations, they were the mainstay of labor settlement. The deep economic crisis in Palestine at the end of the 1920s occurred at a time when the unstable post–World War One political situation in Europe had stabilized and economic growth had begun. With the 1929 New York stock market crash, stability and growth were replaced overnight by a global economic crisis. Europe entered a period of economic depression, unemployment, social unrest, and political shock waves. In Germany the struggle between left and right began, ending with the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933. In Palestine, on the other hand, the uncertainty of 1929–1931 was replaced by relative quiet, political stability, and economic growth. The arrival of the new high commissioner, Arthur Wauchope, heralded a period in which Palestine, instead of depending on the Diaspora, suddenly became a country of refuge for masses of Jews seeking shelter from the gathering storm in Europe.

Within four years the population of the Yishuv more than doubled (a June 1927 estimate put it at 150,000 Jews; the November 1931 census recorded 174,610; a December 1936 estimate was 384,000; and a December 1939 estimate indicated 474,000). Most immigrants came from Poland, the Jewish people’s largest demographic pool, but more than 50,000 came from Germany and had a different social profile than those from Eastern Europe. For several generations they had lived in a developed Western society as a minority with equal rights. Many had a university education. Fifteen percent were doctors, engineers, attorneys, or other professionals. They raised the standard of the Hebrew University and of banking and finance. Bauhaus architecture left its mark on Tel Aviv. The standards of hygiene and aesthetics in the consumer sector improved beyond measure. Patterns of consumption were upgraded: modern department stores, delicatessens, and cafés whose pastries were far superior to the local variety appeared.

More than a third of the German immigrants were classified as “people of means.” Some came with modest capital of 1,000 Palestine pounds (a requirement for receiving an immigration certificate in this category), while others came with far larger sums that they invested in agricultural settlement or industry. According to accepted estimates, capital valued at 50 million Palestine pounds was brought into the country during those years, 80 percent of which was private. Half of it was invested in industry and commerce. This flow of capital made possible the economic prosperity of those years, and it also provided a reason for increasing the number of immigrants on “the schedule,” since the new economic production created a demand for workers.

One way to transfer the assets of German immigrants was the Transfer Agreement signed in 1933 between the German government and unofficial Zionist bodies, but with the knowledge of the Zionist Executive. Money deposited by Jews in Germany was used to purchase German goods to be imported into Palestine, and in Palestine the money was restored to its owners in local currency. The Germans benefited by this promotion of their exports—and because the agreement provided a way to get rid of Jews—while German Jews seeking to escape the Nazi trap could save some of their assets. The Zionist Executive viewed the Transfer Agreement as an important channel for bringing in the capital required for building the country. However, it was bitterly criticized in the Jewish world. The Nazis’ discriminatory and debasing policy toward the Jews of Germany had inspired an international Jewish movement to boycott German goods. The Transfer Agreement hurt the boycott movement and ostensibly legitimized the expulsion of Jews from Germany. When it turned out that the boycott was not achieving its aims and that the Nazis were hardening their anti-Jewish policy, opposition to the agreement waned. And in fact the Jews of Germany saw it as an escape route at that fateful time. The Transfer Agreement brought some 8 million Palestine pounds into the country, about 1 percent of the assets of German Jewry in 1933. For the Jews whose immigration it facilitated, this was a large amount.

The year 1936 brought a severe economic crisis in Palestine that continued until 1941. It was caused by the Arab Revolt, the dwindling capital coming into the country, and the immigration cutback by the Mandatory government, which had placed a political cap on it since 1937. In 1940 there was 12 percent unemployment in the Jewish community, but this low ebb was rapidly replaced by a growth surge during the war years that averaged 10 percent annually. Driven by the British Army’s great demand for agricultural and industrial products, this growth benefited both the Jewish and Arab economies. The Middle East became an important supply center for the Allied armies. Cessation of imports during the war encouraged development of local industry. The glory days of agriculture as a main employment sector were now over. Industry expanded to employ approximately one third of the Jewish workforce. Industrial development was aided by machinery brought into the country through the Transfer Agreement, and German immigrants with academic talent and technical skill were among the leading developers of industry. The Yishuv enlisted in the Allies’ war effort by recruiting some 27,000 of its young men and women, and by supplying spare parts, optical equipment, and medical supplies for the British war machine.

The transition to a postwar peace economy was marked by continued growth arising from a revival of the citrus market and increased exports, and also from the permits now being issued for private construction—which had been prohibited during the war years—which brought about great demand for new dwellings. Growth in these sectors offset the reduced demand from the British Army.

The immigration and settlement processes in the thirty years of the British Mandate laid the groundwork for creation of a durable Jewish society in Palestine. The growth of the Jewish population from 56,000 to 650,000, the establishment of a productive agricultural and industrial economy, and the distribution of Jewish settlements throughout the country were the foundations on which the Jewish state was built.

NOTES

1.Uri Zvi Greenberg, “Hahekhrach” (The Necessity), Beʾemtza haʿolam uveʾemtza hazmanim (In the Middle of the World, In the Middle of Time), Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1979, pp. 30–31.

2.Weizmann’s response in the political debate at the Fourteenth Zionist Congress in Vienna, 23.8.1925, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, B. Litvinoff (ed.), Series B, 1, Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1983, p. 454.

3.Uri Zvi Greenberg, “Hazon ehad haligionot,” (A Vision of One of the Legions), Beʾemtza haʿolam uveʾemtza hazmanim (In the Middle of the World, In the Middle of Time), Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1979, p. 85.

4.Chaim Arlosoroff, “Lehaʿarakhat haʿaliya hareviʿit” (The Fourth Aliya: An Assessment), 1925, Kitvei Chaim Arlosoroff (The Writings of Chaim Arlosoroff ), vol. 3, Tel Aviv: Stiebel, 1934, pp. 107–118.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

English

Bein, Alex, The Return to the Soil: A History of Jewish Settlement in Israel, Jerusalem: The Zionist Organization, 1952.

Gross, Nachum, The Economic Policy of the Mandatory Government in Palestine, Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel, 1982.

Metzer, Jacob, The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Karlinsky, Nahum, California Dreaming: Ideology, Society, and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine, 1890–1939, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Hebrew

Giladi, Dan, Hayishuv bitekufat haʿaliya hareviʿit: behina kalkalit upolitit (Jewish Palestine during the Fourth Aliyah Period [1924–1929]: Economic and Social Aspects), Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1973.

Gross, Nachum, Lo al haruah levada: iyyunim bahistoria hakalkalit shel Eretz Yisrael baʿet hahadasha (Not by Spirit Alone: Studies in the Economic History of Modern Palestine and Israel), Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999.

Halamish, Aviva, Bemerutz kaful neged hazman: mediniut haʿaliya hatzionit bishnot hashloshim (Race against Time: Zionist Immigration Policy in the 1930s), Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2006.

Helman, Anat, Or veyam hikifuha: tarbut tel-avivit bitekufat hamandat (Tel Aviv’s Culture during the Mandate Era), Haifa: University of Haifa, 2007.

Metzer, Yaʿakov, and Kaplan, Oded, Meshek yehudi umeshek aravi: totzar, taʿasuka utzmiha bitekufat hamandat (The Jewish and Arab Economies in Mandatory Palestine: Production, Employment, and Growth), Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel, 1978.

Shapira, Anita, Hamaʾavak hanikhzav: avoda ivrit, 1929–1939 (Futile Struggle: Hebrew Labor, 1929–1939), Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad and Tel Aviv University, 1977.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Halpern, Ben, and Reinharz, Jehuda, Zionism and the Creation of a New Society, Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2000.

Klieman, Aaron S. (ed.), The Rise of Israel: The Jewish Yishuv’s Development in the Interwar Period, New York: Garland, 1987.

Mendelsohn, Ezra, The Jews of East-Central Europe between the World Wars, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Labor Settlement

Kats, Yosef, The Religious Kibbutz Movement in the Land of Israel, 1930–1948, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999.

Near, Henry, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Rayman, Paula, The Kibbutz Community and Nation Building, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Shilony, Zvi, Ideology and Settlement: The Jewish National Fund, 1897–1914, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998.

Weintraub, Dov, Lissak, Moshe, and Azmon, Yael, Moshava, Kibbutz, and Moshav: Patterns of Jewish Rural Settlement and Development in Palestine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.

Urban Settlement

Ben-Porat, Amir, Between Class and Nation, New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Bernstein, Deborah S., Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Cohen, Erik, The City in the Zionist Ideology, Jerusalem: Institute of Urban and Regional Studies, 1970.

Helman, Anat, Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities, Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2010.

LeVine, Mark, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Mendelsohn, Ezra (ed.), People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Biography

Shapira, Anita, Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.