Israel

ATLANTIC

April 1951

on the World today

ALMOST the entire southern half of Israel is a hot, waterless desert, the Negev, with temperatures running up to 110 degrees. A large part of the rest of the country is also wasteland, neglected for almost two thousand years, its rich topsoil of ancient days carried away by torrents and wind, miles of fields literally covered with rocks of all sizes.

There is not a pound of coal, not a drop of oil, not an ounce of iron anywhere. The forests were cut down many centuries ago, and practically every stick of wood has to be imported. No wonder that many an international commission charged with evaluating the possibilities of resettling Palestine came to the conclusion that it could not be done.

The fighting between Arabs and Jews stopped about eighteen months ago. But peace has not been concluded yet and there is no sign of an early settlement. On the contrary, tension between the one million Jews in Israel and their more than 30 million Arab neighbors continues. Hostilities could break out again any time. But despite this numerical inferiority the Israeli are confident that the account which they gave of themselves in 1948 will prevent the Arabs from attacking once more. In the meantime, this nation of 1.2 million Jews and 175,000 Arabs, settled on an area of about 8000 square miles of land, has set out to build a modern democratic state out of practically nothing.

The newcomers pour in

When the British left not quite three years ago, there was no government, no army, no police, no civil service to run the state. Officials had to be recruited from the street. They had to learn as they went along. But they survived the initial chaos, only to face even more difficult tasks.

The biggest problem is how to cope with the human flood which has been pouring in ever since the state was created. In two and a half years Israel has received nearly 600,000 immigrants, far more than had arrived in the past thirty years. True, roughly half a million Arabs fled in the course of the war. But the absorption of 600,000 newcomers is a formidable task. They are still arriving at a rate of nearly 20,000 a month. This influx is expected to add another half a million people by 1953. By way of comparison: this would be equivalent to an immigration of about 70 million people to the United States over a three-year period.

The newcomers — most of them destitute, without a penny — come from sixty-three countries. You can see them leave the boat at Haifa or the government-chartered airplane at Lydda with all their earthly belongings tied up in two bundles. They cannot speak to each other for lack of a common language. They come from different civilizations and different social strata. There is the worldfamous scientist, artist, or big industrialist from Central Europe, the peddler from the Balkans, the primitive craftsman or street vendor from North Africa, the little tradesman from the Middle East.

Take the example of the 50,000 dark-skinned Yemenites who were flown here from their former isolated country near Aden. Most of them had never used a knife and fork before. Given beds in the immigration camp, they were found lying underneath them the next morning.

The difficulties and dangers of integrating people of vastly different background into a homogeneous society were perhaps best summed up by then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion when he referred to Israel as “not a melting pot but a pressure cooker.” Native Palestinians and older settlers who have built the present state and given it its character have the choice of absorbing the newcomers and winning them over to Western civilization on which Israel is built, or of being swallowed up themselves and seeing their country follow Oriental patterns of life and culture. This amalgamation is one of the most dramatic struggles in Israel today.

The religious issue

The religious problem, too, has been complicated by the mass influx from countries where orthodoxy is much stronger than in Western or Central Europe. The Sabbath is fully observed. There are no movies or theaters, and few cafés, open on Satureday. Buses don’t run. Traffic comes almost to a standstill, and there have been incidents when zealots burned or stoned cars in the streets of Jerusalem on a Saturday.

Many newcomers, especially those from Eastern Europe, Arab countries, and North Africa, are orthodox and have strengthened the religious camp. But their opponents do not object to religion as such. The Socialists, for example, demand separation of Church and State but observe the traditional holidays and customs even though these holidays and customs may have a more national, secular meaning for them. In mid-February the struggle between those who insist that religious tradition should influence the nation’s laws and those who advocate strict separation of Church and State caused the fall of the Ben-Gurion government.

The newcomers have also intensified an already existing trend toward private property and away from collectivism. Before and after World War I, immigrants from Eastern Europe particularly formed collective settlements which strictly banned private property or profits. These young men and women saw a dream of a new Communist society. There were no personal profits. The settlement, called a kibbutz (collective), supplied housing, food, clothing, and all other needs. It took care of schooling the children and nursing the sick. If a member of a kibbutz wanted to go to town, to attend a movie, or to buy any extras like cigarettes, newspapers, or books, he had to receive the money from the group’s treasury. The kibbutz also cared for parents or relatives, if necessary.

This type of collective society, the result of a revolutionary era, was influenced by the upsurge of Socialism in Europe and Communism in Russia. It was also the expression of an idealistic groping for a new way of life. Above all, it was peculiarly fitted to overcome the initial difficulties of the pioneer settlements of that era.

Gradually, things have changed. In recent years the original equalitarian principles have lost a good deal of their former attraction for the older, maturer colonists. They have not abandoned the system of collective work and profits. But they have come to emphasize more strongly individual housing, greater comfort , larger shares in the earnings of the kibbutz.

This trend has received an even greater impetus with the arrival of immigrants after World War II, and the creation of the new State of Israel has brought about a dramatic change. The overwhelming majority of the immigrants want their own houses and livestock. The land is usually owned by the Jewish National Fund but leased to the settler for ninety-nine years, with an option for renewal of the lease afterwards. He can sell or give away the house as well as the rest of his property whenever he chooses to do so and pass on the lease of the land, subject to the approval of the Jewish National Fund.

It is the plan of the government to settle about 25 per cent of the population on the land. Most of the money for the creation of these settlements comes from America. Without this support Israel could not have survived, and would collapse if such large-scale aid were stopped. A long-range program seeks to make Israel self-supporting. Today she is far from that goal and will hardly reach it until well after the end of the mass immigration.

No luxuries

At present this nation has a huge foreign trade deficit. Exports in 1950 paid for only a little more than one seventh of the imports. The food bill alone ran up to 70 million dollars despite the fact that agriculture has increased its output by 75 per cent in two and one-half years. The food supply was utterly insufficient when Palestine depended on food from the Arab lands. Now the Arabs no longer trade with the Jews. Besides, Israel must feed the huge number of immigrants, many of whom are just starting to produce.

The result has been a pressing food shortage and an austerity much stricter than in Great Britain. Meat is practically nonexistent although foreigners who can pay in hard currency can get it. Coffee, chocolate, and many other items are luxuries, also reserved for tourists with dollars. Few adults have seen milk or honey in recent months; what little there is goes to children and to the sick.

In general, living standards are likely to drop still further. The per capita income is about 250 Israeli pounds annually, which is about $700 at the arbitrarily set official rate of exchange of $2.80 for the pound. However, conversion at the free exchange rate of about $1.30 would more accurately express the purchasing power of the per capita income.

But the nation’s economy has already passed its lowest point and is now improving. For example, up to 1949 all fertilizer had to be imported. In 1950, production was begun from imported raw materials; in 1951, Israel will produce all the fertilizer she needs; in 1952, fertilizer will be exported. A similar situation prevails in the case of oil. In 1949 all fuel oil was imported. In 1950 crude oil was imported and two thirds of the country’s consumption was refined here. In 1951 all oil will he refined in Israel.

Industrial plants are being set up, some with the aid of foreign investors, such as the Kaiser-Frazor assembly plant at Haifa. The factory, which starts operating this month, will turn out twenty cars and five trucks daily. They are to be sold in Eastern Europe and Middle Eastern soft currency countries on barter terms, thus permitting Israel to purchase food and raw materials which would otherwise have to be bought in the United States. Since tires, glass, plastics, and seats are to be manufactured in Israel only the parts coming from the United States must be paid for in dollars.

Building the new land

In order to induce foreign investment, the Israel government permits annual repatriation for an unlimited period of profits totaling up to 10 per cent of the original investment. But while inviting foreign capital, Israel has big plans of its own. There are undeveloped areas everywhere, land that waits for redemption through irrigation and fertilization, villages and towns which spring up like mushrooms after the rain, and cities which have doubled and trebled their population within a few years. Throughout the country there is a smell of fresh plaster in the air.

Immigrants are brought into huge temporary camps to tents and aluminum huts until they have been processed and jobs have been secured for them. In the meantime permanent small homes go up on the plots allotted to prospective farmers, while municipalities erect apartment houses by the dozen and assume the responsibility of finding work for their new citizens. There is keen competition for every able-bodied man and woman because their hands are needed to rebuild war-torn villages deserted by their former Arab inhabitants, to care for orange groves which would waste away if not properly irrigated.

Above all, growth is part of military security. There are few points in Israel where the frontier — and this still means the enemy — is farther away than 25 miles. The sites for new settlements are chosen not only for reasons of production and commerce but also with regard to defense. Israel cannot afford to keep up an army large enough to guarantee quick action in case of a border incident or a full-scale invasion. Thus the farm settlements are planned as links in a chain of defense outposts and each of them is built around a strong point. Every settler is expected to plow when he can, shoot when he must.

Hope in the Negev

By far the biggest project, an undertaking of which the entire nation talks, is the colonization of the Negev. Today the Negev is a sun-parched, stony wasteland. Tomorrow, they hope, it will be the treasure chest of the state.

The number one problem is water. If enough wells can be found, or if sufficient water can be brought down from the north, the Israeli estimate that the Negev will accommodate 500,000 settlers and feed 1.5 million people. This is more than the entire population of Israel today. Hopes for oil are also high. But even if they should be disappointed, experiments with solar energy hold out another possibility; the intense sunshine of nine months without a cloud and mostly blue skies for the rest of the year may eventually provide the electric energy the nation requires.

The people of Israel — layman, expert, and government leader—have no doubt that their dreams will become realities before long. The word “impossible” does not exist in their vocabulary. The record of accomplishments in the first three years of the new state makes it hard to doubt their ultimate success.