A Jewish share in the public works program proportionate to the Jewish share of the public revenue in Palestine, which Prime Minister J. Ramsay MacDonald promised to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, then president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, two years ago, is now being contested by the Palestine Government, according to its annual report for 1932 made public today simultaneously in London and Jerusalem. The report is for submission at the meeting of the League of Nations Mandates Commission in Geneva June 19.
“It is nenther possible nor was it intended that the Premier’s assurance should be fulfilled by granting the Jews a share in the public works fixed solely in relation to the Jewish contribution to the revenue of Palestine,” the Palestine Government declares in the report, interpreting Mr. MacDonald’s promise as meaning only that the Jewish contribution will be taken into consideration.
The Palestine Government now claims further that Jewish employment on public works is possible only in districts with a mixed, Arab-Jewish population such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, where the Jewish proportion is already said to be considerable.
However, the Government promises to scrutinize the 1933-34 public works program and determine precisely the Jewish proportion of employment on each work, in accordance with the MacDonald promise, but also bearing in mind the “racial distribution of the local population, the nature of the work and the labor cost.”
The report reveals that 864 American Jews settled in Palestine during 1932. The total was 15,908, including 754 whose capital exceeded a thousand pounds each. Only 64 families, including a number of Armenians, left Palestine to settle in Bureya, the autonomous Jewish area in Siberia. The Soviet Government has now halted immigration from Palestine.
Total land purchased by the Jews in Palestine in 1932 amounted to 18,893 dunams, of which 8,300 were acquired by the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel (Jewish National Fund).
The report confirms that the Government has acquired 5,740 dunams of land in the Beisan district to settle the “displaced Arabs of Wadi Hawareth.”
The report also restates that the Government’s intention to establish a legislative council has been unchanged since the 1930 White Paper.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
