English Paper Sees Tension Between Arabs, Jews Growing

The Manchester Guardian, in an exhaustive article from its Jerusalem correspondent, reports that the immigration question is far from settled in Palestine and is giving rise to renewed tension between Arabs and Jews.

“Arabs complain,” the correspondent writes, “that thousands of Jews are being smuggled into the country and have organized their young men to watch the coast and the land frontiers and interfere with suspects; the Jews make a counter-charge that thousands of Arabs from Syria and Transjordan cross into Palestine without control and some of their young men have organized to check the inflow. The government is taking measures to check undesired voluntary forces and to guard the frontiers more strictly.

20 PER CENT INCREASE

“The extraordinary Jewish immigration last year brought an increase of more than twenty per cent in the Jewish population and this year is likely to do the same,” he proceeds. “Nevertheless, the census of 1931 gives the basic figures of the situation. In 1931 the total population was 1,035, of whom the Moslems numbered 760,000, the Jews 175,000, and the Christians 91,000.

“Three-fourths of the Moslem population was rural, and three-fourths of the Jewish population was urban. The Jews were specially concentrated in three towns; in Jerusalem, where they had a considerable majority in the population of 90,000; in Tel Aviv which, having been at the date of the occupation a garden suburb of Jaffa, had grown into a town larger than Jaffa, with over 50,000 inhabitants, and in Haifa, where they numbered one-third of the total population of 50,000.

AGRICULTURE CITED

“As regards occupations, agriculture supported sixty-four per cent of the Moslem population and fifteen per cent of the Jews, while the proportion of Moslems supported by industry was under ten per cent and of the Jews was about thirty-nine per cent.

“Nevertheless, the figures of the two enumerations made by the government in 1922 and 1931 indicate a steady increase in the ratio of the Jewish rural inhabitants. While in the earlier year they numbered only 15,000 or eighteen per cent of the total Jewish population, in 1931 they had risen to 46,500 or twenty-seven per cent. There is no geographical segregation of Jews and Arabs in the country, but the Jewish settlements are most numerous, and are expanding, notably in three of the more fertile areas: the Plain of Sharon, which stretches from Gaza along the coast of Acre; the Plain of Esdraelon, running from the Bay of Haifa to the Jordan Valley, which divides Galilee from Samaria; and the Jordan Valley and the lower hills of Galilee.

JEWS AS LAND OWNERS

“The Jews own not more than one-fifth of the land, and the rest remains to the Arabs.

“Turning to industry, the Jews are predominantly both in numbers and in the importance of their enterprises. The development has been startlingly rapid. The production of building materials, stone and cement, takes the first place; then come factories for food products, and after that metal-work, wood-work, textiles, clothing, leather-work, chemicals and printing.

“Tel Aviv remains by far the largest industrial center; nearly half of the total number of Jewish factories have been set up in that Jewish town. The bigger industries, however, are at Haifa, and a number of smaller establishments, now nearly 1,000, are in Jerusalem.

BUILDING TRADE LEADS

“The trade which employs the greatest number of persons today is building; and that must continue while the immigration flows with its present rapid stream. Arabs and Jews are engaged together in a number of industries. Jews and Arabs are working together in the industrial enterprise which may fundamentally change the economic condition of Palestine—namely, the extraction of minerals from the Dead Sea—which today gives employment to some 500 persons. They worked together also in the building of the hydro-electric station on the Jordan, a Jewish enterprise which supplies the power and light for almost the whole of the country.

“The largest employer of labor, however, in the country is the government of Palestine, and in all the public works, whether the railways or the making of roads, or public buildings or the construction of the harbor of Haifa, while the Jews have a place, the great majority of the workers are Arabs. The experience of the building of the Haifa Harbor was a good omen for the cooperation of Arab and Jew in industry. The activities of the government, therefore, as well as of the larger private enterprises, conduce to Arab-Jewish collaboration in industry.

MANY ARABS WORK FOR JEWS

“It is to be expected that their example will gradually affect the smaller private enterprises. In agriculture, while Arab and Jewish villages are for the most part distinct, there is a substantial employment of Arab labor by Jewish farmers. The figures of labor employed in the Jewish plantations in 1933 showed that of 11,350 persons, 6,800 were Jews and 4,550 were Arabs. The expansion of the citrus plantation by the Jewish settlers is stimulating the Arabs, and the capital derived from the sale of their land to Jewish bodies is enabling the large Arab land owners to turn also to intensive cultivation. So economic factors steadily conduce to bring the populations together even while political factors tend to keep them apart.

“The large immigration, partly from Germany, but mainly from Poland, of the last year,” he concludes, “has tended to swell the town has now 80,000 inhabitants. Tel Aviv. It is calculated that that town has now 80,000 in habitants. Haifa and Jerusalem have received a large number of the newcomers; and some thousands have either acquired plantations or are undergoing training with experienced farmers with a view to their final settlement on the land.

“But the difficulty of acquiring land for maintaining a fair ratio between Jewish urban and rural population has been emphasized.”