Two thousand recently-arrived immigrant families have been transferred from Israeli reception camps to new settlement projects in various parts of the country, Levi Eshkol, chief of the agricultural and colonization department of the Jewish Agency, revealed here today at a press conference. Kshkol said he was in the United States “at the invitation of Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal,” and added he would look into the “possible purchase of agricultural equipment badly needed in my country.”
Declaring that of the “800,000 Jews we hope to bring into Israel by the end if 1952, we hope to settle one-fourth on the land,” the Agency official added: “Today we must deal with whole family groups or the broken remnants of family groups who come to us with little but fervor and the will to succeed in our pioneer country.”
Eshkol stated that “we have calculated that our four-year immigration scheme is going to need at least $1,500,000,000, of which approximately one -fourth will go for the establishment of new settlements.” He revealed that Lebanese officials treated him “well” during his enforced stopover in Beirut–when a plane on which he was traveling developed motor trouble and landed in Lebanon. “They put me up at a hotel and expressed hope that a permanent Lebanese-Israeli peace would soon be signed,” he said.
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