Israeli Labor Minister Mrs. Golda Myerson, who arrived here by air yesterday to undertake a nationwide speaking tour in behalf of the United Jewish Appeal, declared in a statement that the population of Israel has reached the 1,000,000 mark. Of this total, she said, 900,000 are Jews while the remainder are Arabs.
Mrs. Myerson emphasized that there are still 1,500,000 Jews living in Europe and North Africa “who need or want to come to Israel.” The Israeli Labor Minister said that the Tel Aviv government has instituted a four-year immigration plan envisaging the doubling of Israel’s population by the middle of 1953. Replying to a question, she declared that the Israeli Government would not suspend immigration under any circumstances, despite the present shortage of housing.
“Faced with the alternative of halting the immigration of those who must come to our country, or of solving the housing problem, we are determined to solve the housing problem,” she stated. “Not one immigrant shall be denied entrance to Israel because we do not have a house for him.” Disclosing that at present more than 60,000 new arrivals are compelled to live in tents or barracks at reception camps because of the critical housing situation, Mrs. Myerson said that the only obstacle in the way of housing was lack of funds. “We have the trained manpower and the land,” she stressed. “If the Jewish communities of the United States will furnish the United Jewish Appeal with adequate funds, we can lick the housing problem in a relatively short time, despite the fact that 30,000 new immigrants come in every month.”
Mrs. Myerson revealed that 11 women now sit in the 120-member Israeli Knesset. the added that women were playing an equal role with men in developing and building the new state, “as they did during the hostilities.”
The number of immigrants who arrived in Israel during the first year of Jewish statehood amounted to over one-half the total number of Jews who succeeded in entering Palestine-with or without official certification-during the 28 years of the British Mandate, Judge Morris Rothenberg, United Palestine Appeal national chairman, disclosed during the week-end in a statement.
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