The demand that the Zionist Congress obligate every Jewish immigrant entering Palestine on a labor certificate to spend at least three years on the soil, was voiced today by the Laborite delegation at its final conference before the opening of the nineteenth World Zionist Congress.
The laborites, who have a clear majority at the Congress, adopted this demand following a report by M. Dobkin, head of the immigration department of the Palestine Federation of Labor.
Dobkin reported that although more than 100,000 legal Jewish immigrants entered Palestine since the last Congress two years ago, there is still an acute shortage of Jewish labor as a result of which more than 18,000 Arabs were employed in Jewish enterprises during this period.
Dobkin further disclosed that of the 350,000 Jews now in Palestine, 283,000 are located in the cities and only 67,000 are settled in the colonies. This situation, Dobkin declared, threatens the future of the Jewish upbuilding work in Palestine, since the alleviation of economic ills from which Jews suffer everywhere is possible only with large scale Jewish settlement on the soil in Palestine.
The American General Zionists and Hadassah delegates at a session yesterday decided to join the General Zionist Confederation consisting of so-called Group “A” Zionists who are the more liberal wing of the center Zionist party.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
