A ten-year land acquisition and development program in the future Jewish state in Palestine, involving the expenditure of $880,000, ##o for the purchase and reclamation of 3,000,000 dunams (750,000 acres) of land, as adopted here today by delegates to a leaders conference of the Jewish National Land.
Representing Jewish communities throughout the United States, the 700 delegates voted unanimously to embark on a program of land purchase whereby 1,000,000 dunams will be redeemed as quickly as possible to provide the resettlement facilities necessary for the immediate absorption of the scores of thousands of Jews who will be committed to Palestine following the establishment of the Jewish state.
The closing plenary session of the three-day parley adopted the land reclamation plan after considering for two days the draft of the plea submitted by Dr. ?brahanx Granovsky, head of the J.N.P. of Palestine. A Palestinian delegation, head-by Israel Rokach, Mayor of Tel Aviv, and Abraham Harzfeld, colonization expert and labor leader, who arrived in this country by air last week explained the details of proposal to the delegates. The plan is based oh the promise that 100,000 families will be settled on the land.
Asserting that the area of the Jewish state a3 approved by the United Nations general Assembly would have been considerably larger had the land holdings of the N.F. been greater, Mayor Rokach stressed that the Jewish state will not succeed in getting off to a good start “if the land holdings of the Jewish people are not considerably expanded immediately.” He drew attention to the fact that the expected influx of scores of thousands of Jewish immigrants, especially from Europe’s DP camps, will create “grave hardships” unless the facilities for their resettlement on the land are available.
He stated that during its first decade of existence, the Jewish state will possess the means for land purchase since “one-third of the Jewish government’s budget will be directed towards 4he assurance of security. He noted that the city Tel Aviv at present lacks enough hospitals, while the hospital situation In Haifa is “catastrophic?” “A tremendous responsibility rests upon American Jewry,” Rokach told the conference. “The failure of land purchase will result in the creation of invalid state without an economic basis and without establishing a people resting securely on its own soil.”
Harzfeld, in an address stressing that a sound economy demands that at least 20 percent of the population be based on the land, called on American Jewry to provide immediately sufficient funds to purchase and improve 1,000,000 dunams for the settlement of refugee immigrants. He called this figure the “irreducible minimum.
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