Points out How Palestine Government Discriminated Against Jews in Road Building and Non-employment O

How the Palestine Government has discriminated against the Jews when it came to building roads and employing Jewish labor, is shown by S. Ettingen, lecturer on road and railway engineering at the Jewish Technical College at Haifa, in a recent article in the “Palestine and Near East Magazine” on the record of the Public Works Department in the country.

The writer draws up a heavy bill of charges against the government on the score of discriminating against the Jewish population. The history of the building of the Jaffa-Petach Tikvah road is retold. The colony exports over a fifth of the total orange crop of Palestine, yet its demand for an eleven km. road to connect it with the the port of Jaffa was persistently neglected. When at last a consent was obtained, a project was put forward on the part of the government to deviate from the trace of the existing shortcut route, running through a chain of Jewish settlements and an area of intensive plantation development, so as to let the road pass through villages with a negligible population and traffic. The plan was defeated, but on another occasion, when the government was persuaded, again after much delay, to continue the road from Petach Tikvah northward, a renewed attempt was made to map the road so as to leave out all the new settlements of the South Sharon block, in spitee of their expanding orange groves and steadily increasing traffic.

It will be no matter of surprise, says Mr. Ettingen, if, when it comes to continuing the road into Samaria, a similar deviation is tried in regard to the Jewish colonies of that district. In Hedera, another important center of orange growing, the Jewish colonists were even refused permission to build a road at their own expense to connect the colony with the nearby railway station. It was only under pressure of unemployment that the long-sought authorization was given.

The main grievance, however, says Mr. Ettingen, bears on the non-employment of Jewish labor. The figures quoted here refute the allegations made by Arab counsel before the Inquiry commission to the effect that the Government has been squandering money on providing work for the Jewish unemployed. It was only in 1920-1921 that the amount of work done with Jewish labor was 37.5 percent of the total. In 1922-23 it was 4.6 percent; in 1924, 6.2 percent; in 1925, 1.7 percent; in 1926, nil. In 1927-8, the pressure of distress among the unemployed and the understanding shown by the then High Commissioner, Lord Plumer, led to a change in policy. Works then allotted to Jewish labor came to 15.7 percent—still below the percentage of the Jewish population. With the disappearance of unemployment in 1929, there was a relapse to the former practice.

Thus, continues the writer, during the years of depression, 1926-1928, 132,000 pounds were spent on works where Jewish labor was employed. Only about a third of this amount went directly to the workers in the form of wages, the rest covering the cost of materials, transport, administration, etc. But even the gross amount is by one-third less than the Jewish contribution to the revenue through the motor traffic. The average share of Jewish labor in public works for the years 1920-1928 is only 9 percent. The ratio of Jewish population to the total is over 19 percent. The Jewish contribution to the revenue is about 45 percent, while it is estimated that 60 percent of the permanent wage earners in Palestine are Jewish.

“Neither understanding nor interest has been shown by the Public Works Department in the welfare and labor conditions of workers employed by it,” says Mr. Ettingen. “On the contrary, it may be said that the Department allows impossible working conditions to prevail and that it has led the way to a decrease in wages already very low. The contention that an increased standard of wages will entail a ruinous increase of cost does not hold. Were normal wages paid, the total expenditure would be increased by only 5-10 percent, but the general improvement in the wage standard of the country which this would involve, and the improvement in the standard of living, would indirectly more than compensate the treasury.”