Search JTA's historical archive dating back to 1923

The Daily News Letter

February 21, 1935
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
Advertisement

As one travels through Palestine one of the strongest impressions is of the neatness and order which the administration has brought to the land. The main roads are excellent, the secondary roads are good; the government buildings, whether police posts or schools or offices, have an air of stability and distinction. The order and neatness, however, are not confined to the government activities. The Arab villages, at all events those in the plains, nearly all show similar orderly development. New stone houses have been built or are being built in most of them; new orchards of oranges and grapefruit have been planted. The standard of life both of the effendi, the landowner who has sold part of his land to Jewish buyers, and of the fellah, who sells his produce or hires his labor at what would have seemed an incredible price a few years ago, has visibly risen.

The improvement has not yet spread to the Arabs of the hills, because there the influence of the Jewish immigration hardly penetrates. The government has begun to tackle the problem of village credits, to redeem the cultivator from the oppression of the usurer. It is promoting the formation of cooperative societies for saving and credit in the Arab villages throughout the country. In the Jewish villages the cooperative movement is firmly established and more than 500 Jewish societies are already registered.

The movement makes encouraging headway among the Arabs. Thirty-three village societies are working; and the results of the first year are altogether satisfactory. The cultivator can obtain credit at the rate of eight per cent., which is far less than he paid the moneylender.

A remarkable example of urban cooperative enterprise among the Arabs is a society formed by the 108 Arabs lightermen of Jaffa. They formed it in order to eliminate competition; and in the first seven months of this year they had a turnover of $400,000. Times are, no doubt, abnormally good in the ports, but the example should encourage other groups of Arab workers to try cooperation in place of competition.

Another notable development in the Arab life is the running of bus services to all parts of the country. The Jews took the lead in the cross-country services some years ago, but the Arabs have been quick to follow. Now a bus runs hourly from Gaza to Jaffa, half-hourly from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and more frequently from Jaffa to Ramleh, etc. The development of these services dates from a successful strike against the high tax on petrol and the high license fees charged by the government, in which Arab and Jewish drivers combined in the summer of 1933.

The Jewish population has grown during the last two years by no less than 100,000, and the immigration in October touched the unprecedented figure of 5,000. Between a quarter and a third of the immigration comes today from Germany, and the same fraction of the German immigration is composed of what the Government regulation calls “persons of independent means.”

The prosperity of the public and private finances of Palestine has enabled the Administration to extend the facilities for education. The extension brings immediate benefit to the Arabs. The number of elementary village schools is being increased as teachers are available, and the government now conducts two agricultural schools, one for Arabs and one for Jews, for which the funds were available from the bequest of a Bagdad Jew. It is further establishing technical schools for the Arabs and subsidizing the existing technical institutions of the Jewish population. The Jews are also developing research instituted with a view to increasing the absorptive and the productive capacity of Palestine. Besides the work in the Hebrew University there has been striking expansion of the work of the agricultural experimental stations of the Jewish Agency and the establishment of a new and beautifully equipped research institute in agriculture.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement