Jerusalem.
When the High Commissioner of Palestine recently announced that the concession of the Huleh district—one of the worst districts in Palestine for malaria—had been made to a Jewish group, he referred to a number of cases in which the Jews had freed land from malaria by drainage and cultivation, and expressed the hope that these successes would be repeated.
Palestine, like Italy, has a long range of limestone mountains down its center, and the water, pouring off the bare mountains, cannot collect into regular rivers, but soaks into the ground of the alluvial plain and there forms dangerous marshes, the home of the malaria-carrying mosquito.
The damp plains are much more fertile than the mountains, and it is not surprising that the first Jewish settlers, who came to Palestine in the eighties of last century, settled on the western coastal plain. The result was a terrible outbreak of malaria and black-water fever.
The colonies of Chedera, Petach Tikvak, and others had repeatedly to be abandoned, but a return was always made. In Chedera half a million eucalyptus trees were planted, and this, together with the increasing cultivation of the ground, led to the complete disappearance of malaria as early as 1908. Unfortunately malaria made its appearance in this district last year; it is thought that the early rains were responsible.
Jerusalem itself used to be one of the worst centers of malaria. This was due not to the geographical conditions but to the badly built and inadequately covered cisterns which held the water supply.
A society of Jewish doctors was concerned with the struggle against malaria even before the war, but a systematic campaign began only with the coming of the mandatory power. The Jewish organizations worked hand in hand with the health department of the government. Local conditions were investigated, marshes were drained, stagnant waters cleared, and the water supply reorganized.
Doctors practising in Tel Aviv have had practically no cases of malaria from the town and district for years, and malaria today is practically unknown in Jerusalem. When a new colony is to be settled, the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth) or other organization which has purchased the district ascertains that the land is free from the danger of malaria and that adequate drainage is installed.
Some years after the war the National Fund bought much of the historic plain of Jezreel. It was then in a terrible state; the Arab villages were deserted, and it was said that any bird attempting to cross it fell dead in its flight.
Now Jezreel is one of the most flourishing districts of the whole country, and no one who knew its desolate state thirty years ago can help admiring the ceaseless energy of the Jewish pioneers. In the center of the plain stands the modern central hospital for all the colonies of the plain.
The plain of Huleh, lying in the north of Palestine round the lake of Huleh, which has now been granted to a Jewish society, is in much the same condition as was the plain of Jezreel before the war.
In many places, indeed, the land is being cultivated in a primitive fashion by Arabs, who suffer terribly from malaria. There are even two old Jewish settlements, but they have not been able to develop from lack of capital for drainage. One-third of the reclaimed land suitable for intensive cultivation is to go to the Arabs, and there will remain room for about 3,000 Jewish families.
If the High Commissioner’s hopes are fulfilled, the history of other districts will be repeated. The Arabs will gain in health and wealth from the capital and work of their Jewish neighbors. Not only has the prevalence of malaria among the Arabs been reduced; the Jewish health institutions, in cooperation with the health department, have fought successfully against the Egyptian eye disease (trachoma), to which the Arab children in particular were victims, and the amount of infant mortality among the Arabs has also been strikingly reduced.
The time is not far distant when malaria will become as unknown in Palestine as it is at the present day in England. Shortly before the war a writer declared that the complete elimination of malaria from Palestine was unimaginable. Exactly in the same way many travelers across the sandy deserts of Western Palestine and the barren mountains before the war used to say that the Biblical phrase, a land “flowing with milk and honey,” was merely so much Oriental rhetoric. Today the whole plain along the coast is covered with flourishing orange plantations, from which this year 5,500,000 cases of oranges, to the value of £2,500,000, were exported. The desolate sand contains valuable chemicals, and water can be obtained even from the most parched land by boring.
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.
