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Israel
Index
The greatest asset brought by the Zionists settling Palestine
was their organizational acumen, which allowed for the
institutionalization of the movement despite deep ideological
cleavages. The WZO established an executive office in Palestine,
thus implementing the language of the Mandate prescribing such an
agency. In August 1929, the formalized Jewish Agency was
established with a council, administrative committee, and
executive. Each of these bodies consisted of an equal number of
Zionist and nominally non-Zionist Jews. The president of the WZO
was, however, ex officio president of the agency. Thereafter, the
WZO continued to conduct external diplomatic, informational, and
cultural activities, and the operational Jewish Agency took over
fundraising, activities in Palestine, and local relations with the
British Mandate Authority (administered by the colonial secretary).
In time, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency
became two different names for virtually the same organization.
Other landmark developments by the WZO and the Jewish Agency
under the Mandate included creation of the
Asefat Hanivharim
(Elected Assembly--see Glossary) and the Vaad Leumi (National
Council) in 1920 to promote religious, educational, and welfare
services; establishment of the chief rabbinate in 1921; centralized
Zionist control of the Hebrew school system in 1919, opening of the
Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa in 1924, and
dedication of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925; and
continued acquisition of land--largely via purchases by the Jewish
National Fund--increasing from 60,120 hectares in 1922 to about
155,140 hectares in 1939, and the concurrent growth of Jewish urban
and village centers.
The architect of the centralized organizational structure that
dominated the Yishuv throughout the Mandate and afterward was Ben-
Gurion. To achieve a centralized Jewish economic infrastructure in
Palestine, he set out to form a large-scale organized Jewish labor
movement including both urban and agricultural laborers. In 1919 he
founded the first united Labor Zionist party, Ahdut HaAvodah (Unity
of Labor), which included Poalei Tziyyon and affiliated socialist
groups. This achievement was followed in 1920 by the formation of
the Histadrut, or HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael
(General Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel).
The Histadrut was the linchpin of Ben-Gurion's reorganization
of the Yishuv. He designed the Histadrut to form a tightly
controlled autonomous Jewish economic state within the Palestinian
economy. It functioned as much more than a traditional labor union,
providing the Yishuv with social services and security, setting up
training centers, helping absorb new immigrants, and instructing
them in Hebrew. Its membership was all-inclusive: any Jewish
laborer was entitled to belong and to obtain shares in the
organization's assets. It established a general fund supported by
workers' dues that provided all members with social services
previously provided by individual political parties. The Histadrut
also set up Hevrat HaOvdim (Society of Workers) to fund and manage
large-scale agricultural and industrial enterprises. Within a year
of its establishment in 1921, Hevrat HaOvdim had set up Tenuvah,
the agriculture marketing cooperative; Bank HaPoalim, the workers'
bank; and Soleh Boneh, the construction firm. Originally
established by Ahdut HaAvodah after the Arab riots in 1920, the
Haganah under the Histadrut rapidly became the major Jewish defense
force
(see Historical Background
, ch. 5).
From the beginning, Ben-Gurion and Ahdut HaAvodah dominated the
Histadrut and through it the Yishuv. As secretary general of the
Histadrut, Ben-Gurion oversaw the development of the Jewish economy
and defense forces in the Yishuv. This centralized control enabled
the Yishuv to endure both severe economic hardship and frequent
skirmishes with the Arabs and British in the late 1920s. The
resilience of the Histadrut in the face of economic depression
enabled Ben-Gurion to consolidate his control over the Yishuv. In
1929 many private entrepreneurs were forced to look to Ahdut
HaAvodah to pull them through hard economic times. In 1930 Ahdut
HaAvodah was powerful enough to absorb its old ideological rival,
HaPoel HaTzair. They merged to form Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael
(better known by its acronym Mapai), which would dominate political
life of the State of Israel for the next two generations
(see Multiparty System
, ch. 4).
The hegemony of Ben-Gurion's Labor Zionism in the Yishuv did
not go unchallenged. The other major contenders for power were the
Revisionist Zionists led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who espoused a
more liberal economic structure and a more zealous defense policy
than the Labor movement. Jabotinsky, who had become a hero to the
Yishuv because of his role in the defense of the Jews of Jerusalem
during the riots of April 1920, believed that there was an inherent
conflict between Zionist objectives and the aspirations of
Palestinian Arabs. He called for the establishment of a strong
Jewish military force capable of compelling the Arabs to accept
Zionist claims to Palestine. Jabotinsky also thought that Ben-
Gurion's focus on building a socialist Jewish economy in Palestine
needlessly diverted the Zionist movement from its true goal: the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The appeal of Revisionist Zionism grew between 1924 and 1930 as
a result of an influx of Polish immigrants and the escalating
conflict with the Arabs. In the mid-1920s, a political and economic
crisis in Poland and the Johnson-Lodge Immigration Act passed by
the United States Congress, which curtailed mass immigration to
America, spurred Polish-Jewish immigration to Israel. Between 1924
and 1931, approximately 80,000 Jews arrived in Palestine from
Central Europe. The Fourth Aliyah, as it was called, differed from
previous waves of Jewish immigration. The new Polish immigrants,
unlike the Bolshevik-minded immigrants of the Second Aliyah, were
primarily petty merchants and small-time industrialists with their
own capital to invest. Not attracted to the Labor Party's
collective settlements, they migrated to the cities where they
established the first semblance of an industrialized urban Jewish
economy in Palestine. Within five years, the Jewish populations of
Jerusalem and Haifa doubled, and the city of Tel Aviv emerged.
These new immigrants disdained the socialism of the Histadrut and
increasingly identified with the laissez-faire economics espoused
by Jabotinsky.
Another reason for Jabotinsky's increasing appeal was the
escalation of Jewish-Arab violence. Jabotinsky's belief in the
inevitable conflict between Jews and Arabs and his call for the
establishment of an "iron wall" that would force the Arabs to
accept Zionism were vindicated in the minds of many Jews after a
confrontation over Jewish access to the Wailing Wall in August 1929
turned into a violent Arab attack on Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem.
By the time the fighting ended, 133 Jews had been killed and 339
wounded. The causes of the disturbances were varied: an inter-
Palestinian power struggle, a significant cutback in British
military presence in Palestine, and a more conciliatory posture by
the new British authorities toward the Arab position.
The inability of the Haganah to protect Jewish civilians during
the 1929 riots led Jewish Polish immigrants who supported
Jabotinsky to break away from the Labor-dominated Haganah. They
were members of Betar, an activist Zionist movement founded in 1923
in Riga, Latvia, under the influence of Jabotinsky. The first Betar
congress met at Danzig in 1931 and elected Jabotinsky as its
leader. In 1937, a group of Haganah members left the organization
in protest against its "defensive" orientation and joined forces
with Betar to set up a new and more militant armed underground
organization, known as the Irgun. The formal name of the Irgun was
the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), sometimes
also called by the acronym, Etzel, from the initial letters of the
Hebrew name. The more extreme terrorist group, known to the British
as the Stern Gang, split off from the Irgun in 1939. The Stern Gang
was formally known as the Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters for
Israel's Freedom), sometimes identified by the acronym
Lehi (see Glossary).
Betar (which later formed a nucleus for Herut--see
Appendix B) and Irgun rejected the Histadrut/Haganah doctrine of
havlaga (self-restraint) and favored retaliation.
Although the 1929 riots intensified the Labor-Revisionist split
over the tactics necessary to attain Jewish sovereignty in
Palestine, their respective visions of the indigenous Arab
population coalesced. Ben-Gurion, like Jabotinsky, came to realize
that the conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalisms was
irreconcilable and therefore that the Yishuv needed to prepare for
an eventual military confrontation with the Arabs. He differed with
Jabotinsky, however, on the need to make tactical compromises in
the short term to attain Jewish statehood at a more propitious
time. Whereas Jabotinsky adamantly put forth maximalist demands,
such as the immediate proclamation of statehood in all of historic
Palestine--on both banks of the Jordan River--Ben-Gurion operated
within the confines of the Mandate. He understood better than
Jabotinsky that timing was the key to the Zionist enterprise in
Palestine. The Yishuv in the 1930s lacked the necessary military or
economic power to carry out Jabotinsky's vision in the face of Arab
and British opposition.
Another development resulting from the 1929 riots was the
growing animosity between the British Mandate Authority and the
Yishuv. The inactivity of the British while Arab bands were
attacking Jewish settlers strengthened Zionist anti-British forces.
Following the riots, the British set up the Shaw Commission to
determine the cause of the disturbances. The commission report,
dated March 30, 1930, refrained from blaming either community but
focused on Arab apprehensions about Jewish labor practices and land
purchases. The commission's allegations were investigated by an
agrarian expert, Sir John Hope Simpson, who concluded that about 30
percent of the Arab population was already landless and that the
amount of land remaining in Arab hands would be insufficient to
divide among their offspring. This led to the Passfield White Paper
(October 1930), which recommended that Jewish immigration be
stopped if it prevented Arabs from obtaining employment and that
Jewish land purchases be curtailed. Although the Passfield White
Paper was publicly repudiated by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in
1931, it served to alienate further the Yishuv from the British.
The year 1929 also saw the beginning of a severe economic
crisis in Germany that launched the rise of Adolf Hitler. Although
both Germany and Austria had long histories of anti-Semitism, the
genocide policies preached by Hitler were unprecedented. When in
January 1930 he became chancellor of the Reich, a massive wave of
mostly German Jewish immigration to Palestine ensued. Recorded
Jewish immigration was 37,000 in 1933, 45,000 in 1934, and an all-
time record for the Yishu of 61,000 in 1935. In addition, the
British estimated that a total of 40,000 Jews had entered Palestine
without legal certificates during the period from 1920 to 1939.
Between 1929, the year of the Wailing Wall disturbances, and 1936,
the year the Palestinian Revolt began, the Jewish population of
Palestine increased from 170,000 or 17 percent of the population,
to 400,000, or approximately 31 percent of the total. The
immigration of thousands of German Jews accelerated the pace of
industrialization and made the concept of a Jewish state in
Palestine a more formidable reality.
Data as of December 1988
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