JEWS FLOCKING INTO PALESTINE, TRADE REVIVING

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6850, 4 March 1929, Page 8

JEWS FLOCKING INTO PALESTINE, TRADE REVIVING

WARSAW SAID TO HAVE WAITING LIST OF 10,000 APPROVED CANDIDATES.

JERUSALEM, Feb 1.

After a lull of nearly two years there has been organised a large-scale Jewish immigration into Palestine, and a fresh batch of 150 pioneers arrived toward tho end of January iu time to join their comrades working on large Jewish plantations in Judea. Their arrival is said by Zionist authorities here to be proof that the economic depression which set in toward the end of 1926 is past and that Palestine, is entering a period of expansion whicn may equal the rapid development of the boom years preceding the crisis.

1 Permits for new immigrants were obtained by the Zionist authorities toward the end of 1928, and immediately afterward the Zionist offices of central eastern Europe began selecting suitable candidates from long waiting lists, iln some places ,especially Warsaw, the | number of applicants approved as .fit , for early immigration into Palestine is said to reach more than 10,000.

Some 500 pioneers, or haluzig as they are called in Hebrew, are expected before the end of February, tho first group of 50 being from tho training farms of Germany, Poland Lithuania, Latvia, Galicia, Austria, Czechoslovakia and all quotas assigned them from Jerusalem. Although immigration was not actually suspended by law, there is only a very small trickling of immigrants of tho labouring class with no means of their own during the time of depression. Prospective settlers with means are at the same time subjected to very severe control, and there have been loud complaints against the policy of tho immigration authorities, which are said to divide families as well as keep potential-wealth out of the country. Tho Jewish settlers’ eagerness to adopt Palestine nationality is reflected in the 2678 certificates of naturalisation issued in the three months ending December. The Government was obliged to increase the naturalisation staff and bring a special officer to deal with the large accumulation of citizenship applications.