Writing early in the British administration of Palestine, sociologist Arjeh Tartakower assesses the inflationary effects of immigrant land purchases and the failure of absentee Arab landlords to provide any benefits or protection to tenant farmers.
Correctly observing that the vast majority of Palestinian Arab peasants were trapped in debt with interest rates between 30% and 70%, this British civil servant suggested establishing agricultural cooperatives. But neither Arab leaders nor British bureaucrats wanted to provide the funding. For the duration of the Mandate, the Palestinian peasant remained hard-working, sullen and impoverished.
An invaluable glimpse at Palestine’s population: gaping socio-economic distances and vast communal differences between Muslims, Christians and Jews that set the strong preferences for separation of the populations.
A report presented at the 18th Zionist Congress looks at the present and future of Jewish agricultural settlement and expansion in Mandatory Palestine, including the export market.
A description details the economic devastation caused by the 1936-1939 Arab disturbances in Palestine to the majority rural population. This followed the annually poor crop yields of the early 1930s, and the vast rural wreckage caused by WWI.
The deal to mutually phase out tariffs on manufactured goods over a decade is the first free-trade agreement for the United States and the second for Israel, after one reached with a precursor to the European Union.
