Resident Retention Quotes

Escaping from fascism, European Jews had poured into Palestine—more than sixty thousand in 1935 alone. Arab residents reacted angrily to the flood of immigrants. The British government was convinced that the hostility was due, in part, to the region’s lack of resources; the immigrants were exceeding Palestine’s “absorptive capacity” (that is, its carrying capacity). The limit to absorptive capacity was water—British experts argued that regional supplies couldn’t sustain a big influx of immigrants. In this arid, eroded landscape, the supply of well-watered farmland was so small that incoming Jews who used their superior financial resources to acquire it would necessarily create “a considerable landless Arab population.” Zionist groups sent out water testers, who proclaimed that they had found much more water than Britain allowed. London ignored the reports and in 1939 restricted Jewish immigration to fifteen thousand a year. No! Lowdermilk protested. Britain had it backward! The new Jewish settlements were the only bright spots he had seen in the entire dismal region! In the midst of the desolation were Zionist village cooperatives where jointly owned farms grew newly bred crop varieties that thrived in the dry heat. The farms were investing their profits to buy advanced well-boring equipment and create small industries—carpentry and printing shops, food-processing facilities, factories for building material. Most important to Lowdermilk were the irrigation and soil-retention programs—“the most remarkable” he had encountered “in twenty-four countries.” If the British increased immigration, rather than restricted it, he said, Palestine would be able to support “at least four million Jewish refugees from Europe.