The Doctrine of Beitar

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We assisted in the establishment of the "Jewish National Home," including the "immigration of Jews under suitable conditions," and even "close settlement on government and uncultivated lands" - yet this government did not bother then, not later, and not now, to prepare any settlement plan whatsoever. In 1930, as the official expert appointed on behalf of Palestine, Sir John Hope Simpson demanded that the government inform him of the total amount of land suitable for cultivation in the country. In addition, he received two separate reports, one from the Department of Lands, and the second from the Cadaster Administration /Department of Land Settlement/: one answer spoke of "8 million dunams," the second - of "12 million dunams." In total, there are in the Land of Israel, as is told, 26 million dunams. /A quarter of a dunam is a tenth of a hectare/. The official reports were clarified by mere guesswork. The difference amounts to 50 percent; and all this - 12 years after the country passed from the hands of the backward Turks into the hands of the enlightened Mandate government!

And so the situation remains to this day. That same Simpson admits in his report how he "examined" the evidence for the infertility of two-thirds of the land area of Palestine. He sent a photographer in an airplane, and the latter photographed the land of the Negev from the sky, and the Palestine officials /from those same two government departments/ would decide based on the photographs whether the land was good or bad. And upon this are officially based all the numbers and conclusions of this scientific survey.

This negligence determined the entire course of the land policy of the Government of Palestine. In the early years, Jews were permitted to conduct "close settlement" by purchasing lands from the Effendis, the large estate owners. Simultaneously, the prices rose at once to unheard-of heights: as early as 1921, they were already paying for the Jezreel Valley, largely neglected and manured for generations, five and even ten times the price /according to the figures of the American Department of Commerce/ of prime, cultivated, irrigated land in the United States. In this way, the Jews were forced to pay compensation to the lessors, who were...