Political report of the Executive of the Jewish Agency submitted to the ... Zionist Congress and the ... session of the Council of the Jewish Agency · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 43

43 mediately attained. Thrown on their own resources, the Jews mobilised their unused reserves of economic opportunity in terms of labour, provision of services and organization of supplies. The development of the Tel Aviv roadstead, the increase of Jewish labour in citriculture, the increased use of locally manufactured products in preference to imports, the expansion of vegetable growing, the progress of Jewish stone production and the increased number of Jewish workers employed by Government in road construction, are among the advances made in the present period of trial. It can now safely be asserted that not only has the Arab strike failed signally in its object of bringing the economic life of the country as a whole to a standstill, but that it has fortified in the Jewish population the spirit of self-reliance and, on the balance, strengthened the economic basis of the Jewish National Home." Of all the points of weakness revealed in the Jewish economic structure by the emergency of 1936, the fact that the city of Tel Aviv and the whole Jewish population of the .south of Palestine were barred from the sea was perhaps the most serious, and it was in this respect that the most striking advance was achieved. 57. Late in 1935 negotiations had been renewed for the introduction of Jewish labour into the port services controlled by the Government at Jaffa and Haifa. The representations made on a number of occasions to local and to central authorities were summarised in an official letter to the Chief Secretary of March 11, 1936, in which the position then obtaining in the ports of Palestine was described as follows : "The present composition of the labour force employed by Government in port services is completely non-Jewish. According to the information of the Jewish Agency, about 500 porters are employed regularly by the Port Management at Haifa on a system of direct labour. At the Port of Jaffa about 400 porters are employed under a Government contractor. In addition, hundreds of labourers are engaged casually for porterage at both ports. The whole of this force consists exclusively of Arab labour. Moreover, among the 500 men employed at Haifa about 100 are Egyptians, while a large proportion of the casual porters are Hauranis. The same practice of exclusion of Jewish labour prevails in other sections of port work which are under the charge of Government. The men employed on operating the water craft in the two ports — numbering a total of about 60 — are all non-Jews. Again, there is not a single Jew among the 90 odd customs guards at the port of Haifa, while in Jaffa there are only 3 or 4 Jews out of a total of 80 customs guards."