Has Palestine an Industrial Future?
Is Palestine a land with any industrial future at all?
So far as the adaptation of Palestine is concerned, there are still people who consider it a God-forsaken district, cursed because of the crucifixion of Christ. This view was formerly universal, and gave rise to the most diverse hypotheses as to when the curse would be removed from the land. The most zealous believed that the land would remain accursed to the Last Judgment; others believed that the time would come after all the Jews would be converted to Christianity; there were, however, those, too, who desired that the Turk would be redeemed when the yoke of the Turk would be shaken off, or even when the Jews will have turned from a nation of traders and usurers into a nation of farmers in the land of their fathers.
But all these hypotheses were exploded by the investigations of trained men and the experiences of the early settlers.. These showed that the land was by no means desolate; that if rightly handled it yielded good, at times even splendid, returns and that even climatically it belonged to the most favored portion of the Mediterranean coast. The English experts in particular, Sir Charles Warren, Sir Charles Wilson and Colonel Conder, have had sufficient opportunity to study the land in its industrial relations, too, while they were engaged in investigating Palestine, in their travels, for many years. They agree unanimously that the land is in every way suitable for colonization.
What these scientists and military men have found out through research, the German colonists, the Württemberg Templars, who have been in the country since 1868 and have laid out several flourishing villages, have found out by experience. Mayor Jung, of one of these colonies, published in 1902 the statement that in favorable years we may receive from good
land 2500-3000 kg. of wheat per hektar, 2000-2500 kg. of barley, 1500 kg. of maize, 1200-1500 kg. of durrha, and 1000 kg. of potatoes. Anyone who has any knowledge of husbandry will admit that these are quite satisfactory results. If any proof is needed that this is not empty boasting, it may be had in this: that the Württembergers are continually buying land, and just recently have laid out a new colony, and are ready to establish still another on ground already purchased.
It would be an easy matter to borrow such examples from the Jewish colonies, too, but unfortunately, I know the tendency of our f£el- low-Jews, to be convinced only through what people of another race have done, or, as the case may be, have said. I shall simply mention the fact that in Mikweh Israel, the Agricultural School of the Alliance Israelite, in Jaffa, during the past year—1905—sesame was made to produce fifteen-fold returns and wheat nine-fold. Of course all of the land is not so fertile as that described; there are great stretches of hill-country, that are useless for cereal culture, but still very well adapted for vine-culture and especially for olive-trees, while a small portion of the land—the so-called Desert of Judea—is unfit even for these purposes. Perhaps, however, it will be useful for plants, living in dry places, that may be introduced, such as agave, cactus, etc.
The Jordan valley, in particular, is remarkably fruitful. Not only could it produce splendid groves of date-palms, and myrrh and incense-trees, but if once irrigated with the waters of the Jordan, it would also be well adapted to the most valuable of products, cotton and sugar-cane. Even now, the decayed, primitive sugar-mills remind one of the former highly cultivated condition of the beautiful, if somewhat sultry, strip of land.
East of the Jordan, on the other hand, in