Prospects for Building Activities in the Jewish Settlements of Palestine
I.
IN the subjoined I shall essay to give a brief survey of the potentialities for building activities in various parts of the country, with retrospects upon past mistakes and considering the labor problem from a constructive point of view.
I begin with Jaffa, the most considerable port of the country. Jaffa has had a rapid rise of late years, and with the coming of the new harbor-construction in the near future, its speed of progress is bound to increase. Thus far, Jaffa has been the only center, in the narrowly circumscribed Jewish Palestine of pre-war times, with incipient building activities on a grand scale. Tel-Aviv, its thoroughly modern Jewish suburb, had 1,500 dwellers in the fall of 1913, out of 10,000 Jewish inhabitants of Jaffa. A vast increase in the acquisition of building ground was even then an accomplished fact. There is plenty of room for extension and the necessary deals in the acquirement of further building ground are under way. The Hebrew gymnasium, as a central attraction of Tel-Aviv, will be sure to help in its expansion. Real-estate and building speculations, unpleasantly conspicuous in recent times, will cease with the prospective nationalization of the ground. Such a step would assuredly be no bar to increased building activities—on the contrary, the number of builders will certainly increase through the financial facilities to be accorded them
in the future. Rational building ordinances will do away with the herding and crowding in single dwellings. Nothing is more certain in the immediate future than an increase in the number of public institutions in Jaffa.
Haifa, at the present time, has only 20,000 inhabitants, but the new British railroad expanse from Cairo along the sea-coast over Jaffa to Haifa will be certain to increase the population to several times its present numbers. Some of the Jewish colonies between Jaffa and Haifa have already railroad connection, others are about to get it.
The extensive building area in and near Haifa, bought before the war by the Terraingesellschaft Palaestina —an area extending from the old railroad station to the Technikum—has already been parceled out, the plots for 325 dwelling-houses have all been sold, the blue-prints for construction are ready, and building will soon be in full blast. The area—originally worth 1,500,000 francs—ascends slightly toward Mount Carmel, the only direction fit for urban extension. Provision has been made for a junction with the Carmel settlement-to-be, the Gartenstadt planned before the war. The territory of the latter is especially fit for the erection of hotels and sanatoria. There is already in existence an auto-road
to the city, with a little German air-cure establishment nearby. Haifa is the most beautiful coast town of Palestine, and its splendid future as a port, a bathing resort and health resort is assured.