Settlement for Security & as Dispersion

The early years of the State saw a confluence of national tasks, each of which was extremely large, often almost overwhelming, and many of which became intertwined with the search for solutions. Analysis of the concept of hityashvut in these years shows this very clearly.

• One of the major tasks was to absorb the enormous waves of population that came to the country in these years.
• Another need was to disperse that population so as to decentralise the population of the young state, over fifty per cent of which was concentrated in the three large cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa in 1948.
• Moreover there was a security problem; large tracts of the new country lay bare; in many areas the Arab population had left, either in flight, in anticipation of return or having been encouraged to leave. Their settlements lay abandoned, largely in ruins.
• In addition, all unowned land inside the borders of the state now became state property. The borders included areas of comparatively little settlement that invited infiltration.
• Last, but not least, the country, almost bankrupt after the War of Independence, was not producing enough food for its population.

All of these problems came together and a comprehensive settlement programme was introduced to try and resolve the potential crisis of the young state.

The Format: Moshavim

Initiative was taken by the government in partnership with the Jewish Agency to settle hundreds of thousands of the newcomers in agricultural settlements in all the "empty" areas of the country and in those areas where security dictated an enlargement of existing settlement. The primary form of agricultural settlement suggested and accepted by the immigrants themselves was the moshav. In the first five years of the state alone, some two hundred and fifty moshavim were set up all over the country, on the coastal plain, the Jerusalem corridor, and the North and South of the country.

The majority of the new immigrants that were settled in these moshavim were from oriental countries. This was, not surprisingly, very problematic: virtually none of the immigrants had any experience with agriculture; indeed, many came from urban settings where agricultural work was denigrated as primitive. Most were strangers to the Zionist ideas that had characterised their predecessors: their sense of physical attachment to the land - as opposed to the concept of the Land, was minimal. In addition, such large scale attempts at settling a population amidst such a shortage of resources and under such pressures could only lead to enormous confusion and hardship. As a result, many of the immigrants did not adjust well to the transition and large numbers in fact fled the land for the urban slums within a fairly short period. Some immigrant ethnic groups, such as the Yemenites, adjusted to the conditions and proved model farmers; among others, such as the Iraqis, most new immigrants demonstratively refused to move onto the land. In short, the whole hityashvut programme of these years was fraught with difficulties.

Nevertheless, given the circumstances, the long-term results were more than reasonable. By the late 1960's, almost four hundred and forty new agricultural settlements had been added to the map of Israel. Almost three-quarters of these were moshavim while the rest were kibbutzim, causing a major change in the relationship between the two dominant forms of hityashvut, compared with the situation in the pre-1948 period when some two thirds of the settlements had been kibbutzim.

The Format: Development towns

Despite the fact that the term Hityashvut is usually used to denote agricultural settlement, it is important at this stage to mention a very significant development that started in the mid-1950's. This was the advent of the development town, a new concept in Israeli planning that was aimed at the immigrants of the early state years, many of whom had been languishing in ma'abarot - meant to be temporary camps - for a number of years, and under very difficult conditions. Examples are: Dimona, Shderot, Ofakim and Netivot - all in the Negev - and Kiryat Shmonah in the very North.

The development towns were new towns set up primarily in order to provide the agricultural heartland and the southern, border areas of the new country with a series of small urban centres to supply urban products and services to the surrounding and more peripheral agricultural areas. The new immigrants themselves felt they were sent to the middle of nowhere, cut off from the mainstream of life in the country, and this later became a problem as the objective gaps grew more pronounced with the years.

From the beginning, this feeling of isolation, together with the inadequate infrastructure that characterised many of the towns, generated a resentment which lay smouldering through the years. The subjective and objective circumstances exacerbated and even created alienation and social problems which persisted into the second and third generations. These in turn provided the focus for a great deal of anger aimed at the governing power who came to be seen in time as having manipulated the immigrants' naivety and powerlessness. In the mid-1960's, the creation of these development towns was followed by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's increasing expression of the national need to develop the Negev, but massive decentralization did not take place.

From the settlement point of view, both the towns and their immigrant populations became an important addition to the fabric of society, but most of these first generation towns remained unable to function economically without government and philanthropic intervention.