Aliyah and Yishuv During World War I - Difficulties Facing The Yishuv

Difficulties Facing The Yishuv

The Yishuv was treated badly during the Ottoman regime. Upon the eruption of World War I, the regime severed supply lines to Palestine and caused a severe food shortage. This severing of supply lines also caused economic difficulty and prevented the arrival of donations. On top of these problems, the regime piled up additional difficulties such as war taxes and the confiscation of work animals, tools and food. Other difficulties (either unrelated or not in direct relation to the regime) arose in the form of a locust attack (which the settlers were not equipped to deal with), famine and poverty (the result of donations ceasing), epidemics such as typhus, bank closures and inflation.

The attitude of the Ottoman administration toward the Jews hardened as their situation in the war deteriorated and it made the functioning of the Yishuv much harder. This situation lasted almost four years. First the Ottoman authorities canceled the regime of capitulation (immunity to foreign citizens) and as a result those that arrived from Allied countries (including the majority of the immigrants who originated from Russia) were now considered enemies. There started a sort of a war between the Ottoman authorities and the Zionist movement in Israel. The Ottoman authorities violated the freedom rights of the Jewish population. The Jewish population was not permitted to carry any weapons, to hold any stamps of the Jewish National Fund and to write letters in Yiddish or Hebrew. It became mandatory to learn Turkish in the schools of the Jewish population and the Zionist flag was banned. The peak of the friction was when the Ottoman authorities demanded that some of the people enlist in the Turkish army or leave the country.

The Ottoman authorities even made a number of deportations from the country. In 1915 the Ottomans collected people walking the streets of Tel Aviv and Jaffa and deported them by ship to Egypt. In 1917 the Ottoman deported the Jewish population of Tel Aviv and Jaffa as a result of the progress of the British front in the south of the country. (The Ottomans feared that the Jewish population in Tel Aviv would assist the British in taking control over the country.) The Ottoman authorities also deported the leaders of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel—David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were deported from the empire in spite of the Zionist leadership officially declaring their support to the Ottoman empire.

The relation of the authorities evoke divisions of many opinions among Yishuv leadership. Ben-Gurion, leader of the labor party Poale Zion, said that the enlistment might lead to the sympathy from the Turks. Jewish soldiers were recruited commissions—working battalions performing degrading difficult service jobs. At the end of the war, the Yishuv was at its lowest ebb. Its number fell from 84,000 to 56,000 and it suffered considerable economic difficulties.