My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

The beginning was dismal. Approximately a hundred thousand of the first immigrants to arrive in the free Jewish state were sent to the vacant houses of Arabs who had just fled Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramleh, and Lydda. Tens of thousands were settled in dozens of Palestinian ghost villages whose stone houses were deemed fit for residence. But by early 1950, the deserted properties could no longer solve the acute problem created by the astonishing human flood. More than a hundred thousand immigrants found themselves in depressing camps established in what had been British military installations, most of them surrounded by barbed wire fences. There they lived in tents, sharing toilets and showers. The camps were muddy, chaotic, and prone to disease. This was not what the immigrants had expected the Promised Land to be like.