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65 YEARS AGO

Labor minister Golda Myerson (Meir) told the Knesset that no immigrants would need to live in tents the next winter. She said that 19,000 families from ma’barot (immigrant absorption camps) and 2,500 living temporarily elsewhere would be housed in stone or timber houses or in temporary wooden huts before the winter rains came. She explained that of the 66,000 families in ma’barot, 11,500 were in tents. However, these included 1,500 families who had been provided with housing, in some cases with farmland, but who infiltrated back to tent cities (sometimes paying “key money” bribes) in the hope of getting better accommodation. Myerson also told the Knesset that the government would meet its commitments to build 12,000 units of the Popular Housing Scheme (public housing) during 1952. The government had undertaken to build 48,000 units in four years. She said that in Beit Mazmil (now Kiryat Hayovel in Jerusalem), work had already begun on paving roads and laying water pipes. She defended the government’s action in doubling the cost of the units, citing the big increase in the price of building materials. In order to help subscribers to the popular housing scheme meet the extra burden, the government would lower the down payment costs for mortgages.

50 YEARS AGO

The cabinet decided that Israel would permit West Bank residents who crossed to the East Bank after June 7 (when the West Bank was captured), to return to their homes. They would have until August 10 to return. People wishing to return would be required to show proof that they had in fact resided on the West Bank “on or shortly before June 7.” People thought to constitute a security risk would not be permitted to return. Also barred from returning would be people who elected to cross to the East Bank after the next day, July 4. The decision followed the earlier cabinet ruling that people seeking to leave for the East Bank needed the written approval of their mayor, village head or other local authority. It was believed that the main reason for the cabinet’s decision was to counter the “smear campaign” waged by the Arab states and their allies, charging Israel with forcibly ejecting West Bank residents.

25 YEARS AGO

The Joint Distribution Committee closed its camps in the village of Tedda in the Gondar region of Ethiopia, in anticipation of the near completion of the aliya of Ethiopian Jewry. The last few hundred Jews were expected to leave Addis Ababa by mid-August or September. The Joint was awaiting a government decision on the Falash Mura question before packing up its operation in Ethiopia completely. In addition to the Falash Mura – whose status as Jews was still undecided – it was thought possible that there were other Jews in remote areas who were not included in a census carried out in the 1970s. Close to 4,000 Jews passed through the two camps at Tedda. “They had to walk between one to three weeks to reach Tedda, a distance of some 500 kilometers. They had never seen a car, an electric light bulb or a mirror,” said Dr. Rick Hodes, the American doctor who worked at the camps.