Hityashvut
Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel
The Jewish people's presence in the Land of Israel has been maintained unbroken since biblical times. This physical presence existed throughout the centuries of dispersion, and in each generation Jews came - in larger or smaller groups - to settle in their ancient homeland.
During the 400 years of Ottoman rule, the Land of Israel was divided into four districts, attached to the province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul. By the end of the 18th century, the country had suffered from widespread neglect, taxation was crippling, the great forests of the Galilee and the Carmel mountains were denuded of trees and the country was sparsely populated, mainly by impoverished tenant farmers. The 19th century saw the first signs of progress, when Britain, France, Russia, Austria and the US opened consulates in Jerusalem, postal and telegraphic connections were installed and the first road connecting Jaffa and Jerusalem was built.
The situation of the country's Jews slowly improved, and their numbers increased substantially. By the middle of the 19th century Jews had built the first neighborhood outside the city walls of Jerusalem, land for farming was purchased throughout the country and the Hebrew language was revived as a spoken tongue.
The agricultural school Mikve Israel, east of Jaffa, was founded in 1870 by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, to train Jewish pioneers, from urban environments in Europe, in agricultural work. In 1878 the first moshava, Petah Tikva, was established.
The pogroms in Russia and Romania in 1882 led to the First Aliya (wave of immigration) and the foundation of agricultural villages: Rishon Lezion, Ekron, Zichron Ya'akov and Rosh Pinah.
Members of the Bilu movement also began to arrive in 1882. The first organized group of pioneers, they preceded the Zionist movement by fifteen years. Some settled in Mikve Israel and Rishon Lezion, others founded Gedera in the coastal plain, which became known as the Bilu settlement.
Some of the newcomers joined the old yishuv, while the majority, in both towns and rural settlements, contributed to a modern and dynamic way of life, that of the New yishuv. This new yishuv established the first industrial enterprises and introduced cultural activities and the use of Hebrew as the language of daily life. The foundations of the State of Israel, many years in the future, were thus laid.
As early as 1898, at the Second Zionist Congress in Basle, Zionists recognized the importance of settling the Land for national revival. In time they founded the Jewish National Fund to purchase land for the Jewish people and to set up villages.
