CJPME on the beginning of Jewish immigration to Palestine

When did Jewish immigration to historical Palestine begin? 

An ancient community: There was already an indigenous Jewish population in Palestine during the Ottoman Empire and before.  Its members were concentrated principally in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron.  Nonetheless, the Jewish presence in Palestine, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, had fluctuated through time, with various communities appearing and disappearing.  Regardless, in 1880, before immigration began, Palestine’s Jewish population numbered about 25,000, and had been deeply rooted there for several generations. 

The beginning of Zionism and immigration: The beginning of modern, national-minded Jewish immigration coincides with the foundation of the modern Zionist movement. Zionism as a political movement is conventionally dated to 1882.  Small groups of Jews dispersed through Europe began to cooperate to establish agricultural colonies in historical Palestine.  These groups met officially for the first time in 1897, for the first Zionist conference, in Basel, Switzerland. 

The first two waves of immigration took place under the Ottoman Empire.  The first aliya, between 1882 and 1903, brought 20,000 to 30,000 Russians fleeing Czarist Russia’s pogroms. Between 1903 and 1914, during the second aliya, 35,000-40,000 more Russians, most of them socialists, established themselves in Palestine.  The newcomers were very active in the building of Tel-Aviv and also founded kibbutzim (collective villages). 

Marginal immigration: This immigration remained small relative to both the total Palestinian population and the other destinations of the migrants.  In fact, on the eve of WWI, the 80,000 Jews of Palestine constituted only a tenth of the country’s total population. Moreover, Jewish immigration to Palestine constituted only 3 percent of the transoceanic Jewish migration during that period.  By way of comparison, of the 2,367,000 Jews who left Europe then, 2,022,000 established themselves in the US.

With WWI and the subsequent famine, Palestine’s total population dropped.  Its Jewish community now numbered only 60,000.

~ Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, "Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine," CJPME Factsheet 181, November, 2013