ABSTRACT
The Zionist settlers who came to Palestine, to the Land of Israel, found a Jewish settlement already there. The actual settlements in the eighteenth century consisted mostly of Sephardic Jews, with very small Ashkenazi ones; economically most of them were not very prosperous. New methods of land settlement were adopted, and the foundation was laid for the whole structure of the labour movement in Palestine. Several basic problems or dilemmas about the nature of the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel developed from the beginning of the Zionist settlement. The Yishuv, and later on the State of Israel, attempted to develop external markets and reference points. The decision to create a completely independent Jewish economy as well as to maintain a distinctive semi-political organization, closely related to the Zionist organization, was perhaps the most fateful step in the development of the Yishuv.
