ABSTRACT
In the history of most peoples settlement on the land has been a sluggish, protracted process, as elemental and heavy as the soil itself. The Jews constitute a notable exception, and from the earliest period of their history, their emancipation from foreign servitude and resettlement in their own country has proceeded at a more impatient pace. The creation of settlements with settlers coming from a single, more or less homogeneous community may lead to the transplantation to Israel soil of diaspora ways and customs, of family rivalries and struggles for communal supremacy. The creation of the ‘Maabara’ constituted a further stage in the temporary settlement of newcomers to Israel. The temporary forms of settlement—immigrants’ camps, labour camps and ‘maabarot’—discussed in this chapter are all features of an extraordinary project of mass settlement on the land which has been a concomitant of the process of mass immigration.
