---
"The Athenaeum: Part 1, J. Lection, 1887, Page 469
LITERATURE
Haifa; or, Lift in Modern Palestine. By Laurence Oliphant. (Blackwood & Sons.) In November, 1882, Mr. Laurence Oliphant took up his residence at Haifa, under the shadow of Mount Carmel, and commenced a series of delightful letters to the New York Sun upon Palestine and the domestic life of its people. Thanks to Mr. Dana the letters, which are spread over a period of three years, have been gathered together in a book, and in that form they have now, for the first time we believe, been published in this country.
[...]
Besides the colonies, a large Jewish agricultural college near Jaffa, founded by the Israelite Alliance, has for the last fifteen years been educating Jewish youths in agricultural pursuits; and though at first it entailed a heavy outlay on its promoters, it is now a financial success On the southern slopes of Carmel a thousand acres of pasture and arable land have been purchased by the Central Jewish Colonization Society of Roumania, and here is being tried the interesting experiment of associating Jews and Moslem fellahin in field labour. The political aspect of the recent immigration of Jews from Russia and Roumania is discussed in the chapter " The Jewish Question in Palestine." The Russian Government, by adopting the policy of encouraging Jewish immigration into Palestine, and of protecting immigrants when there, has obtained a ready excuse for political interference in the country. Like the French Government in the case of the religious orders, the Russian Government pursues one policy at home and another abroad: the Jew driven to emigrate from Russia is forced as a colonist upon the unwilling Turk, and then protected.
Less satisfactory colonists than Germans or Jews are the Circassians who have been settled at several places east of Jordan, and on the coast plain south of Carmel. The site of Csesarea, with its extensive ruins, has been given to Slav Moslems, who have emigrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina since those provinces were handed over to Austria; and near Acre a Persian colony has collected round the successor of the founder of the Bubs, who lives in complete seclusion at a villa on the plain.
http://books.google.com/books?id=KWRIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA469
More on the Zionists cultivating the deserted land... published in 1920
New Outlook: Volume 126 - Pages 55-56 Alfred Emanuel Smith - (Outlook Publishing Company, Inc.,) 1920 - Free Google eBook - Read
...a land flowing with milk and honey only under Jewish settlement. Centuries of Turkish rule, of Arab squatting, have desolated a beautiful country. Sand dunes, pyramid high, shift along the coasts where once were splendid forests. The Jews are planting them again. They have set a million trees in Palestine— eucalyptus for shade, boxwood for orange crates and as an antidote against malaria. Olives, almonds, and oranges have been planted.
If Palestine is a prize for which peoples bid with tangible demonstrations of their love, then to date the Jews are bidding highest. Not from Jewish lips alone does the testimony come. Major Ormsby Gore, a British attache of the Zionist Commission in Palestine, said: "I have crossed miles of desert, broken only by the mud huts of the Arabs, in stretches of desolate land. And then I have come upon green groves; a synagogue; a school; white stone houses, with red-tiled roofs; civilization. These were the Jewish colonies, the only oases in the Palestinian desert." There is water-power in Palestine, and shortly it will have to be utilized for canneries, box factories, and other industries which will inevitably follow agricultural development. But for the time being the Zionists are placing their confidence in a sound agricultural life.
Few Christians know the story of how Hebrew, the language of the Bible, has been made a living, spoken tongue. One man, Ben Yehudah, a sort of divine fanatic, started the movement. He would speak no language but Hebrew even to his old mother, who could not understand a word. He is writing the first dictionary which can be used for modern everyday expressions. Twenty years ago, when he went to Palestine and undertook the task, he was dying of tuberculosis. He still has tuberculosis, but his dictionary, they say, is keeping him alive. He has lived to see Hebrew spoken by every Jewish child in Palestine, the foundations of a Hebrew University laid on the Mount of Olives, and schools throughout the land.
THE POLITICAL EFFECT OF ZIONISM!
Jews from Palestine were warm in the assertion that their troubles with the Arabs had been stirred up by outside imperialistic influences. At no time during the Conference was there a dissenting voice to the often-repeated policy that the interests of Arabs and Jews in (Palestine and in the East must be considered-identical. They pointed out that Palestine under cultivation can accommodate five times its present population, and that no Arab need be crowded out. Moreover, the temper of the Zionist movement is distinctly anti-imperial. , The writer was probably the only Christian who sat through every session of this historic Conference. By far the most memorable impression of the meeting is of the courage and idealism which never failed to rise above the often sharp dissonances of varied experiences and insuperable gulfs of language and custom. This was the meeting of a nation which lies, outside of Palestine... The predominant aim could excite only admiration, and regret that so many eminent Jews, whose talents have contributed greatly to the building of other nations, were not present to contribute to the planning of this their own peculiar experiment.
The eyes of Jewry, and of many nonJews, will watch three men upon whose shoulders the Conference put the execution of its plans: Mr. Chaim Weizmann, whose irresistible presentation of Zionist claims..
http://books.google.com/books?id=jEgwG6mQ7UMC&pg=PA55