The sizable immigration wave that began in…

The sizable immigration wave that began in 1924 had continued for two years, bringing rapid development largely in Tel Aviv, which has absorbed a considerable number of the immigrants of the fourth Aliyah.

Palestine has absorbed in five years about eighty thousand immigrants, mainly from the countries of eastern Europe, half of them from Poland and the rest from the USSR, Romania and Lithuania.

About twelve percent have come from elsewhere in Asia, mainly Iraq and Yemen.

Only a few have come from the rest of Europe and the Americas.

During the years 1926 and 1927 the Jewish settlers had experienced what is to be the worst economic crisis of the British mandate.

About twenty-three thousand of the recent immigrants elected to leave the country before the economic upturn of 1928 and 1929.

The years from 1923 to 1929 have been relatively quiet; Arab passivity is partly due to the drop in Jewish immigration in 1926­-28.

In 1929, many private entrepreneurs are forced to look to Ahdut HaAvodah to pull them through hard economic times.

Ahdut HaAvodah is now powerful enough to absorb its old ideological rival, HaPoel HaTzair.

They merge to form the Israeli Workers Party, Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael, better known by its acronym Mapai, with David Ben-Gurion at its head.

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who has served as a member of Histadrut's secretariat from 1920 to 1929, aids his old colleague in the formation of Mapai, which is to dominate the political life of the State of Israel for the next two generations.

The hegemony of Ben-Gurion's Labor Zionism in the Yishuv is challenged by the Revisionist Zionists led by Jabotinsky, who espouses a more liberal economic structure and a more zealous defense policy than the Labor movement.

Jabotinsky believes that there is an inherent conflict between Zionist objectives and the aspirations of Palestinian Arabs.

He calls for the establishment of a strong Jewish military force capable of compelling the Arabs to accept Zionist claims to Palestine.

Jabotinsky also thinks that Ben-Gurion's focus on building a socialist Jewish economy in Palestine needlessly diverts the Zionist movement from its true goal: the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In the wake of the Palestine riots, the Fifth Aliyah begins.