Page 14—Supplement to The Jewish News—March 16, 1973

Industry Israel's
Key to Independence

• Israel in 1948 was an industrial backwater—com-
paratively progressive compared to the rest of the
Middle East, but far, far behind the Western coun-
tries. Even the nations of Europe, just then rising from
the ashes of World War II, were destined to outstrip
the industrially primitive Israel. She had to begin at
the beginning.
Three periods can be distinguished in Israel's in-
dustrialization process: 1948-1956, when industry moved
into consumer products; 1956-1962, when industry re-
placed agriculture as the prime instrument in settling
the land and furnishing employment; '1962 onward when
Israeli industry began aligning itself to foreign markets
after fully serving domestic needs.
In those early years the paramount national effort
was not industrial expansion so much as it was the
absorption of immigrants. Many villages in the mid-
'50s had a surplus of manpower. By 1956 it was ap-
parent that agriculture alone could not absorb the con-
tinuing influx of immigrants. It was also apparent the
villages could provide Israel with all its needs in vege-
tables, eggs, milk and dairy products—basic staples.
When the momentum of agricultural settlement
came to a virtual standstill, industry became the prin-
cipal means of finding employment. The impetus sparked
by the industrial challenge did indeed create employ-
ment. In 1950 there were about 89,000 industrial work-
ers; by 1970 there were 261,000. Most of this growth
is in skilled labor—technicians and academicians.
Manpower, as a new natural resource, was coupled
to another held by Israel—commercialization of old nat-
ural resources. There are three plants for processing
natural resources: the Dead Sea Works (potash and
bromine), Chemicals and Phosphates, and Timna Cop-
per. Marble, gypsum and sand are found in several
places and are largely used in local construction and
the glass industry. The kiln at Oron, west of the Dead
Sea, has a yearly production capacity of 200,000 tons
of phosphate rock—all for export.
The copper plant at Timna produces nearly 10,000
tons a year of copper cement (appx. 7,000 tons of pure
copper). The depressed state of world copper production
has made copper •a high-priced commodity, and Timna,
Israel's most successful industry, is in a program of
doubling the production of recent years.
Oil was struck in the coast plain at Heletz in 1955.
Since then, 38 wells produce some 200,000 tons of oil
a year—which supplies 8% of Israel's fuel consumption.
Shortly after striking oil, natural gas was discovered
—in 1958—at Rosh Zohar. Eight wells are now yielding
the equivalent of 60,000 tons of oil.

Major Industries

Israel's most important industrial export product
is diamonds—$203,000,000 worth were shipped out of
the country in 1970. Food, beverage and tobacco indus-
tries account for about 14 per cent of manufacturers.
Textiles and clothing industry produce about 15 per
cent of the total with some 53,000 employes. Chemicals
and petroleum refining cover about 10 per cent of in-
dustrial output.
Between 1950 and 1970 industrial output more than
quintupled—growing by over 10 per cent a year and
reaching about $3,000,000,000 in 1970. Industrial exports
rose from $18,000,000 to $606,000,000 an increase of 20
per cent a year; employment went up from 89,000 to
261,000, and output per worker rose, on an average, by
four per cent a year.
Although most factory production goes for domestic
consumption, industrial exports are 84 per cent of all
goods exported from Israel. And even greater is the
contribution to the local economy through net foreign-
currency earnings. This rose from $5,000,000 in 1950 to
$253,000,000 in 1970.

lJ

Congratulates

the leaders

and

the people of

ISRAEL

on their

25th
Anniversary