British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 728

CHAPTER XVI.

Persons engaged Gross output £P.OOO's

Net output £P.OOO's

1 Arabs I Jews

4,117 8,804 , 13,G78 37,773 1,0451 5,658 I 6.046 29,041

313 1.125 I 2.455111,488

(b) The disproportion between the standards of social services, including health and education, available to the Arab and Jewish communities respectively. Comparative figures in respect of education and health are given below. Those in respect of education compare the amount expended annually on the maintenance of the Va'ad Leumi Jewish public school system (i.e. excluding the institutions of higher education and private Jewish schools) and the total expenditure of Government on the maintenance of Arab public system (i.e. including institutions of higher education but except for special grants not mission and private schools :-

Jewish public system Arab public system

1933/34 194,037 154,381

1938139

143/44

447,492 259,000

1,010,500 574,000

The disparity as between health services may perhaps most succinctly be illustrated by the statement that the expenditure in 1944 of the Kupath Holim, a Jewish co-operative society administering a medical service covering approximately 210,000 persons, was £P.l,195,359. The Government's expenditure on all health services during the financial year 1944/45 was £P.530,000.

(c) The disproportion between the financial holdings of Arabs and Jews. The estimated distribution of purchasing power as between the two communities in 1945 was :

Arabs Jews

£P. £P.

40,000,000 75,000,000

An additional complexity is introduced into the situation shown above by the pronounced difference in the distribution of income in the Arab and Jewish communities respectively, as illustrated in the income tax collections.

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