1959 in Israel

Israel entered 1959 with a population of approximately 2,089,000 people.[1] The country was concluding a decade-long austerity period — lasting from 1949 to 1959 — during which the government had used rationing policies and strict limits on basic consumer goods to manage mass immigration and scarce resources.[2] Throughout those years, Israelis subsisted on rationed staples, including powdered eggs, even as new industries and technologies were simultaneously being developed.[3]

By 1959, this era of scarcity was giving way to measurable economic growth. Israel's industrial output index rose to 114.0, with 1958 as the base year of 100.0, and a historical economic study characterizes 1958–1960 as the opening of a new phase marked by advances in agriculture and industry, irrigation expansion, export growth, and substantial foreign-capital inflows.[4] Consumer prices had barely risen during 1959, while gross national product had been growing at roughly 10 percent annually in the preceding period.[5] The port of Eilat was also developing, and Israel had established friendly relations with several Asian nations and newly independent African states.[6]

Yet prosperity was uneven. A persistent gap divided mainly Ashkenazi veterans and long-established residents from immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries — the Mizrahi population — who were disproportionately concentrated in overcrowded urban neighborhoods and development towns.[5] That gap would prove explosive in the summer of 1959.

The political backdrop was turbulent as well. A coalition crisis erupted over the sale of Israeli arms to West Germany. After Mapam and Ahdut HaAvoda voted against a motion approving the transaction, Ben-Gurion demanded the resignation of ministers who had opposed the government. When they refused, he submitted his resignation; an attempt to form an alternative government failed, leading to new elections.[6]

The most consequential domestic event of 1959 began in Wadi Salib, a former Arab neighborhood in lower Haifa that had become home primarily to Jewish immigrants from Morocco.[7] The neighborhood held approximately 15,000 residents and was characterized by severe overcrowding, unemployment, and poverty.[8] On the night of July 9, 1959, police encountered Akiva Yaakov Elkadif — a porter and local resident — as he returned from work.[9] During the confrontation he was shot and seriously wounded. Rumors that Elkadif had died spread rapidly through the neighborhood, and the next morning residents — many of them North African immigrants — marched into central Haifa, throwing stones, setting cars on fire, looting shops, and targeting Mapai and Histadrut offices.[9]

The disturbances spread beyond Haifa. Riots and clashes with police broke out in Migdal HaEmek, where employment difficulties were a central grievance, and in Beersheba.[5] Press reports stated that 16 people were injured in the Haifa disturbances alone.[8] Accounts differ on the number of police and demonstrators injured: one report records 13 injured police officers and two injured demonstrators,[9] while another records 34 injured officers, two injured demonstrators, and 34 arrested demonstrators.[10] Black flags were carried at mass demonstrations, and the events prompted Knesset debate alongside the broader political conversation about discrimination and immigrant absorption.[4]

The government convened an emergency meeting and announced that it had instructed police to prevent riots "by every means at its disposal."[10] Three leaders of the neighborhood's residents were tried at the end of July and received sentences of several months' imprisonment.[10] At the prime minister's request, the Israel Security Agency took charge of intelligence activity intended to prevent further unrest, operating approximately 50 informants across 35 communities to restore public order — even though the disturbances technically fell under police jurisdiction.[11]

On July 19, 1959, the government established a formal commission of inquiry, the Etzioni Commission, chaired by Haifa judge Moshe Etzioni.[12] The commission submitted its report on August 17, 1959. It denied intentional discrimination by state and national institutions but acknowledged significant inter-communal disparities in employment, housing, and opportunities for advancement.[12] The commission's chair stated, "Here we have all sinned; here we are all guilty," adding that Israeli society had not opened its heart and homes sufficiently to those who needed "a generous measure of brotherly love."[12]

The Library of Congress described the Wadi Salib events as the first violence of its kind in Israel, noting that they made Israelis acutely aware of the country's ethnic problem.[7] The term "Second Israel" entered the public vocabulary to describe the socioeconomic chasm separating the two main segments of Israeli Jewish society.[7] The riots became a defining political issue in the months leading to the November election.

Israel held elections for the Fourth Knesset on November 3, 1959.[13] There were 1,218,483 eligible voters. Official results recorded 969,337 valid and 24,969 invalid ballots, corresponding to turnout of approximately 81.6 percent.[13][6] Twenty-four candidate lists appeared in the official results, and half won no Knesset representation.[13]

The campaign was fought against several overlapping pressures. The Lavon Affair had created political instability during the preceding Knesset term.[14] Religion and state remained a sharp point of contention: Mapai supported self-definition as the criterion for Jewish identity under Israeli law, while religious parties insisted on religious criteria.[14] The Wadi Salib riots thrust the question of ethnic discrimination and social justice to the center of the campaign as well.[14] Disunity among Mapai's opponents worked to the governing party's advantage.[4]

Mapai, led by Ben-Gurion, dominated the result. The party received 370,585 valid votes — 38.2 percent of the total — and won 47 seats, the largest number it had ever won in an election and an increase of seven seats over its Third Knesset tally of 40.[13][6] Herut, led by Menachem Begin, came second with 130,515 votes, 13.5 percent, and 17 seats, a defeat by a margin of 24.7 percentage points.[15] The National Religious Party won 12 seats with 9.9 percent; Mapam won 9 seats; the General Zionists won 8; Ahdut HaAvoda won 7; the Religious Torah Front and Progressive Party each won 6; Arab lists associated with Mapai won five seats collectively; and Maki, the Communist Party, won three seats.[16]

Despite the ethnic mobilization that followed the Wadi Salib riots, none of the ethnic lists representing Mizrahi or Oriental immigrant communities passed the qualifying threshold.[6] Mapai did, however, respond to the changed political environment by substantially increasing Mizrahi representation on its candidate list. Eight members of Mapai's parliamentary faction were of Mizrahi origin: three veteran members — Bekhor-Shalom Shitrit, Yisrael Yeshayahu-Sherabbi, and Rachel Tsabari — and five newly elected members: Moshe Sardines, Asher Hassin, David Pat'el, Menachem Cohen, and Mordechai Zar.[8]

The Religious Torah Front, formed for these elections by Agudat Israel and Poalei Agudat Israel, excluded the two Mizrahi religious parties because it considered them insufficiently committed to the concept of a Torah state; the front was later dissolved before the 1961 elections.[7] The National Religious Party rejoined the governing coalition after an arrangement resolved the Jewish-registration dispute that had troubled the previous government.[6]

Several notable electoral milestones coincided with the 1959 vote. Shimon Peres was elected to the Knesset for the first time as a Mapai member.[17] Shlomo Hillel had resigned from the Third Knesset earlier that year, on July 6, to enter Israel's diplomatic service; he subsequently became Israel's first ambassador to Guinea.[8]

On election day itself, active participation was recorded despite hot weather. Voters in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods went to the polls after morning prayer. Election officials in the Tel Aviv regional committee used a color-coded flag system to track polling-place disruptions: red for a station closed due to disorder, blue for order restored without arrests, green for disorder involving arrests, and yellow for disorder outside the polling-place building.[18]

The Fourth Knesset held its first sitting on November 30, 1959.[6] Ben-Gurion formed the Ninth Government of Israel, which began on December 17, 1959, with Mapam, the Religious Torah Front, the Progressive Party, Ahdut HaAvoda, and the National Religious Party.[19] The government included Golda Meir as foreign minister, Levi Eshkol as finance minister, and Moshe Dayan as agriculture minister; Peres served as deputy defense minister.[19][17] The Fourth Knesset ultimately served for only one year and nine months, making it the shortest Knesset term.[20]

Historical accounts attribute Mapai's strong showing to multiple factors: Ben-Gurion's enhanced prestige, rapidly rising living standards, the relative border tranquility that followed the 1956 Sinai Campaign, fear of communal fragmentation, and a widespread desire for strong central government.[5]

Several significant diplomatic developments marked 1959. In July, Israel signed an agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany for the sale of Israeli armaments to the Bundeswehr — an arrangement kept secret until shortly before its public disclosure and not disclosed to Mapam and Ahdut HaAvoda, both of which were participating in the governing coalition.[4] In November, Israel and France signed a cultural agreement that included a provision for French-language instruction in Israeli schools.[4]

Israel also expanded its ties with newly independent states. Shlomo Hillel presented his credentials to Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré and became Israel's first ambassador to Guinea.[8] Brazil and Israel signed the first of several cooperation agreements, covering culture, commerce, agriculture, science, and industry.[21]

U.S. economic grants to Israel ended in 1959. From that point until 1985, American aid to Israel consisted largely of loans — which Israel repaid — and surplus commodities purchased by Israel, rather than direct grants.[22]

In August 1959, the fourth plenary assembly of the World Jewish Congress was held in Stockholm. Moshe Sharett, Israel's former prime minister and foreign minister, addressed the assembly, arguing that Israel's primary concern was its own survival and that Diaspora Jews were expected to accept Israel's authority in determining its interests and policies. Sharett identified defending Jewish rights in the Diaspora and advising communities in need as functions outside the direct sphere of Israeli affairs, while calling for coordination between Israel and the World Jewish Congress wherever their activities overlapped.[23] He emphasized that the World Jewish Congress remained independent and solely responsible for its own work and program.[23]

On the regional stage, Fatah was created on October 10, 1959, in the years between the 1956 Suez Campaign and the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in January 1964.[24]

The close of the austerity period coincided with notable legislative and infrastructural initiatives. The Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investment was passed in 1959, providing for state participation in the investment needed to establish or expand industrial plants and directing development toward national-priority areas including the Negev, the Jordan Valley, and the Galilee.[25] Amendments approved in August 1959 strengthened the law's incentives for foreign investors, including the right to transfer profits abroad freely in foreign currency.[4]

Also in August 1959, the Eilat–Haifa oil pipeline was leased for 49 years to Tri-Continental Pipe Lines Ltd., a consortium described as involving the Rothschild group, PEC, the Miami group, Discount Bank, Ampal, Israel Investors Corporation, and other participants.[4]

Several institutions foundational to Israel's later technological prominence were established in 1959. Unit 8-200 of the IDF Intelligence Corps was formed, with Avraham Aloni as its first commander; an electronics division established in the same year functioned as a research and technology arm of the Intelligence Corps.[3] Mamram, the IDF's Central Computing Facility, was also formed in 1959 and is recognized as a pioneer of computing within the IDF.[3] Its acquisition of a large computer prompted journalist Uri Avnery to publish an article titled "Brains We Have — It's Common Sense We Lack," arguing that the machine's capacity was sufficient not only for the IDF and Israel but for the "entire Middle East."[3] Development of Shafrir 1, Rafael's first air-to-air missile, also began in 1959; Rafael is the acronym for Israel's Armaments Development Authority.[3]

In civilian infrastructure, the cornerstone of the new Knesset building was laid in 1959, though the building would not be inaugurated until 1966; until then the Knesset continued to operate from the Frumin House in central Jerusalem, where it had been located since March 1950.[26] The Carmelit — Haifa's underground funicular railway — was inaugurated in 1959.[27] Heichal Shlomo, the seat of the Chief Rabbinate, was also inaugurated that year.[27]

On April 1, 1959, a late-night IDF broadcast calling up reservists — intended as a routine exercise — panicked civilians, alarmed the Knesset, mobilized Arab armies along Israel's borders, and led to the resignations of senior military officers before officials acknowledged that it had been only a drill.[28]

Immigration to Israel in 1959 totaled 23,045 arrivals, set against 9,750 emigrants — an emigration rate equivalent to 42.0 percent of immigration for the year.[4] Among immigrants from specific countries tracked by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 1,362 came from the former Soviet Union, 420 from Argentina, 379 from the United States and Canada, 326 from France, 229 from the United Kingdom, 114 from South Africa, and 3 from Ethiopia.[29]

The Soviet Union officially declared in 1959 that it would not permit Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel.[27] Separately, approximately 3,000 Jews from Aden emigrated to Israel in 1959, while many others fled as refugees to the United States and England.[30] By 1959, Zionist activities in Morocco had been made illegal.[30]

On May 5, 1959, approximately 2,500 people gathered at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot in the western Galilee for the first official Yom HaShoah commemoration. Participants included Israeli Interior Minister Israel Bar-Yehuda and Polish Ambassador Antoni Bida.[31]

The 1959 Israel Prize was awarded across multiple disciplines. Recipients included the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for music; Shlomo Yosef Zevin for Rabbinical literature; Leo Aryeh Mayer for humanities; S. Yizhar, or Yizhar Smilansky, and Ezra Fleischer for literature; Ephraim Katchalski, later known as Ephraim Katzir, and Michael Sela for life sciences; Hillel Heinz Oppenheimer for agriculture; and Joseph Zaritsky for painting.[32]

Habima was declared Israel's national theater in 1959.[27] The Israeli Navy's first submarine, the Tanin, arrived in Haifa the same year.[27]

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, who had been elected Chief Rabbi during the British Mandate in 1937 and became Chief Rabbi of Israel de facto after the state's establishment in 1948, died in 1959. His death initiated a prolonged political and religious contest over the succession; the Ashkenazi chief rabbinate remained vacant for almost five years as elections were repeatedly delayed.[6]

Several developments of 1959 continued to shape Israeli public life in the following years. The Wadi Salib unrest established ethnic inequality and immigrant absorption as national political issues; in 1962, the relocation of neighborhood residents to improved alternative housing began.[9] The Fourth Knesset lasted only one year and nine months before the continuing Lavon Affair precipitated its dissolution and another election in August 1961.[20]

Institutional disputes also persisted. The succession struggle following Rabbi Isaac Herzog's death left the Ashkenazi chief rabbinate vacant until 1964, illustrating the political and religious tensions surrounding the office.[6] Meanwhile, projects begun or marked in 1959 — including the new Knesset building and early military-computing and missile programs — continued into the following decade.

Accounts of Wadi Salib agree that the unrest erupted in July 1959, but they differ in how they describe the immediate encounter. One Ynet account says police met Elkadif as he returned from work, while Globes traces the confrontation to a café brawl.[9][12] Injury totals also vary: one Ynet report gives 13 police officers and two demonstrators injured, while another gives 34 police officers and two demonstrators.[9][10] A separate academic account, drawing on contemporary press reports, gives 16 people injured in the Haifa disturbances.[8]

Interpretation of the Etzioni Commission's conclusions remains contested. The report denied intentional discrimination by state and national institutions while acknowledging inter-communal disparities in employment, housing, and opportunities for advancement.[12] The tension between those findings has remained central to historical assessments of the commission and the unrest.

The election statistics require attention to differing definitions. Official results list 969,337 valid and 24,969 invalid ballots.[13] Using the electorate of 1,218,483 reported by Encyclopedia.com, the combined total corresponds to approximately 81.6 percent turnout; the Jewish Virtual Library table instead lists 1,218,724 eligible voters and 79.5 percent, a figure corresponding to valid ballots alone.[6][33] The sources do not explain the difference in their electorate totals. On the broader causes of Mapai's victory, sources differ in emphasis, variously crediting Ben-Gurion's prestige, rising living standards, border security, fear of fragmentation, and the failure of competing lists to unite.[5]