Israel's History:
1954

1954:
by Kenny Gold, 2002-2003 Hagesher Israel Affairs VP

Although every year of Israeli history is amazing and exciting, some years are not as filled with life changing events. However, the year 1954 marks two big things in the history of the State. Major development in aeronautical engineering were achieved in 1954. A department of aeronautical engineering was inaugurated in the Technion in 1954, later to become the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

1954 also marks a high point in immigration and population of the state. According to Don Peretz, an American scholar, by 1954 "more than one-third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property, and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in the urban areas abandoned by Arabs." The fleeing Arabs emptied thriving cities such as Jaffa, Acre (Akko), Lydda (Lod), and Ramla, plus "338 towns and villages and large parts of 94 other cities and towns, containing nearly a quarter of all the buildings in Israel."