Do you know that the research department of the British Foreign Office had suggested in the 1940s Eritrea to be a Jewish settlement and that was before Israel was established in Palestine, in 1948. The primary purpose of creating a Jewish Colony in Eritrea was to divert Jewish immigration from Palestine (which was under Britain) and thereby relax the tensions in the British dominion in Palestine itself. The authors of the report argued that Eritrea had a suitable climate and sufficient unexploited land to be used for Jewish colonization. This argument belies the Department’s previous argument that Eritrea was economically unviable.
At any rate, the Foreign Office soon found obstacles to the realization of a Jewish colony in Eritrea. Some of the reasons were; first, the Jewish settlement might come into conflict with the Europeans who were already entrenched in the agro-commercial and technical sectors in Eritrea. Second, the settlement could clash with the interest of the local population which will necessitate a European or international protection of the Jewish colony. Furthermore, it was doubtful whether any Jewish organisation would be willing to undertake such colonization without explicit protection from a European power, the US or an international body. Thirdly it was thought that if Eritrea was given to Ethiopia, the idea of A Jewish colony would be rejected by the Emperor. Fourthly, Eritrea met the requirement of being a non-Arab territory to avoid a strain in the Anglo-Arab relations, its geostrategic position was still thought to make an unhappy choice from the same Anglo-Arab perspective. For those reasons the idea was given up.
Source: p. 64 from the book, Eritrea, a Pawn in World Politics by Okbazghi Yohannes, quoting British Foreign Office Sources
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