Mr. Hay to Mr. Straus.
Washington, October 14, 1898.
Sir: To enable the Department to answer the inquiries which it is receiving on the subject, you are requested to unofficially and discreetly ascertain whether the Ottoman regulations prohibiting the entrance of Jews into Palestine, referred to in Mr. Riddle’s No. 179, of the 5th ultimo, discontinue the permission heretofore granted to individual Jews to visit and sojourn in Palestine for a period not exceeding ninety days.
In this relation I invite your attention to the correspondence transmitted to you with the Department’s No. 10, of the 11th instant, in relation to the visé of the passport of the Rev. S. L. Beiler, an American citizen about to visit Palestine for the purpose of travel. You will observe that in my note to the Turkish minister I construed the recent regulations as applying only to immigrants resorting to Palestine in [Page 1089] bodies for the purpose of settlement there, and by exclusive inference as not applying to individual resort to that colony for travel or temporary sojourn. The minister in his reply makes no reference to my comment, and I might reasonably assume that it has passed uncontroverted and has thereby been tacitly accepted.
I am, sir, etc.,