Summary
One of the two chief agencies of Jewish settlement on the land in Simpson’s report, the other being the Colonisation Department of the Zionist Organisation; it buys land and installs settlers, and Simpson sets its past policy of friendship and conciliation toward Arabs against the Zionist colonies’ exclusion of Arab labour (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 1135-1285).
Details
- The P.I.C.A. commenced work in 1882 as the Jewish Colonisation Association (I.C.A.), supported by generous expenditure by Edmond de Rothschild; in 1930 it owned 454,840 metric dunams and its colonies numbered 34, among them Petach Tikvah and Rehovoth (spelled “Eehovoth” in the text copy) (lines 1135-1145).
- Its tenant policy is in the interest of the occupant: it either sells land to the occupant by instalments over a long term or provides a long-term lease (lines 1091-1095).
- It held the 1921 concession for salt at Athlit, drainage of the Kabbara swamp and development of the Caesarea sand-dunes; £92,000 had already been spent on the Kabbara drainage, and its Pardessana project was preparing holdings for 450 families besides 1,000 families of workmen (lines 1139-1150).
- Simpson records that the relations of the old P.I.C.A. colonists with their Arab neighbours and workmen were excellent and a mutual advantage, that in many cases it developed Arab land simultaneously with its own when founding colonies, and that it employed Arabs to tend plantations, cultivate fields and pluck grapes and oranges; all the cases quoted by Jewish authorities for the advantageous effect of Jewish colonisation on neighbouring Arabs related, on his account, to P.I.C.A. colonies established before the Keren Hayesod existed (lines 1153, 1265-1275).
- Even of the P.I.C.A. colonies, a number including some older ones still required support and in some cases reorganisation in 1930 (lines 1245-1251).
- Simpson records the Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish Labour) bringing great pressure on the old P.I.C.A. colonies to replace Arab with Jewish labour, in one instance compelling police intervention, and warns that unless the Zionist policy changes the Federation will extend its principles to all Jewish colonies (lines 1315-1335).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Jewish National Fund, Jewish Agency, Jewish Colonization Association, Edmond de Rothschild