Palestine Jewish Colonization Association

The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (Hebrew: חברה להתיישבות יהודית בארץ־ישראל), commonly known by its Yiddish acronym PICA (Hebrew: פיק"א), was established in 1924. It played a major role in purchasing land and building Jewish settlement in Palestine and later the State of Israel until the association disbanded in 1957.

The Jewish Colonization Association (JCA or ICA) was founded by Bavarian philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch in 1891 to help Jews from Russia and Romania to settle in Argentina.^[1][2] Baron de Hirsch died in 1896 and thereafter the JCA began to also assist the Jewish settlement in Palestine.^[2] At the end of 1899 Edmond James de Rothschild transferred title to his colonies in Palestine, plus fifteen million francs to the JCA. In 1924, the JCA branch dealing with colonies in Palestine was reorganized by Baron de Rothschild as the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association,^[1][3] with his son James appointed as president for life.^[4]

Between 1895 and 1899, Rothschild's development agency and PICA planted Palestine’s first major forest in Hadera, primarily aiming to drain swamps. The developers sourced 250,000 eucalyptus seeds from Algeria, where French settlers had cultivated large eucalyptus forests. In the 1920s, the once-dominant eucalyptus trees were replaced by pine trees, which were hardy, fast-growing, and contributed to a more European-like landscape.^[5] After the 1929 Palestine riots, PICA extended its support beyond forestation, helping to rehabilitate agricultural colonies that had been damaged in the unrest.^[6]

James de Rothschild, who died in 1957, instructed in his will that PICA should transfer most of its land in Israel to the Jewish National Fund.^[7] On December 31, 1958, PICA agreed to vest its right to land holdings in Syria and Lebanon in the State of Israel.^[8]

• Jewish Colonization Association

• Avneri, Arieh (1984). The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-87855-964-7
• Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1973). Letters of Louis D Brandeis. SUNY Press. ISBN 0-87395-231-6
• Fischbach, Michael R. (2003). Records of Dispossession. Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12978-5
• Norman, Theodore (1985). An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Halbrook, Stephen P. (1981). "The Alienation of a Homeland: How Palestine Became Israel" (PDF). Journal of Libertarian Studies. V (4).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Palestine Jewish Colonization Association.

• Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Redeemers of the Land, 18 October 1999, accessed 1 June 2007.
• UNISPAL, Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Sir John Hope Simpson, Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, October, 1930.