Nadene Goldfoot
By 1855, modern Jewish Agricultural villages began to spring up in Palestine, way before the 1st Aliyah made it from Russia to the Ottoman Empire's held land of Palestine. It was the Jews of Jerusalem who bought a parcel of land at Motza but weren't able to do anything with it immediately. It is a neighbourhood on the western edge of West Jerusalem. It is located in the Judean Hills, 600 metres above sea level, connected to Jerusalem by the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway and the winding mountain road to Har Nof. Established in 1854, Motza was the first Jewish farm founded outside the walls of the Old City in the modern era. It is believed to be located on the site of a Biblical village of the same name mentioned in Joshua 18:26.
First, a Kibbutz, Moshav and Aliyah need to be explained.
A Kibbutz is an Israeli collective village, the form originating during the 3rd Aliyah or large immigration group from 1918 to 1921. They contracted the work of large tracts of land.
A Moshav or Moshav Ovedim, is an Israeli agricultural village where the people possess individual homes and small holdings, but cooperate in the purchase of equipment, etc, the sale of produce, and mutual aid. The 1st experiments were in 1907 and 1913. During the 3rd Aliyah, a reaction against the 1st Kevutzah led to the foundation of the big moshav of 1928. Since 1948, the moshav is the most common form of the workers' village and there were 411 by 1992, linked to various organizations.
Aliyah is the group immigration of Jews to Israel
1st Aliyah (1882-1903)
2nd Aliyah (1904-1914)
3rd Aliyah (1919-1923)
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He visited Eretz Yisrael 7 times with the last visit at age 90 ! He worked to improve the status of the Jews as well as his other benefactions.
One thing he did was organize the 1st agricultural villages, being president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1838 to 1874. Most of his later years were spent in Ramsgate, a seaside town in England where he built a synagogue and established a college.
In 1870 , The Alliance Israelite Universeslle founded Mikveh Israel near Jaffa with the goal to attract Jews from the "Old Yishuv" to productive work on the land. By 1878, two groups prepared to go into agriculture at the same time.
One group went from Safed to the Upper Jordan region and founded Ge Oni-later called by the well known name of Rosh Pinnah, upper Galilee village, 1st Palestinian Jewish agriculture site, 1878 by Safed people, had to abandon it, came to life again in 1882 by Bilu immigrants from Romania. It absorbed new immigrants after 1949. In 1990, had 1,590 population.
Aaron Aaronsohn (Hebrew: אהרון אהרנסון) (21 May 1876 – 15 May 1919) was a Jewish agronomist, botanist, and Zionist activist, who was born in Romania and lived most of his life in the Land of Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He is written about in the book, The Settlers by Meyer Levin, one of the main characters.
He botanically mapped Palestine and its surroundings and became a leading expert on the subject. On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, while trekking around the Upper Galilee in the area of Rashaya in what is now Lebanon, The geographical distribution of wild wheats in their historical setting and current context he discovered Triticum dicoccoides, whom he considered to be the "mother of wheat", an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization. Geneticists have proven that wild emmer is indeed an ancestor of most domesticated wheat strands cultivated on a large scale today with the exception of einkorn, a different ancient species, which is currently just a relict crop.
After Aaronsohn's death while flying, the director of British Military Intelligence, confirmed that Allenby's victory would not have been possible without the information supplied by the Aaronsohn group.
The other group went from Jerusalem to Petah Tikvah in 1878. Unsuccessful at first, a colony growing vineyards and grains founded in 1883 by Hoveve Zion pioneers of the 1st Aliyah. It became a center of citriculture, later an industrial center. In 1937 it became a municipality, part of the Tel Aviv conurbation. By 1990 the population was 133,600.
Both attempts failed, but the trial opened the revival of those villages by 1882, the year of the arrival of the 1st aliyah when the Hibbat Zion and Bilu movements started immigration activities and the building of homes in the country.
Rishon Le-Zion, Nes Tziyyonah, and Zikhron Yaakov were founded in the same year of 1882, to be followed by other colonies.
Their handicaps were: lack of experience, lack of money, disease from malaria from the swamps, and Arab attacks.
That's when Baron Edmond de Rothschild stepped into the picture and took over with his protection in 1883. Most of these farmers changed their crops from grain to fruit growing on vines. By 1900 Rothschild handed over their care to the ICA society which tried to changed the crops back to grain again. For that, they acquired some new land in the Lower Galilee and founded additional villages.
By the time the 2nd Aliyah arrived early in the 20th century, the Arab labor and guards were replaced by these new Jews. This led to disputes, and the foundation of the Ha-Horesh (contractors for agricultural work) and Ha Shomer (self defense ) organizations. If this had happened today, it would have been handled differently with the Arabs continuing to work, but they didn't know better.
The first Jewish-owned orange grove was purchased in 1855 by the legendary Jewish British philanthropist Moses Montefiore; Baron Edmond de Rothschild also encouraged and financed planting and purchasing of orange groves by Zionist settlers. On the eve of WWI,1914, there were almost 7,500 acres of orange groves in Palestine, of which about a third were in Jewish hands. Successfully cultivated by both Jews and Arabs, citrus accounted for 75% of all exports from Palestine.
"Jews and Arabs lived amicably on Rothschild's land, with no Arab grievances, even in the worst periods of disturbance. According to historian Albert M. Hyamson, "Rothschild recognised that the overriding interest of the Jews of Palestine was the confidence and the friendship of their Arab neighbours. The interests of the Arab cultivators of the land he bought were never overlooked, but by development he made this land capable of maintaining a population ten times its former size." While Edmond de Rothschild was not always supportive of an inclusive government - he suggested in 1931 to Judah Magnes that "We must hold them (the Arabs) down with a strong hand" - he acknowledged the importance of co-governance and peaceful coexistence in a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, stating that "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."
In these same years, the Jewish National Fund was created which established training and experimental farming on a basis of mixed agriculture Deganiah, the 1st Kevutzah, was founded in 1910, now called Kibbutz Deganiah Aleph. The 1st successful experiments with citrus cultivation were made at the same time.
By the1920s, the Kibbutz Movement, reinforced by the pioneers of the 3rd Aliyah, was instrumental in the villages of the Jezreel and Kinnarot Valleys.
Nahalal was the pioneer of the Moshav Movement. Citrus cultivation spread speedily in the Coastal Plain, creating the living on the Sharon Plain by individuals.
There was mass immigration after 1933 when Hitler's moves were against Jews. At that time, Arabs, under the Nazi influence, were rioting in 1936. "Stockade" and "Watchtower" villages went up at exposed strategic points. New neighborhood were created, like Bet Shean and in the Hulleh Valleys, Valley of Jezreel had Bet Alpha in 1922, Western Galilee, the Hills of Manasseh, and the northern part of the Plains of Zebulun.
In 1930, the Jewish National Fund bought part of the Plain of Bet Shean land at a high price from its Arab owners and Jewish settlement commenced in the midst of the 1939-1939 riots. By 1948 and the creation of Israel, the few remaining Arabs fled. Recently, the area has been developed for cotton-growing.
The foundation of Negbah, a kibbutz in southern Israel that is located in the northern Negev desert near the cities of Kiryat Malakhi and Ashkelon. It falls under the jurisdiction of Yoav Regional Council. In 2019 it had a population of 969. On the eve of World War II in 1939 began the expansion toward the Southern Coastal Plain and the Negev. The new regions posed new problems of soil conservation, irrigation, etc. while giving the opportunity to introduce new branches of agriculture, such as fish breeding and tropical fruit.
A new type of town, called The Moshav Shittuphi, came into being in the1930s. It is a type of cooperative Israeli village, whose organizational principles place it between the kibbutz and the moshav on the scale of cooperation. The construction of pioneer villages proceeded despite Arab opposition and the 1939 White Paper of England.
The outcome of the War of Independence (1947-1949) was due to Israel's agricultural developments of villages, man of which put up a heroic resistance to the Arab invaders, for the most part.
"Stronghold Settlements" were now built all over the country on an unprecedented scale, and the Moshav Olim and Kephar Avodah were introduced. A later innovation is Administrative Farms which grow mainly industrial plants relying on hired labor.
A new immigrants' absorption scheme, "from Ship to Village," was put into operation in 1934. From the foundation of the state until 1987, 543 villages were set up, as against 277 existing before the war.
The aggregate figure of the Jewish agricultural population in Israel was 360,000 compared to 111,000 in 1947. the area under cultivation has greatly expanded during the years of statehood (412,500 acres in 1948 and 1,100, 000 acres in 1987), as has irrigated area of (600,000 acres in 1987 compared to 72,500 in 1948).
However, since the early 1900s, the area of cultivated land has remained almost unchanged. From 1939 to 1948, the war years, the farmers suffered severe setbacks and then had to deal with drought in the early 1990s. Afterwards, grain and fodder production greatly increased. Local grown wheat covered 1/3 of the country's needs. Barley, maize and sorghum provided most of the fodder required by husbandry.
Employment peaked in 1960 with over 17% of wage-earners engaged in agriculture, but numbers fell and in the mid-1980s stood at only 5.6%. Since the 1970s, the stress in agriculture has been on the specialized farm, concentrating on highly intensive branches, mainly for export. New branches have included flowers, off-season vegetables, and special crops, often grown in artificial conditions.
In general the importance of agriculture in the nation's economy decreased in the 1970s and 1980's. I moved to Israel in the fall of 1980.
The theft of entire greenhouses and their equipment has put out of action about 70 acres of the roughly 1000 acres left by Jewish settlers as the basis of a Palestinian agriculture industry when Israel withdrew from Gaza last September. The looting began when gunmen from a militia hired to protect the greenhouses abandoned their posts early this month because they had not been paid, officials from a government company that operates the project said.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Aaronsohn#:~:text=Aaron%20Aaronsohn%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F%20%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%9F,part%20of%20the%20Ottoman%20Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motza
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/negbah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshav_shitufi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Pinna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petah_Tikva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_She%27an
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