Palestine Jewish Colonization Association

Rothschild settlement body (1924–1957) that took over the Jewish colonies in Palestine from the Jewish Colonization Association and handed its land to the JNF and the Israeli state

Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA)
Logo	Men of PICA in the Kabara swamps, early 1920s
Type	Jewish land purchase and settlement association
Founded	1923–1924, as successor to the Jewish Colonization Association's Palestine work
Founder(s)	Baron Edmond de Rothschild
Dissolved	1957: land transferred to the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli state
Headquarters	Paris, with offices in Palestine
Area served	Palestine, later 'Israel'
Key people	Edmond de Rothschild; James de Rothschild (president)

The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA; also spelt Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association) bought land and set up Jewish settlements in Palestine from 1924 to 1957. Baron Edmond de Rothschild created it to take over the colonies he had founded or supported, which the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) had managed since 1900. His son James de Rothschild was its president. When James de Rothschild died in 1957, PICA wound up its work. It gave its land to the Jewish National Fund and other national institutions, and its cash to build the Knesset.

PICA was not a body of the Zionist Organization, but its aim was Jewish settlement of the land, and it ended by merging its work into the Zionist and state institutions. In his farewell letter to David Ben-Gurion, James de Rothschild wrote that the State of 'Israel' had taken over "the main task of settlement on the land which had been PICA's objective". He wanted PICA's work "completed to avoid duplication with the work which is now being done on a grander scale by the national institutions".

Origins: the Rothschild colonies and the JCA

In the 1880s Edmond de Rothschild funded Jewish colonies in Palestine and encouraged agriculture and industry there. In 1899 he transferred to the JCA the colonies he had founded or supported, with 15,000,000 francs for their development. He chaired a Palestine Commission in Paris that oversaw them. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says that during the First World War Rothschild saw that the coming political changes needed "a stronger organization". In 1923 he decided to set up a separate body, headed by his son James. The British Mandate authorities officially recognised PICA in 1924. The Rothschild Foundation, which holds PICA's Paris archive at Waddesdon, gives 1924 as the founding date.

Land and settlements

Sir John Hope Simpson's 1930 report to the British government described PICA as the largest and most important Jewish settlement agency in Palestine. It said PICA had 34 colonies and owned 454,840 metric dunams. Unlike the Zionist Organization's Colonisation Department, it "buys land and installs settlers" itself. The report listed Rishon LeZion and Zichron Ya'akov among its "well-known" colonies.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica says PICA founded or helped the moshavot (farming villages) of Pardes Hanna and Binyamina, moshavim such as Nahalat Jabotinsky, Beit Hananya, Shadmot Dvora and Sde Eliezer, and kibbutzim such as Ashdot Ya'akov, Ma'ayan Zvi and Kfar Glickson. It drained swamps, as at Kabara from 1925, planted forests at Hadera, fixed sand dunes, and carried out farm research and modernisation. Hope Simpson reported that in 1921 PICA had won a concession for salt making at Athlit, the drainage of the Kabara swamp and the development of the sand dunes at Caesarea. The Kabara concession covered 5,170 dunams, next to 2,300 dunams PICA already owned, and £92,000 had been spent on drainage.

PICA also funded the Hebrew University and the Technion. It developed the industries Rothschild had started, including the Grands Moulins flour mill at Haifa and the Athlit salt works.

Arab cultivators

Hope Simpson drew a sharp line between PICA and the Zionist Organization. He wrote that "in so far as the past policy of the P.I.C.A. is concerned, there can be no doubt that the Arab has profited largely by the installation of the colonies". He also said that "in many cases, when land was bought by the P.I.C.A. for settlement, they combined with the development of the land for their own settlers similar development for the Arabs who previously occupied the land". PICA employed Arab workers, and in his view its colonisation "was of unquestionable benefit to the Arabs of the vicinity". By contrast he described the Zionist settlements' "persistent and deliberate boycott of Arab labour".

The same report called for an "occupancy right" for agricultural tenants, and found the 1929 tenant-protection ordinance "of little value in preventing the displacement of tenants from the soil". It noted that PICA either sold land to its Jewish occupiers by long-term instalments or gave them long leases, so that "the Jewish settlement is in the interest of the occupant of the soil, while the Arab enjoys no such advantage".

Winding up, 1957

James de Rothschild decided before his death in 1957 that PICA should end its work in 'Israel'. It would give its land to the national institutions and its cash assets of six million pounds ($3,333,000) to a fund for a new Knesset building. Ben-Gurion told the Knesset of the decision, which reached him in a letter delivered after Rothschild's death. On 30 July 1957 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that PICA had transferred 130,000 dunams (42,500 acres) to the Jewish National Fund, "in conformance with the desire of the late James de Rothschild". It added that "some of the land is unoccupied, and the remainder is tenanted". The Encyclopaedia Judaica says PICA "transferred its considerable property to the State of Israel".

See also

• Jewish Colonization Association
• Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund
• Mikveh Israel
• Anglo-Palestine Bank
• Evelyn de Rothschild
• Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild