Sursock Purchases

[4] The buyers demanded the existing population be relocated and, as a result, the Palestinian Arab tenant farmers were evicted, and approximately 20–25 villages were depopulated.

[7] Palestinians' responses to the Sursock Purchase/Afula incident at the time constitute "one of the earliest cases of organized opposition to Zionist land purchase in Palestine.

"[8] Through much of the period of Ottoman rule, the low-lying land of Palestine had suffered from depopulation due to the unhealthy conditions on the plains, and the insecurity of life there.

During drought years, Bedouins from the ghor even encroached on lands cultivated by local fellahin, covering the entire area with their tents.

A Greek banker named Sursuk, to whom the Government was under obligations, was allowed to buy the northern half of the Great Plain and some of the Nazareth villages for the ridiculously small sum of £20,000 for an extent of seventy square miles; the taxes of the twenty villages amounted to £4000, so that the average income could not be stated at less than £12,000, taking good and bad years together.

The cultivation was materially improved under his care, and the property must be immensely valuable, or would be, if the title could be considered secure; but it is highly probable that the Government will again seize the land when it becomes worth while to do so.

The peasantry attributed the purchase to Russian intrigue, being convinced that their hated enemy has his eyes greedily turned to Palestine and to Jerusalem as a religious capital, and is ever busy in gaining a footing in the country.In 1891, Yehoshua Hankin, who had immigrated to Palestine from Russia a few years previously, began negotiations to acquire the Jezreel Valley; the negotiations ended when the Ottoman government enacted a prohibition on Jewish immigration.

The Ottoman government made a number of attempts to limit mass land acquisition and immigration, but these restrictions did not last long due to European pressure under the terms of the capitulations.

In 1910–11, Elias Sursock sold 10,000 dunums around the village of al-Fula, located at the foot of the Nazareth mountains in Marj Ibn 'Amir,[23] to the Jewish National Fund.

In particular, they claimed that Ilyas Sursuk and a middleman had sold their land to people, whom they called "Zionists" and "sons of the religion of Moses" (siyonist musevi), who were not Ottoman subjects, and that the sale would deprive 1,000 villagers of their livelihoods.

"[25] The Ottomans had refused to authorize numerous sales, such that the Sursocks were unable to sell significant land to Jewish purchasers prior to World War I.

In 1912, the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC) arranged to purchase a large area in the Jezreel Valley from Nagib and Albert Sursock, but the transaction did not complete due to World War I.

[30] The high priority given to these lands owes much to the strategy pursued by Menachem Ussishkin, who found himself opposed by other members of the JNF board.

[2]However, the new owners considered it was inappropriate for these farmers to remain as tenants on land intended for Jewish labor, driven in particular by the working-the-land ideology of the Yishuv.

The Sursock purchase (see red dotted circle) illustrated on a map of Jewish land purchase in Palestine as at 1944; the dark blue represents land then owned by the Jewish National Fund , of which most in the circled area had been acquired under the Sursock Purchase.
1911 cartoon: Saladin (right) protesting the Sursocks' sale of Al Fula, and Yehoshua Hankin (left) handing out money. Haifa satirical newspaper al Himara al Qahira ("The Stubborn Donkey").