The Rothschild family's Palestine Jewish Colonization Association…

The Rothschild family's Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) has continued to assist rural settlements as well as developing or financing economic enterprises, including some of lasting importance in the Israeli economy, such as wineries, the Potash Company, the Electric Company and Nesher Cement.

Because much of the available territory is in marshy valleys, PICA begins to drain swamps, turning over the land to existing or newly founded rural settlements there.

In 1934, a fifty-six hundred-hectare concession is acquired, from two Arab families in Syria, to drain and settle the Huleh Valley in the eastern Upper Galilee "panhandle."

By purchasing additional land in the northern Huleh Valley, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), achieves virtual contiguity between Metulla and ...