Zionism and Free Enterprise: The Story of Private Entrepreneurs in Citrus Plantations in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s

Co-publication with Magnes Press Irit Amit-Cohen explores the riddle behind disappearing citrus orchards and plantations from Israel’s coastal scenery. The book reveals the biographies of entrepreneurs who came to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. Exposing the uniqueness of the plantation companies, describing the figures involved in them and analyzing their contribution to forming Palestine’s settlement landscape in the British Mandate period, this book relates the intimate narrative of settlements which were built as temporary structures, but still leave lasting imprints on the landscape. Irit Amit-Cohen explores the tension between Zionist ideology and mainstream economic thinking in Palestine in the 1920 and 1930s. The book tells the story of North Americans, South Africans, English and Egyptian Jewish entrepreneurs who invested in citrus plantations and changed Palestine’s economy.