1903 Lydda, Ramleh, Ben Shemen

1903 Arab Murder, Mayhem, and Massacre – Lydda, Ramleh, Ben Shemen

“In the autumn of 1903, after the Sixth Zionist Congress, the Anglo-Palestine Bank purchased 2,330 dunams of land in the village of Haditha for 80,730 francs.  Of that area, 1,946 dunams were fertile and flat, while the remaining 384 dunams were hilly and barren.  Together they formed a long strip of land that stretched from the silvery olive orchards of the Arab city of Lydda to the low ridge of hills rising from the grayfields of the Lydda Valley toward Jerusalem.  The Beit Arif estate became the Ben Shemen estate, one of the first plots of land purchased by Herzl’s Zionist movement in Palestine.

Two years later, – the civil engineer Nahum Wilbosh decided to establish his Atid factory in the Lydda Valley.  With an investment of 150,000 francs, he bought 100 dunams from the Anglo-Palestine Bank and erect a modern plant to press oil from its orchards and manufacture fine soap from the olive refuse.”

Source: My Promised Land