Yossi Ben-Artzi

Isolated building remains and an abandoned cemetery surrounded by a fence and pine trees, located right on the dividing line of Cyprus, testify to the complex and fascinating historical episode, in which various parties tried to establish Jewish and Zionist agricultural settlement on the island. The book reveals the story of attempts to settle in Cyprus in modern times, made parallel to the beginning of the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and not without connection to it. Cyprus is associated in the public mind especially with being a tourist destination, and the place of detention camps of illegal immigration where Jews were expelled to before the establishment of the state. However, few realize the Jewish settlement enterprise that existed from 1883 to 1939 to claim Cyprus land and maintain Jewish rural and agricultural colonies. The settlement initiatives were varied, and were done by Jews from different countries, in the context of affinity to Israel and what was happening there. When the immigration to Israel was difficult under Turkish rule, there were those who saw in the proximity of Cyprus a viable alternative, bought land and sought to establish settlements. After initial setbacks, the JCA managed to establish a relatively large colony, and smaller colonies around it. In the 1930s citrus growers from Israel farmed thousands of acres of citrus groves on the island. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Herzl also examined the possibility of creating a temporary Jewish shelter on the island as an alternative to the Uganda Plan, and Zionist David Trietsch saw this island, located not far from the Promised Land, as a place deserving to be settled by hundreds of thousands of Jews. This book recounts these episodes, illuminating the entire Jewish settlement in Cyprus in modern times along with photos, maps and archival sources.