Land ownership of Palestine by large Jewish Corporations (in square kilometres) on 31 December 1945:
JNF 660.10
PICA 193.70
Palestine Land Development Co. Ltd. 9.70
Hemnuta Ltd 16.50
Africa Palestine Investment Co. Ltd. 9.90
Bayside Land Corporation Ltd. 8.50
Palestine Kupat Am. Bank Ltd. 8.40
Total
906.80
JNF= Jewish National Fund
PICA= Palestine Israeli Colonization Association
From the 1880s to the 1930s, most Jewish land purchases were made in the coastal plain, the
Jezreel Valley, the
Jordan Valley and to a lesser extent the Galilee.This was due to a preference for land that was cheap and without tenants.
There were two main reasons why these areas were sparsely populated. The first reason being when the Ottoman power in the rural areas began to diminish in the seventeenth century, many people moved to more centralized areas to secure protection against the lawless Bedouin tribes.
The second reason for the sparsely populated areas of the coastal plains was the soil type. The soil, covered in a layer of sand, made it impossible to grow the staple crop of Palestine, corn.As a result this area remained uncultivated and under populated." The sparse Arab population in the areas where the Jews usually bought their land enabled the Jews to carry out their purchase without engendering a massive displacement and eviction of Arab tenants".
In the 1930s most land was bought from small landowners. Of the land that the Jews bought, "52.6% of the lands were bought from big non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian-Arab landowners and only 9.4% from the Fellahin.