of the water-rich fertile soil in the area.11
By the time Allon arrived, it was no secret that the PICA did not share Hartzfeld’s viewpoint. He treated the PICA’s holdings as national land; it regarded the Ginossar camp as trespassing. Yet the young men and women clearly had no intention of leaving, continuing to hope for some sort of accommodation. The PICA wasn’t interested: it wanted the kevutzah off its land. The Agricultural Center tried to placate the PICA, taking care not to dent its prestige or mar relations with the Rothschilds, the company’s owners. Ginossar’s members were also prepared to placate the PICA—as far as lip service went.
The PICA had the law on its side, along with the financial power of a large settlement company and the force of political pressure: so long as the conflict with Ginossar remained unresolved, the national institutions, including the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Agricultural Center, could not assist the young settlement. The budgetary stranglehold caused Ginossar severe hardship in the early years and was a direct result of the PICA’s pressure. Nevertheless, the PICA’s public position was also the source of its weakness: it was no ordinary private company; rather, it was driven by Zionism and was not immune to the influence of settlement bodies and Jewish public opinion. There was thus little chance that it would use force to evict this kevutzah of fine young people, even if they were squatters. Nor was it reasonable that it would appeal to the law since turning to the British could provoke an outcry.12 The Ginossarites bet on the PICA’s feeble reaction, and relations settled into a regular pattern: an attempt was made to negotiate; the kevutzah acknowledged its wrongs and promised to behave better in the future if the PICA forgave it its sins and recognized the status quo; the PICA refused to relinquish its holdings, demanding the kevutzah’s removal; and negotiations collapsed. But every such failure led to further encroachment by the kevutzah, to another fact on the ground in blatant, audacious defiance and total disregard of the PICA’s objections.
The determination of the young to stay at Ginossar no matter what was echoed in their battle cry of “Ginossar and only Ginossar.” Apart from the site’s beauty, which chained them with love, its farming potential was enormous. “Better that we sit here waiting for this land for a year, two, three, five, for even then we will draw more from this soil than from any other,” said Israel Levy, then Ginossar’s central figure.13 As time passed, the bond to the land only tightened. Time was in their favor, for each passing day there meant another patch tilled, another pipe laid, one more birth, one more burial.
When Allon came on the scene, the pattern of the dispute over Ginossar’s illegal camp was already set, and he took an extreme position on the matter of placating the PICA. When it became clear that the clash would squeeze the group financially, Allon made a statement at one of the assemblies that became Ginossar’s catchphrase: “We will sow two hundred dunams of wheat and ten dunams of onions and we’ll eat bread and onion.”14 This bravado—undoubtedly nourished too by his great love for the bulb that showed up in his every salad—summed up Ginossar’s resolve.
Allon seems to have been eager for the confrontation with the PICA. He could not have been oblivious to the difference in Ginossar-PICA relations and those between Mes’ha’s old-timers—his father included—and the PICA. Mes’ha’s farmers had faced the PICA cap in hand. In contrast, Ginossar’s young were the active element, pushing the PICA into a resigned, passive corner. The role reversal between initiator and submitter, between the party in control and the party forced to knuckle under, must have put a song in his heart.
A few months later, at the height of the Arab Rebellion in August 1938, Ginossar’s land-grab aims took another step forward: one weekend, as the PICA official in charge indulged in his Sabbath rest, the kevutzah mobilized to install a small pumping station, pipes, and an irrigation line from the Sea of Galilee to a 20-dunam tract; the group also planted a vegetable garden. The PICA issued a strenuous protest: the group was to remove the pipes and uproot the tomato plants.15 Two weeks later the PICA received an inordinately courteous letter requesting its permission to create a winter vegetable garden at Ginossar—an idea “that can shore up our stamina in these troubled times and further bolster our readiness to preserve the integrity of the PICA’s lands at Ju’ar as we have done to date.”16 The letter ended with the disingenuous hope that when the PICA decided to settle these lands, it would look on the Ginossar kevutzah as a suitable candidate. In vain did the PICA protest and threaten legal action.17 The kevutzah blithely went about its business, affably ignoring the company.
In the autumn of 1938 the Arab Rebellion peaked and the local security situation badly deteriorated. In one incident, an Arab gang fell upon a Jewish neighborhood in Tiberias and, meeting no opposition, killed, wounded, and plundered (see the next chapter). As far as security personnel were concerned, this only made the small settlement point on the Kinneret shore all the more important. Meir Rotberg, of the Haganah High Command, applied to the PICA not only to leave Ginossar in place but to enlarge it (11 October 1938).18 He was seconded by the Haganah’s district commander, Nahum Kramer (Shadmi), who wrote to the PICA to expand the settlement point and fortify it properly.19 Hartzfeld too suggested that the PICA broaden the settlement for security reasons, undertaking to have the kevutzah removed should conditions change. The PICA mulled over the matter with long letters going back and forth between the Haifa executive and the Paris head office. Hartzfeld’s innocent proposal aside, the PICA’s people knew very well that if they officially recognized the kevutzah on the land, this would mark the start of their concession to settlement there. The PICA wavered.
Ginossar’s members did not. On 4 November 1938, some weeks after negotiations started about extending the site, they began to move the entire outfit from Migdal down to Ginossar. For about a year and a half, part of the kevutzah had lived in two huts at the lower camp, working and guarding the lands on the plain, while mothers, children, pregnant women, and some of the men continued to live in the old camp at Migdal. Communication between the two parts was problematic if not downright dangerous, and the separation was not healthy for internal cohesion. Beyond the very real security and social worries, however, the kevutzah wished to exploit the situation to establish its home at Ginossar. “We have come out well with the PICA”—Sini wrote his parents on an optimistic note—“it seems that after the Tiberias incident they are more inclined to give in to every demand made in the name of security, and there is hope that we will succeed in going down to Ginossar this week in peace. It also looks as though the money question will be resolved with ease and we will settle on our land.”20 But the PICA, it transpired, did not swallow the bait and Ginossar’s members were furious. The PICA dilly-dallied in its response to the Haganah, which was seen as a snub to security personnel, inconceivable insolence, and a quasi-license for independent action.21
The move down to Ginossar was organized as a military operation to the very last detail: it was scheduled for a weekend when the PICA officials in Tiberias could be expected to relax their supervision over the intrepid squatters. The huts were moved in toto by rolling them along pipes. Construction material had been prepared in advance to fortify the enlarged settlement point and secure the dining hall and children’s quarters. Everything was well planned—and then the heavens intervened. Contrary to all forecasts for clement weather and moonlit nights for that Friday in early November, it started to pour without letup. The members got soaked to the bone, the truck got stuck in the mud and had to be extricated by a tractor, and the entire schedule was thrown off kilter. Mustering the heroic effort that became part of the Ginossar saga, the members managed to knock together two extra huts for shelter from the rain, but all hope of completing the move in two days was lost.22
The PICA, of course, was incensed: the impudence of these young people had exceeded all bounds. The Haganah High Command announced that it had no hand in the affair; it had not given the kevutzah permission to do what it had done. Hartzfeld and the Agricultural Center also fumed: they too had not been consulted and had certainly not given their consent. But once the dust settled—or the mud dried—the question again
