Palestyna Rys gieografji fizycznej [Palestine A sketch of physical geography]

Scientific diplomacy for a Jewish national home in Palestine.

This uncommon 1919 report, written by two Zionist agronomists, provides a persuasive overview of the physical geography of Palestine during the British occupation that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The contents highlight the economic success and vitality of existing Jewish settlements – presumably, these advancements would continue under policies that favored increased emigration to the contested region.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 asserted support for such political motives, though the final national determination of Palestine was still undecided at the time of publication. In addition to pages of descriptive text and tables of statistics, the informative volume includes a fold-out topographic map of Palestine that pinpoints the location of various Jewish communities.

The contents were authored by Aaron Aaronsohn and Selig Soskin and published in Warsaw in 1919 by Wydawnictwo Organizacji Syjonistycznej W Polsce [Publishing House of the Zionist Organization in Poland]. The Polish Jewish population suffered significantly at the hands of both Russian and German forces during World War I, offering a rich recruitment ground for potential settlers.

Soskin and Aaronsohn were both accomplished agronomists, though the latter was more famous as the discoverer of the earliest ancestor of modern cultivated wheat. Aaronsohn was also involved with surveying the official borders of Palestine and spied on behalf of the British during World War I. He died in a suspicious plane crash during the Paris Peace Conference – this piece was likely published posthumously.