Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "瑟索克購地" in Chinese language version.
The Sursock deal is known to have involved the eviction of about 8000 tenants 'compensated' at three pounds ten shillings [about $17] a head.
In order to execute this plan the Jaffa office communicated with Messrs. Kalvariski and Joshua Hankin. The latter, then a young man of twenty-five had already demonstrated his skill in such negotiations in the acquisition of land for the colonies Rehoboth and Hederah. By energetic work he succeeded, in 1891, in reaching an agreement with large owners in the Jezreel Valley Emek Jezreel and the Plain of Acco for the purchase of 160,000 dunams [160 km²] at 15 francs per dunam [15,000 franc/km²]....Before the consummation of the agreement, however the Turkish Government, alarmed by the increasing inflow of Russian Jews, prohibited Jewish immigration entirely. This blow proved disastrous for the negotiations. The Russian societies formed for the purposes of purchasing land were dissolved, failed to send in the money they had promised, and the entire magnificent project fell through...It was only in 1910 that Hankin – who, in the meanwhile, had purchased land in Lower Galilee for the ICA – resumed his negotiations for land in the Emek.
In 1897, the year of the first Zionist Congress, a commission was set up in Jerusalem to scrutinise land sales to Jews... the commission effectively halted land sales to Jews in the Mutasarriflik for the next few years. Thus, when the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA — an organisation founded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch in 1891 and un-connected with the Zionist Movement) began to interest itself in Palestine in 1896, it very quickly discovered that the possibilities of buying land were wider in the north of the country... The breakthrough, from JCA's point of view, came in 1901 when the Council of Ministers ruled that JCA’s President, Narcisse Leven, could, as a foreigner, buy land in the Vilayet of Beirut under the Ottoman Land Code of 1867, provided that he undertook not to install foreign Jews on it. The very fact that this concession could be granted shortly after the 1901 regulations went into force points to another weakness in the Government's handling of its own policy. Under this concession, JCA acquired 31,500 dunams of land near Tiberias in the early part of 1901, mainly from the Sursuq family of Beirut.
In order to execute this plan the Jaffa office communicated with Messrs. Kalvariski and Joshua Hankin. The latter, then a young man of twenty-five had already demonstrated his skill in such negotiations in the acquisition of land for the colonies Rehoboth and Hederah. By energetic work he succeeded, in 1891, in reaching an agreement with large owners in the Jezreel Valley Emek Jezreel and the Plain of Acco for the purchase of 160,000 dunams [160 km²] at 15 francs per dunam [15,000 franc/km²]....Before the consummation of the agreement, however the Turkish Government, alarmed by the increasing inflow of Russian Jews, prohibited Jewish immigration entirely. This blow proved disastrous for the negotiations. The Russian societies formed for the purposes of purchasing land were dissolved, failed to send in the money they had promised, and the entire magnificent project fell through...It was only in 1910 that Hankin – who, in the meanwhile, had purchased land in Lower Galilee for the ICA – resumed his negotiations for land in the Emek.
