Sursock family
During the Fourth "Aliyah" (1924–1928), a time of Jewish migration to the British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, the Jezreel Valley was the top priority of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The fund wanted to settle the arable valley in order to establish a significant Jewish agricultural community and to create a contiguous bloc of Jewish settlements connecting Haifa with the existing bloc of Jewish settlements between Afula and Beit She'an. In 1924 the JNF purchased lands owned by the Christian Lebanese Sursock family near Nahalal. Afterwards it decided to expand south and in 1926 purchased most of the land of Abu Shusha, where Bedouins and Turkmens lived.