Will the Jewish National Fund purchase land in the West Bank?
Illustrative: Construction work in the Dagan neighborhood of the settlement of Efrat, in the West Bank on July 22, 2019. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90) The Jewish National Fund is reportedly expected to officially authorize the purchase of land in the West Bank, potentially marking a major policy change for the century-old organization.
What is the Jewish National Fund (JNF)?
Jewish National Fund. The JNF is a non-profit organization. By 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees in Israel. It has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres (1,000 km 2) of land and established more than 1,000 parks.
What does the JNF do in other countries?
The Jewish National Fund has arms in other countries, active in fundraising for the benefit of the JNF-KKL in Israel. The United States arm of the JNF was incorporated on January 26, 1926 and developed a uniquely American effort to support development in Israel.
Can the JNF sell its land to non-Jews?
In late 2007 a land swap deal was proposed that would allowing the JNF to continue leasing its lands only to Jews. Urban JNF land sold in future to non-Jews would include an automatic swap mechanism: the fund would transfer the land to the ILA, and in exchange would receive the purchase price plus a similar-sized plot in the Negev.
Is Israel building settlements on West Bank?
Israel has continued to support settlement initiatives through financial incentives and security support by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Today, there are upwards of 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem.
How much of the West Bank is under Israeli control?
Presently, most of the West Bank is administered by Israel though 42% of it is under varying degrees of autonomous rule by the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority.
What percentage of the West Bank is Israeli settlements?
1 percentThe actual buildings of the Israeli settlements cover only 1 percent of the West Bank, but their jurisdiction and their regional councils extend to about 42 percent of the West Bank, according to the Israeli NGO B'Tselem.
Does Israel claim West Bank?
Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as affirmed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.
Is Israel occupying Palestine land?
BACKGROUND: Palestinian territory – encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem – has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Is West Bank and Gaza the same as Palestine?
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are two Palestinian territories that were part of Mandate Palestine and were captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. There are over 5 million Palestinians combined living in the two territories.
Who owned the West Bank before Israel?
West Bank, Arabic Al-Ḍaffah al-Gharbiyyah, Hebrew Ha-Gadah Ha-Maʿaravit, area of the former British-mandated (1920–47) territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River, claimed from 1949 to 1988 as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but occupied from 1967 by Israel.
Why is Israel entitled to the land?
Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied. It holds that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as on the later Prophets.
What was Israel before 1948?
The region was ruled under the British Mandate for Palestine until 1948, when the Jewish State of Israel was proclaimed in part of the ancient land of Israel. This was made possible by the Zionist movement and its promotion of mass Jewish immigration.
Is Jerusalem in Israel or Palestine?
Jerusalem is a city that straddles the border between Israel and the West Bank. It's home to some of the holiest sites in both Judaism and Islam, and so both Israel and Palestine want to make it their capital.
When did Palestine become Israel?
1948In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was voted. This triggered the 1947–1949 Palestine war and led, in 1948, to the establishment of the state of Israel on a part of Mandate Palestine as the Mandate came to an end.
Are people in the West Bank Israeli citizens?
East Jerusalem Palestinians are governed directly by Israel; while a small minority of them have Israeli citizenship, most have a special residency status that denotes a restricted set of rights compared with those of Israeli citizens.
Can a Palestinian from West Bank become an Israeli citizen?
Therefore, if a given area of the West Bank is considered to have become part of Israel, most Palestinians subsequently born in such territory are plausibly entitled to receive Israeli citizenship as a matter of treaty law.
Did Israel annex the West Bank?
East Jerusalem was the first part of the West Bank to be annexed; it was de facto annexed following its occupation by Israel in 1967, and de jure annexed following the 1980 Jerusalem Law.
When did Israel occupy the West Bank?
1967During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank and established a military administration throughout the area, except in East Jerusalem, which Israel incorporated into itself, extending Israeli citizenship, law, and civil administration to the area.
What is JNF in the West Bank?
The board of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is set to approve a new policy on Sunday that will allow the organization to officially purchase land in the West Bank for the potential expansion of Israeli settlements there, according to a draft resolution I obtained. Why it matters: A non-governmental organization founded in 1901 to purchase land ...
Why did JNF not buy land in the West Bank?
The backstory: Since 1967, JNF refrained from direct involvement in buying land in the West Bank, partly due to the objections of American donors. For many years, JNF was controlled by the center-left Labor Party, but has since October been headed by a right-wing, pro-settler politician.
Who owns 15% of the land in Israel?
Why it matters: A non-governmental organization founded in 1901 to purchase land for Jews to settle in Ottoman Palestine, JNF today owns 15% of all the land in Israel. This major policy shift could funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the expansion of West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.
Can foreign donors buy land in the West Bank?
Foreign donations will only be used to buy land in the West Bank if the transactions are legal according to the law in the donor’s country. The resolution includes a list of priority areas for buying land, including the Jordan Valley and other areas deep into the West Bank.
What is JNF in the UK?
In the United Kingdom, the JNF-UK (full name JNF Charitable Trust) was formed in 1939 and registered as a charitable organization. In October 2005, the JNF-KKL in Israel split from its British partner, accusing JNF-UK of having "misled" the public. The JNF-KKL claimed that the British group was using the KKL name to raise funds "for their own causes which are not associated with KKL." The Israeli JNF-KKL said it would launch a separate fundraising operation in the UK. JNF-UK launched a legal action to stop KKL using the names "JNF" or "Jewish National Fund" in the UK. The two organisations made peace after the Israeli-born businessman Samuel Hayek took over as JNF-UK chairman in 2008. Israeli JNF-KKL ended its dispute with the JNF-UK within weeks of ending a similar dispute with the American JNF-USA
When did the JNF start working?
After concentrating on the centre and northern part of the young state, the JNF-KKL started supporting Jewish settlements around the Negev border from around 1965. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the JNF-KKL started work in the newly occupied Palestinian territories as well.
How much did JNF raise for Canada Park?
Following the Six-Day War, the Canadian arm of the JNF raised about $15 million US to fund a 1,700-acre park called "Canada Park." The park was built in 1970 on land that had been occupied until the war by three Palestinian villages, which were destroyed on the orders of Yitzhak Rabin. Starting around 2013, Independent Jewish Voices has campaigned against JNF Canada's charitable status, and in 2017 it filed a formal complaint with the Canadian government seeking the revocation of JNF's charitable status on the basis of discrimination.
How many trees did the JNF plant?
The early JNF was active in afforestation and reclamation of land. By 1935, JNF had planted 1.7 million trees over a total area of 1,750 acres (7.08 km²) and drained swamps, like those in the Hula Valley. Over fifty years, the JNF planted over 260 million trees largely in semi-arid, rocky, hilly terrain in which cultivation is not cost-effective and the risk of land degradation is high. While the Ministry of Agriculture is the official regulator of Israel's forests, the JNF is responsible for the implementation of forest management and afforestation. In 2006, the JNF signed a 49-year lease agreement with the State of Israel which gives it control over 30,000 hectares (300 km 2) of Negev land for the development of forests. The JNF has been criticized for planting non-native pine trees which are unsuited to the climate, rather than local species such as olive trees. Others say that JNF deserves credit for this decision, and the forests would not have survived otherwise. According to JNF statistics, six out of every 10 saplings planted at a JNF site in Jerusalem do not survive, although the survival rate for planting sites outside Jerusalem is much higher – close to 95 percent. The Israeli newspaper Maariv claimed that workers remove saplings daily to allow more tourists to plant the following day, but the JNF denied this and said it would sue the paper for libel. The Union for Environmental Defense has criticized the fund's forestry practices for "overreliance on highly flammable pine trees" and overuse of toxic herbicides, in the context of minimal government and public scrutiny. Some forests have been planted for security reasons and as a means of demarcating Israeli space. Critics argue that many JNF lands outside the West Bank were illegally confiscated from Palestinian refugees, and that the JNF furthermore should not be involved with lands in the West Bank. Shaul Ephraim Cohen has claimed that trees have been planted to restrict Bedouin herding. Susan Nathan wrote that forests were planted on the site of abandoned Arab villages after the 1948 war. Nathan also writes that olive trees were replaced by pine and cypress trees and that JNF afforestation policy erases traces of the Arab presence prior to 1948. In 2008, the JNF announced that historical information plaques erected in JNF parks and forests would cite the names of the Arab villages formerly located there.
What was the purpose of the JNF charter?
The JNF charter specifies the reclamation of land for the Jewish people as its primary purpose . During the 1980s, almost 60,000 acres (240 km 2) were planted. Over 50,000 acres (200 km 2) of crop-land were reclaimed, and hundreds of miles of roads built. Research into the soil and water conservation and the construction of dams and reservoirs took on added importance in the face of water shortages and drought.
How many dunams did the JNF have?
By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of 936,000 dunams (936 km 2; 361 sq mi) of land; another 800,000 dunams (800 km 2; 310 sq mi) had been acquired by other Jewish organizations or individuals.
Why did Seth Morrison resign from JNF?
In December 2011, Seth Morrison resigned from the board of JNF-USA in protest at the decision by Himnuta, a subsidiary of JNF-KKL, to launch eviction proceedings against the Sumarin family, who lived in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem. In the case of the Sumarin family, the children of the original owner, Musa Sumarin, were declared absentees after his death even though there were other family members living in the home at the time. In 1991, the Israeli government took the step of transferring the property to the JNF subsidiary. A campaign against the JNF's eviction was launched by Rabbis for Human Rights, the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, and the Jewish organization Yachad. The pressures led the JNF to delay the eviction. The JNF played a similar role in evicting the Gozlan family in the 1990s.
Overview
Jewish National Fund (Hebrew: קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, previously הפאנד הלאומי, Ha Fund HaLeumi) was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, and subsequently Israel and the Palestinian territories) for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a non-profit organization. By 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its incepti…
Name
The name Keren Kayemet comes from the Mishnah. Tractate Peah (1:1) lists the types of good deeds whose rewards are enjoyed in this world, while the principal merit will be in the world to come: hakeren kayemet lo l’olam haba.
History
The idea of a national land purchasing fund was first presented at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 by Hermann Schapira, a German-Jewish professor of mathematics. The fund, named Keren Hakayemet (later known in English as the "Jewish National Fund") was formally established at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901. In its early years, the organization was headed by the Jewish ind…
Reclamation projects
The JNF charter specifies the reclamation of land for the Jewish people as its primary purpose. During the 1980s, almost 60,000 acres (240 km ) were planted. Over 50,000 acres (200 km ) of crop-land were reclaimed, and hundreds of miles of roads built. Research into the soil and water conservation and the construction of dams and reservoirs took on added importance in the face of …
International fundraising arms
The United States arm of the JNF, incorporated on January 26, 1926, is the largest contributor to JNF-KKL. In 1996, JNF-USA was accused of mismanaging funds. According to the charges, only 21% of US donations reached Israel, and money was being diverted to Latin American JNF offices. In the wake of this scandal, the North American management was forced to resign. The tax-exem…
JNF collection boxes
JNF's blue charity boxes were distributed by the JNF almost from its inception at the initiative of Johann Kremenezky. Once found in many Jewish homes, the boxes became one of the most familiar symbols of Zionism. A children's song about the boxes, written by Dr. Yehoshua Frizman, Headmaster of the Real Gymnasium for Girls in Kovno, ran
Controversies
T'ruah has expressed concerns that the JNF is not transparent about where their funds go and that the organization may be subsidizing projects in West Bank settlements. The organization's chief executive later acknowledged that JNF does fund projects within settlements. A review of their tax filing from 2014 led Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T'ruah to estimate that about $600,000 of the $27.2 millio…
See also
• Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. Collections of the Jewish National Fund (KKL1-KKL17)
• Israel Land Administration
• Israel Land Authority
• Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award