Jewish National Fund

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The JNF logo found on all JNF charity boxes.

The Jewish National Fund (Hebrew: קרן קימת לישראל, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael) (JNF) was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine (later Israel) for Jewish settlement. By 2006, it owned 14% of the land in Israel

1 Early History
2 After Israel's Establishment
3 Relationship to the Israel Land Administration
4 Reforestation work
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Early History

The JNF was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel upon an earlier suggestion by Zvi Hermann Schapira to create an organization to buy and develop land in Palestine for Jewish settlement.

Its main source of income was donations which were deposited into about one million of "little blue boxes" distributed in Jewish communities all over the world. The JNF also raised money by printing stamps.

The JNF received its first parcel of land - a 50-acre plot in Hadera - as a gift from philanthropist Isaac Goldberg. In 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres (100 km²), rising to 50,000 acres (200 km²) by 1927. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km²) of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. Overall, during the British Mandate period, the JNF purchased about 94 km² of land, largely from Arab landowners. From the beginning, JNF's policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it.

[edit] After Israel's Establishment

After Israel's establishment in 1948, there was a debate concerning the future of the JNF. Initially the government wanted to dismantle it, but after the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194 calling for Arab refugees to be allowed back into their homes, the JNF was seen as mechanism by which land which was previously owned by Arab refugees could be placed further out of their reach. Accordingly, the government began to sell land to the JNF that had been seized from Arab refugees. At the end of 1948, 100 square kilometers of this land (from a total of about 350 square kilometers) was sold to the JNF for 11 million pounds. Another 25 square kilometers was sold to the JNF later on. Questions about the legitimacy of these transactions were counteracted by Israeli legislation.^[1]

Yosef Weitz, the Executive Director for the JNF during the 1940's was also a member of the three-person Population Transfer Committee which [1] made recommendations regarding the expulsion of Palestinians and the confiscation of land. In his report on Committee efforts, Weitz wrote that the transfer of the Arab population from the Jewish areas "does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evacuate land now cultivated by Arabs and thus release it for Jewish settlement."[2]

[edit] Relationship to the Israel Land Administration

In 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company without much essential change. A far greater change occurred in 1960, when administration of the land held by the JNF, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency, the Israel Land Administration, the government agency responsible for managing 93% of the land of Israel [3]. JNF received the right to nominate ten of the 22 directors of the ILA.

JNF funds pay for the planting of trees in Israel.

The charter prevents JNF from leasing land to non-Jews, but the restriction was frequently circumvented in practice, for example, by granting one-year lease to Bedouins for pastures. In January 2005, Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ruled in response to a Supreme Court petition that lease restrictions violated Israeli anti-discrimination laws.

In June 2005, an agreement was made by which the JNF would transfer its urban holdings to the state and the state would transfer an equal area of rural land to the JNF.

[edit] Reforestation work

The early JNF was also 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 Hulah Valley. It continues planting trees in the present day.