The Jewish National Fund was founded more than a century ago by the
fifth Zionist Congress at Basle in 1901 for the purpose of land
purchase and development in Palestine. The JNF (Hebrew: Keren
Kayemeth Leyisrael, KKL) was more than a charity for it saw itself
as 'the custodian of the land for the Jewish people', according to
the biblical injunction that 'the land shall not be sold in
perpetuity' (Leviticus 25:23). It was to become the most prominent
Zionist symbol for Jews everywhere before the establishment of the
State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of collection boxes would be
placed in Europe, the US and elsewhere - altogether forty countries
- where 'the kopecks, pennies and centimes went into the little
blue box.' After 1948, its role changed but its importance was not
diminished.
A popular mission
For many Jews, the idea of 'redeeming the land' under public
ownership, rather than relying on the egotism of private property,
appeared as a liberal and universal ideal.
Above all, the JNF's work was seen as yielding highly beneficial
practical results all over the map of Israel. In the economic
field, its adherents viewed it as facilitating the development of
modern agriculture and of efficient farming units. The kibbutz and
the moshav (communal and cooperative settlements), which could only
be built on national land, appeared as exciting new social
forms.
It was apparent for all to see that JNF afforestation had
beautified and enriched the Israeli landscape over the length and
breadth of the country. The JNF states that at the end of the 20th
Century, Israel was the only country in the word which had more
trees than there were at the start of the century. The JNF has also
invested major efforts in education and in publicity in order to
foster an attractive and constructive image of the benefits it
brings to the state and to ordinary citizens, be they from Left or
Right, secular or religious. There may be criticism here and there
but the recognition of the JNF as an organization carrying out an
important mission was, and remains, widespread in Israeli public
opinion.
In effect, hardly any other Jewish organization could compete with
the special appeal of the JNF, which was first incorporated in
England in 1907, controlled by the World Zionist Organization. It
made its first purchase of land in Palestine in 1905 in the areas
of Tiberias, Ramle and Lydda. Since its foundation, it has
purchased 2.6 million dunams (one dunam is a quarter of an acre) of
land all over the country for 1,000 settlements (including the
kibbutzim and moshavim), planted 240 million trees and built 150
dams and water reservoirs and 400 parks.
The JNF is also among the important 'green' organizations in the
country and were it not for JNF forests, and other projects, the
countryside would look quite different. Nowadays the JNF claims
that annual donations amount to US $25 million, 40% coming from the
US. In 2003 even the small Jewish community of Australia still
collected over a million dollars through the blue JNF boxes.
However, most of the JNF's income now comes through more
sophisticated methods like revenue from lands it owns, legacies
etc. The JNF's annual budget is about US $150 million, illustrating
the vast scope of current JNF activities in all areas of work
connected with land and development. The JNF employed some 3,000
people in 1998, but the number has been reduced by about a half due
to budgetary problems.
Another side of the coin
Despite this record of well publicized achievements, accompanied by
propaganda campaigns conducted abroad and in Israel, there has been
no lack of unfavorable evaluations of the JNF's record. These
negative viewpoints deserve equal attention. Let us take a brief
look at some of these items of criticism. First, 'redeeming' the
land before the establishment of the State of Israel was often at
the expense of Arab fellahin. The British Hope Simpson report in
1930 said that 'the Arabs gradually were being driven off the soil
by Jewish land purchases and by the JNF not allowing Arab
employment on Jewish tracts.' There are, however, widely differing
estimates as to how many fellahin were evicted.
Second, after the 1948 war, it was the holdings of Arab refugees or
of 'present absentees' (and not land purchases from the little blue
boxes) that accounted for most of the JNF's land. They were not
'redeemed' but conquered. This is quite contrary to the image that
JNF holdings were bought by mutual agreement from the former owners
of the land at fair prices. It is also contrary to international
law. Land acquisition and settlement by an occupying power
contravene The Hague Regulations of 1907 and the 1949 Geneva
Convention. Incidentally, in Israel itself the JNF 'often buys land
for prices well above the market value in order to prevent their
being sold to Arabs who may have been negotiating to buy
them.
Third, the JNF undertook projects with dubious moral overtones,
like planting Canada Park in the Jerusalem Corridor on the still
visible ruins of two Arab villages destroyed in the 1967 war.
Canadian Jews financed the project with donations of fifteen
million dollars. Fourth, as with many large organizations in Israel
the efficiency of the JNF administration in Jerusalem has been
questioned in the Israeli press. It is asked why two chairmen are
necessary, except in order to satisfy the ambitions of the two main
Zionist parties.
Last but not least, the JNF claims that it does not operate over
the 'green line' (the 1967 border) but the JNF subsidiary Himnuta,
as an instrument for the implementation of JNF policies, makes no
such claim. Himnuta was established by the JNF in 1938 and
registered in Ramallah in 1971. Its original function in the 1930s
was mainly to circumvent legal restrictions on land dealings so
that there is a degree of continuity in its current endeavors. As a
private rather than a public company it enjoys the advantage that
its activities are not properly supervised. Hence it can avoid too
much public exposure. When the public eye is turned upon Himnuta,
it appears, for example, under the headline 'Ring suspected of
trading in stolen Palestinian land' in Haaretz on 28.2.05. We read
that Haim Cohen the former director of Himnuta, and four others,
were suspected of 'purchasing stolen Palestinian lands in exchange
for bribes… police suspect that the ring was responsible for
at least five deals in which West Bank lands were stolen from their
Palestinian owners and sold to Himnuta for a total of more than NIS
20 million. Nineteen lawyers were said to be involved in the fraud.
The stolen lands are located near Hebron, Gush Etzion, Jericho,
Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev.' All these areas are, of course, in
the occupied West Bank, or in formerly Palestinian-owned Jewish
neighborhoods in Jerusalem, settled since 1967. Apart from the
criminal aspects, the question is - why is the director of Himnuta,
which is a JNF subsidiary, interested in purchasing land in the
territories?
Other examples: It is also known that in 1972 the JNF paid half the
cost of a highway through the West Bank linking Jerusalem with the
upper Jordan valley. JNF Director Shimon Ben Shemesh said on Israel
Radio on 23.9.97 that during the past year the JNF had purchased
lands in the territories for the sum of over US $66 million,
including lands in the Nebi Samuel area, huge tracts in the area
between Ramallah and Latrun. Another report spoke of JNF land deals
in the northern part of the Jordan valley, southeast of Nablus,
near Kiryat Arba, south of Ramallah, east of Kafr Kasim, and in
Gush Etzion.
The JNF itself sometimes inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag
in connection with the occupied territories. For instance in a
reference in the official 2003 JNF website we read that the 1967
Six Day War 'started a fresh page in the history of Israel and the
JNF was enlisted to develop new areas for settlement.' In addition
to areas within the green line, one of the areas developed for
settlement was none other than Rafah (in the Gaza Strip, then
occupied by Israel). In general, since, as we have noted, such
activities in the territories are not publicized and do not appear
in JNF reports, the random examples quoted here, which somehow
manage to escape the secrecy, may well be only the tip of the
iceberg. At any rate, all this is summed up in the statement by
Amiram Barkat in Haaretz of 28.2.05 that 'Himnuta has made
extensive purchases in the territories, where the JNF does not
operate (my italics - DL).
Perpetuating an anomaly
There is still a naive belief in the old myth that the land in the
State of Israel was acquired dunam by dunam through donations to
the JNF from the Diaspora. This idea has no historical foundation
since before the establishment of the state only 7% of the land in
Palestine was owned by Jews, and not all of that was JNF land.
Though impressive for a voluntary organization, the results of the
JNF's land acquisition before the establishment of Israel were
quite modest - 22,363 dunams by 1920, 516,000 dunams by 1940,
936,000 by May 1948. (Even so, the British White Paper of 1939
didn't prevent the JNF holdings from almost doubling between 1939
and 1946). Most of the land now owned by the JNF - 13% of all
public land - was conquered during the War of Independence and
ended up in the hands of the JNF, administered by the Israel Land
Authority (ILA). This includes some of the best lands in the center
of the country. In spite of its minority status in ownership, the
JNF, according to an agreement signed in 1960, appointed about half
of the board of directors of the ILA.
The JNF could have been abolished, and the land taken over by the
state after 1948. Why was this anomaly perpetuated? The Zionist
leader and Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had
originally thought that the role of the JNF would end once the
state was declared. Then came the UN resolution on the refugees,
arousing the fear of grave international repercussions if the state
were to take over Arab land directly. The JNF was used to
circumvent the issue and it was given a new mandate, later
popularized in the slogan 'Making the desert bloom.'
In 'The Israelis - founders and sons,' Amos Elon has noted that
'the Zionists, pursuing a national and social renaissance in their
ancient homeland, were blind to the possibility that the Arabs of
Palestine might entertain similar hopes for themselves.' In 'The
question of Palestine,' Edward Said has written that 'Zionism has
been studied and discussed as if it concerned Jews only, whereas it
has been the Palestinian who has born the brunt of Zionism's
extraordinary human cost… large but unacknowledged.' There
were various Zionist responses, too many and complex to be
described here, to the sort of Arab opposition forcibly brought
home in the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. Among these, it is significant
that Joseph Weitz, who was director of the JNF since the early
1920s, had hinted at future developments when he wrote in 1940 that
'the Zionist enterprise had been fine and good in its own time and
could do with "land buying" (but now) there is no way beside
transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries' (My
italics - DL).
The concept of transfer
This opinion by the veteran head of the JNF should not come as a
surprise for though Zionist historiography tries to indicate
otherwise, in ideological terms Zionists frequently raised the
concept of transfer for the Arab population. Herzl had written in
his diary in 1895 that 'we shall try to spirit the penniless
population across the border (by) denying them employment in our
own country' In 1930, speaking to a high British official the
reputably liberal Chaim Weizmann, who was to become Israel's first
President, called the idea of transfer ('a quasi-exchange of
population') 'a courageous and statesmanlike attempt to grapple
with a problem that had been tackled hitherto halfheartedly.'
Though careful about public declarations, after the British Peel
Commission had at one stage mentioned the possibility of transfer,
David Ben-Gurion had said in 1938 that 'I support compulsory
transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral' (Footnote 16
'Righteous victims'). Later, he even compared the expulsion of the
Arabs to the expulsion of the Indians from North America.
However, even in the exigencies of wartime, there was no official
Israeli expulsion policy. It was the Revisionist Jabotinsky who had
written in 1923 that voluntary agreement with the Arabs was
impossible and Jewish settlement depended upon building an 'iron
wall which they would be powerless to break down.' But by 1938
Ben-Gurion also saw the Arab Revolt as 'a national war declared
upon us by the Arabs' and thought that now 'only war, not
diplomacy, would resolve the conflict between Zionism and the
Arabs.' 'The Arabs would reconcile themselves to the Jewish
presence only after they had conceded their inability to destroy
it.'
Ben-Gurion refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion
orders, preferring during the 1948 war to let his generals
'understand' what he wanted, as in his approval of the largest
expulsions from Lydda and Ramle in July 1949. Ben-Gurion tended to
convey the image of Israel as a de-Arabized society, writing in
1952 that the state 'was set up in a desert land' and after the
Arabs fled the country 'it was virtually emptied of its former
owners', this when the Arab population of the country made up
twelve percent of the population.'
Neither Ben-Gurion, nor the more moderate Moshe Sharett, who unlike
Ben-Gurion knew Arabic and understood Arab sensitivities, shared
the illusions of the Zionist founding fathers about 'a land without
a people for a people without a land' As far back as 1914 Sharett
wrote that 'we have not come to an empty land to inherit it but we
have come to conquer a country from a people inhabiting it. No
wonder, then, that Chaim Weizmann, the acknowledged and most highly
respected leader of world Zionism, called the 1948 Arab exodus 'a
miracle'.
After 1948: less Arabs, more land
According to the official Israeli version, which welcomed the Arab
exodus, the Arab population left of its own accord; on the other
hand, Arab and Israeli new historians believe they did not leave
but were expelled. Professor Martin Buber, the veteran philosopher
of dialogue, remarked in 1949 that 'there is nothing sillier than
to be overjoyed because the Arab population has left.' Be that as
it may be, it seems fair to sum up the Jewish position as follows:
after the holocaust, after the Arabs rejected the 1947 partition
proposal and took up arms against Israel, after the Arab exodus and
as the new state faced the perspective of mass Jewish immigration -
Israel wanted still less Arabs and still more land.
The United Nations had resolved in December 1948 (Resolution 194)
that 'those refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in
peace with their neighbors,' should be given that option. Israel's
official line was that these people, who made up a majority of the
former Arab population and numbered about 700,000 be resettled in
Arab countries and that issues of return and compensation should be
held in abeyance pending an Israel-Arab peace agreement. Buber
proposed that a certain number of refugees be allowed to return
since a solution of the refugee problem demands 'cooperation and
mutual understanding'… while taking into account security
conditions. This was considered totally unrealistic.
In the wake of the mass Arab exodus set off by the War of
Independence, the Israeli authorities created irreversible facts on
the ground as Arab lands were formally taken over by the 'Custodian
of Absentee Property' and sold to a fictitious 'Development
Authority' which had the options of selling to the state, to the
JNF, to municipalities, or to 'an institution for settling landless
Arabs.' The latter option was not used and in fact most of the land
was sold to the JNF.
In the biggest real estate transaction ever carried out in Israel,
at the end of 1948 the JNF bought one million dunams of good lands
for eleven million Israeli pounds, a very low price in some, though
not all, opinions. (Footnote 26: 'The land revolution' by Tovah
Tsimuki, Yediot Aharonot 27.1.05. Meron Benvenisti noted that in
this case 'the uprooted Palestinians including tens of thousands of
"present absentee" citizens, did not get a single agora for their
land that was given to the JNF, while the government of Israel was
compensated in their stead in a deal that was illegal even
according to the heads of the JNF.' (Footnote 27. See 'A shameful
kind of Zionist,' Haaretz, 10.2.05). This was followed later by
additional sales of some 250,000 dunams. The JNF had apparently no
more money to buy further lands from the ILA. Today, about half of
JNF land once belonged to Palestinian refugees.
An indefensible policy
The JNF was not owned by the government, and according to the 1929
Constitution of the Jewish Agency, JNF land is 'the inalienable
property of the Jewish people.' So 'it is not obliged to act for
the good of all its citizens (but) for the good of the Jewish
people only,' according to statement by JNF Chair Yehiel Leket,
December 9, 2005. Therefore, the State of Israel as such could not
be accused of expropriating the land. In 1954 more than a third of
Israel's population lived on property which had belonged to Arab
refugees or to 'present absentees' (some 30,000 Palestinian Arabs
with Israeli citizenship whose property was confiscated since they
had fled to other places in Israel during the war).
Though Arabs account for about 20% of Israel's population, they own
only 4% of the land. The real problem posed by the JNF is that in
acting as caretaker of the land for the Jewish people only in a
period of protracted national conflict, it was bound whatever the
intention, to be discriminatory. However, it seems that most Jews
did not ask the question: From whom was the land 'redeemed?' The
JNF published a survey in 2005 showing that over 70% of the Jewish
public opposed allocating JNF land to non-Jews (over 80% preferred
that Israel be defined as the state of the Jewish people and not
the state of all its citizens). These subjects were to generate a
stormy public debate in the late 1990s when Adel Ka'adan, a
Palestinian Arab and citizen of Israel, applied to buy a plot of
land in order to build a house for his family in the new
neighborhood of Katzir in the lower Galilee. The JNF-owned land is
seven minutes ride from his own village.
While the Ka'adan family had lived in Galilee for some 200 years
and Ka'adan (43), a male nurse with three children, was prepared to
pay the full price of $17,000 for the land, the Katzir residents'
committee refused his application because as JNF land, it was
earmarked for Jews only. In March 2000, the issue went to the
Supreme Court which handed down a landmark decision that though
Israel is a Jewish state 'every minority member enjoys full
equality and the government could not give state land to the JNF
which could only allocate that land to Jews since it was
established to serve the Jewish people' (author's italics)..
In January 2005, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz declared that 'the
state cannot defend a policy in which the ILA prevents Israeli
Arabs from applying for building plots on land belonging to the
Jewish National Fund' and 'all land managed by the ILA, including
land owned by the JNF, will be marketed without discrimination or
limits, including to non-Jews' (author's italics). (A few months
later, after prolonged legal wrangling Ka'adan was permitted to
sign a contract with the ILA) Mazuz added that while the state
could not defend discrimination in the marketing of JNF lands by
the ILA, if any ILA tender for land owned by the JNF is won by a
non-Jewish citizen, the ILA will transfer alternative land to the
JNF. He thought that this would both honor the principle of
equality while retaining the JNF's current quota of land, and
budgets, 'for the purpose of settling Jews.'
There were various and contradictory reactions to the
Attorney-General's decision, which the press described as
'revolutionary.' Perhaps surprisingly, JNF Chair Yehiel Leket
welcomed it since 'it permitted his organization to continue its
mission' and 'the JNF will continue to safeguard the land.' Without
going into detail, he referred to 'smart solutions to uphold the
principle of Jewish settlement without having to face the High
Court of Justice.' Unlike Mazuz, he was not convinced that the JNF
would have lost the case had it reached the Court but he preferred
'a non-confrontational solution' and welcomed the establishment of
a committee to discuss 'arrangements which would satisfy the
Supreme Court without injuring the JNF,' a subject which had up to
now been based on informal agreements.
While there can be no objection to the JNF's continuing to
'safeguard the land' as a green organization, the concept of
'safeguarding' through the sort of discrimination which is built
into the JNF's constitution is today widely unacceptable. Thus for
example, while the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI),
which had petitioned the court along with other organizations,
welcomed the Attorney-General's decision, it saw the compensation
arrangement between the JNF and the ILA as 'problematical' since
'it does not provide a full answer to concerns about anti-Arab
discrimination'. Journalist and leader of the Peace Bloc, Uri
Avnery, objected to the JNF claim that it acts 'not on behalf of
the state but on behalf of the Jewish people' and saw the decision
as 'a sleight of hand which allows a body based on discrimination
to maintain its hold over 13% of land in the state.' The Arab
Advocacy Center Mossawa saw 'a glimmer of hope' in the decision but
felt 'we will still have a situation in which 13% of the land will
not really be accessible to Arab citizens.' The decision 'will
effectively protect the original reserve of land controlled by the
JNF and its principles' (so that) 'discrimination against Arab
citizens in terms of land allocation will continue.'
Equality for all
In summation, some welcomed the attorney-general's decision as a
sign of progress toward equality in the state since it prevents the
ILA, and through it the JNF, from discriminating over the rights to
land; others regretted that meanwhile it nevertheless assures the
maintenance of the JNF and its budget, an anomaly perpetuating the
long-standing inequality of Arab citizens who make up 20% of the
population. In this view, the situation is intolerable whether
Israel is perceived as 'a Jewish and democratic state' or as 'a
state of all its citizens.' What would we say were a minority group
of citizens elsewhere in the world be denied the right to purchase
13% of the land in its own country?
The 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence promised 'to foster
the development of the country for the benefit all… to ensure
complete equality of social and political rights to all its
inhabitants regardless of religion, race or sex (and) full and
equal citizenship to the Arab inhabitants of the state.'
One recalls that the draining of the lake and swamps in the Huleh
valley in upper Galilee, a major JNF project in the 1950's, turned
out to be an error, prompting the eminent Hebrew poet Yehuda Amihai
to write:
'When I was young I believed with all my heart the
Huleh swamp had to be drained.
Then all the bright-colored birds fled for their lives.
Now half a century later they were filling it with water
again
Because it was all a mistake. Perhaps my entire life I've been
living a mistake.'
The dictionary defines an anachronism as 'the error of placing a
person or thing in the wrong period.' This is a precise definition
of the JNF today, and it is true however one evaluates the JNF's
past. 'Perhaps it was all a mistake,' as the poet ruminated, and
perhaps it wasn't. In any case, in our day and age, the JNF's
historical concept of exclusively Jewish land is wholly
anachronistic and should surely be considered incompatible with the
vision of a democratic society founded on equality between all its
citizens.
1 This was the next to the last Congress presided over by
Theodore Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement in 1897.
2 In this context, the JNF, though not a religious organization,
was perceived by some supporters as comparable to the Muslim
religious endowment the Waqf, whose property is also not subject to
any inheritance or sale. The Basic Law on Israel Lands (1960) holds
that land is not sold but rather leased for a period of 49
years.
3 An opponent of Zionism like Noam Chomsky wrote in 1960 that the
kibbutzim "the most advanced socialist form in existence... were
constructed on lands purchased by the Jewish National Fund and from
which Arabs were excluded in principle"- see his Peace in the
Middle East.
4 Haaretz, 23.2.05, 23.7.05, though various figures are
quoted.
5 A History of Israel by Howard M. Sachar.
6 Simpson spoke of some 30 percent of the fellahin but the British
authorities subsequently agreed that this was an exaggeration. See
Israel and the Arab World by Aharon Cohen. Abraham Granott, one of
the heads of the JNF, wrote in his book Agrarian Reform and the
Record of Israel (1952) that 27 percent of JNF land was purchased
from fellahin, and 57 percent from large Arab landowners, and that
the JNF's "far-seeing policies" determined the borders in the 1947
Partition Plan in contrast to those in the 1937 Peel Plan. Walter
Lehn, not a friend of the JNF, thinks in "The Jewish National
Fund," Journal of Palestinian Studies, summer 1974, that 9.4
percent of the fellahin were ejected.
7 "Laundering the land," Haaretz, December 4, 1998.
8 Visitors to the Canada park, with its archeological sites, scenic
lookouts and hiking trails, read signs about Jewish, Byzantine,
Roman and Ottoman history but without mention of the thousand-year
Arab presence there.
9 The director-general and a former chairman recently sued each
other for libel after an exchange of remarks in the JNF Audit
Committee. Legal expenses of over US $60,000 were paid by the JNF,
prompting the judge to remark that "the blue box was being used as
a cash box (for) the well-being of JNF officials and their
self-perpetuation, rather than for the redemption of the land." See
Yediot Aharonot, March 11, 2004; Haaretz,.February 23, 2005).
10 Amiram Barkat describes Himnuta as follows in Haaretz, February
28, 2005 under the heading "State-Funded yet Private": "While it is
a division of the JNF, it is a private company whose dealings go
largely unsupervised. It neither issues financial statements nor
publicizes information on its business deals. Though financed in
part by state funds, it is not subject to oversight by the State
Comptroller or the High Court of Justice. It can buy lands as an
investment, or exchange them, with Arab dealers, both of which are
forbidden to the JNF. It is useful for buying lands from Arabs who
are reluctant to sell directly to a Jewish national
institution."
11 New York Times, February 20, 1973.
12 "And the Fund Still Lives" by Uri Davis and Walter Lehn, Journal
of Palestine Studies, summer 1978.
13 Joseph Weitz: My diary and letters to the children, 1965.
14 Estimates of land thus acquired by the state from Arab citizens
who remained in the country vary, with some claiming that as much
as 40 percent of this land was expropriated. See "Early state
policy toward the Arab population 1948-1955" by Don Peretz in New
Perspectives of Israeli History edited by Laurence J. Silberstein.
Of the present 1.1 million Israeli Arab citizens, 25 percent were
the victims of expropriation of their land or property and over 15
percent were displaced from their original towns and villages,
according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in a
Palestinian Media report of May 15, 2005).
15 "Buying the State of Israel" by Amiram Barkat, Haaretz, February
10, 2005.
16 In 2005, there were over 250,000 of these internally displaced
people living in Israel, Haaretz, May 13, 2005.
17 "JNF Land," The Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2005.
18 The Declaration of Independence, with all its unique historical
importance, is not a law but the principle of equality has been
endorsed by the Knesset in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and
Liberty.
19 The Palmach, a voluntary armed striking force, was disbanded by
Ben-Gurion in May 1948, with the establishment of the state. Its
people, including a young officer named Yitzhak Rabin, were
integrated into the newly formed IDF. In the eyes both of its
adherents, and later of historians, this did not make the Palmach's
contribution to the creation of the state any less important. The
same would be true were the JNF to transfer its functions to the
state, in accordance with the precept that changing times demand
abandoning outdated thinking.