"Jewish National Fund (JNF) land is not state land. The JNF is the sole owner of its land. The JNF bought all the land it owns from its previous owners with donations from thousands of Jews from across the world who collected money penny by penny for the purchase of land in Israel, and maintaining and developing it for the Jewish people. The JNF's trusteeship is reserved solely for the Jewish people for whom it was founded and for whom it works," states the JNF in its response to a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Adalah The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning over the marketing of land in the north only to Jews.
After the petition was filed, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) completely halted the marketing of land in the Galilee to the Jewish population by tenders, and cancelled some recently published tenders. Most of the land being marketed is owned by the JNF. Tenders for the Arab sector were unaffected. The ILA also continued marketing land not through tenders, for the expansion of moshavim (collective villages) and kibbutzim (cooperative communities), which was carried out by applications committees.
The issue arose after a number of Arabs were denied access to tenders in Carmiel, which led the petition to the High Court of Justice. The ILA and JNF agreed to suspend the marketing of land until a High Court of Justice hearing on the petition.
Last week, the petitioners asked the High Court of Justice to issue a temporary injunction against the marketing of land in the south. The JNF announced that it objected to the halt of marketing of land in the south. In its statement of response, the JNF said that the petitioners wanted to expropriate JNF land from the Jewish people, by converting it to state land. In other words, the JNF said, the petitioners wanted the State of Israel to turn its back on Theodor Herzl's vision for the JNF to hold land in trust for the Jewish people.
The JNF says that if the petition is accepted, it would mean the expropriation of 2.5 million dunam (625,000 acres), about 12% of state land, to be given to the state without any legal or factual basis.
The JNF claims that in all matters relating to JNF land, the ILA must act in accordance with the JNF's principles, in other words, allocate JNF land only to Jews. The JNF announcement goes on to detail the laws that prevent the nationalization of land.
The JNF claims that its agreement with the state cannot to prevent the continuation of the separate status of JNF land, particularly its designation as the property of the Jewish people. The JNF also claims that it is under no obligation to allocation land to non-Jews, and that the allocation of JNF land to Jews is a founding principle of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on December 19, 2004