Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund is a non-profit organization founded in 1901 to buy land and encourage Jewish settlement in Ottoman Syria. By 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF has planted over 240 million trees in Israel. It has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed of land and established more than 1,000 parks. In 2002, the Israeli government awarded the JNF the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State of Israel.
The JNF has faced numerous criticisms for its role in the displacement of Palestinian Bedouins, the construction of Israeli military installations, the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank—considered illegal under international law, its refusal to lease to non-Jews, and its planting of non-indigenous trees potentially harmful or dangerous for Israel's ecosystem.
Name
The JNF was founded at the 1901 Zionist Congress as the Nationalfonds. On April 8, 1907, it was incorporated in London as an "Association Limited by Guarantee" under the name "Juedischer Nationalfonds, Limited". In October 1921, the company's name was changed to "Keren Kajemeth Le Jisroel Limited", and in January 1926 it was further changed to "Keren Kayemeth Leisrael Limited".The name Keren Kayemet comes from the Mishnah. Tractate Peah lists the types of good deeds whose rewards are enjoyed in this world, while the principal merit will be in the world to come:.
History
The idea of a national land purchasing fund was first presented at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 by Hermann Schapira, a Lithuanian-Jewish professor of mathematics. The fund, named Keren Hakayemet was formally established at the fifth World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901. In its early years, the organization was headed by the Jewish industrialist Johann Kremenezky. Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee. In 1909, the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. The establishment of the "Olive Tree Fund" marked the beginning of diaspora support of afforestation efforts. The JNF collection box or "blue box" has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the diaspora. In the period between the two world wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money. For a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel.Ottoman era
The first parcel of land, east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1903. It became an olive grove. 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, rising to 50,000 acres by 1927. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres of land housing 108 Jewish communities.British Mandate
In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region, or a bit less than 4% of the land in what was then known as the British Mandate of Palestine. By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of of land; another had been acquired by other Jewish organisations or individuals. Most of the JNF's activities during the Mandatory period were closely associated with Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department.From the beginning, JNF's policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it. In its charter, the JNF states: "Since the first land purchase in Eretz Israel in the early 1900s for and on behalf of the Jewish People, JNF has served as the Jewish People's trustee of the land, initiating and charting development work to enable Jewish settlement from the border in the north to the edge of the desert and Arava in the south."
State of Israel
After Israel's establishment in 1948, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF. On January 27, 1949, 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF for the price of IL11 million. Another 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF in October 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised but Israeli legislation has generally supported the JNF's land claims.In 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company under the name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. In 1960, administration of the land held by the JNF-KKL, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency, the Israel Land Administration. The ILA was then responsible for managing some 93% of the land of Israel. All the land managed by the ILA was defined as Israel lands; it included both land owned by the government and land owned by the JNF-KKL. The JNF-KKL received the right to nominate 10 of the 22 directors of the ILA, lending it significant leverage within that state body.
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.
Reclamation projects
The JNF charter specifies the reclamation of land for the Jewish people as its primary purpose. During the 1980s, almost were planted. Over 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.The JNF's collaborative work involves participation in the International Arid Land Consortium, which explores the problems and solutions unique to arid and semiarid regions, working to develop sustainable ecological practices to improve the quality of life among people in the dry areas.
Afforestation
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 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 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 wrote 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 said 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.
Since 2009, the JNF has been helping the Palestinian Authority plan public parks and other civic amenities for the Palestinian city of Rawabi, north of Ramallah. The JNF provided the Palestinian Authority with 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area being developed on the edge of the new city.
Water conservation
is dependent on 50 days a year of seasonal rainfall, while water consumption has doubled since 1960. Towards the end of the 1980s, the JNF undertook several large-scale water conservation projects. Dams and reservoirs were built to capture rainwater run-off which would have otherwise been lost in the Arava Valley, Reshafim in the Beit She'arim Valley and Kedma near Kiryat Gat. An artificial lake was built in Timna Park.The JNF has built 200 reservoirs around the country, and plans to build 30 more reservoirs and water treatment plants over the next five years. Over the past decade, JNF has invested over $114.99 million in reservoir construction, increasing the country's total storage capacity by 7%, to over of water. JNF is also involved in river rehabilitation projects all over Israel, such as the Nahal Alexander Restoration Project begun in 2003.