Adalah: JNF lands come from state, not Jewish contributions

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, yesterday refuted Jewish National Fund claims, saying that most JNF land was not purchased with Jewish people's contributions but was given to it by the state during the first years after the War of Independence.

Adalah's comment came after the JNF said it is not required to act on behalf of all of Israel's citizens but only those who are Jewish.

The JNF statement came in response to a High Court petition filed by Adalah, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) against the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). The petitioners are asking the court to annul an ILA policy preventing Arabs from participating in bids to purchase land owned by the JNF. The petitioners say the policy does not comply with the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.

The JNF holds some 2.6 million dunams, comprising 13 percent of the land in Israel. Adalah says the state gave the JNF close to two million dunams, including lands formerly owned by Arabs that were confiscated or seized.

"The first million dunams were given to the JNF in 1949, and a second million were given in 1953," Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara said. "This led to giving the JNF a special legal status as a decisive body in the public discourse concerning land policy."

The JNF argued that its right to allocate lands only to Jews rather than to all of the state's citizens derives from the fact that the lands owned by the JNF were purchased with the funds "of the Jewish nation."

"The JNF's loyalty is not and cannot be for the benefit of the Israeli public," according to a JNF statement made to the court this week. "The JNF is not required to act for the good of all of Israel's citizens. It is forbidden to act to allocate lands to all of the state's citizens."

Adalah claims that the JNF's special legal status enables transferring land ownership from the state to the fund, allowing it to expropriate lands.

According to an agreement between the JNF and ILA at the beginning of the 1960s, JNF funds will be managed by the ILA and in exchange about half of the the ILA council members will be appointed by the fund. "We are dealing with a policy that discriminates on the basis of ethnicity," Adalah wrote to the High Court.

"The continued allocation of JNF lands to Jews only can cause a lot of damage to the Israeli public in general and to the Arab citizens in particular," Adalah concluded.