In a controversial vote last Thursday with the narrowest margins, the board of directors of the Jewish National Fund put forward the controversial allocation of NIS 38 million ($ 11.58 million) to buy land in the West Bank.
The board of the Jewish National Fund Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL-JNF) will meet again after the March 23 election to decide its policies outside the Green Line and rule on whether to grant final approval for the buy yourself.
Follow-up groups represented on the KKL-JNF board, which includes international Jewish groups and representatives from Israeli political parties, had hoped that they would be able to scrap the measure, according to the Haaretz every day.
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But they were surprised when the Hadassah representative stopped and the Na’amat and Maccabi representatives both voted. Na’amat is a Jewish women ‘s group affiliated with the Labor Zionist Campaign and Maccabi is the international Jewish sports organization.
They were then moved by one vote.
Left-back Meretz, who had hoped to postpone the vote until after the election, later said he would file for a re-vote with the results close.
A photograph, taken on 13 October 2020, shows the construction of new houses in the West Bank town of Nokdim, south of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)
The question of KKL-JNF activity in the West Bank has provoked strong debate, albeit largely outside Israel, with more critical critically acclaimed Jewish Diaspora Jewish groups.
KKL-JNF has relied on donations from abroad and Diaspora has long associated the organization with their small blue charity boxes and by planting trees in Israel. But in the last two decades, the American branch of KKL-JNF has almost completely separated from the sister-Israeli group and just merged with JNF, leading to much confusion among donors regarding where their assets are shifted, as KKL -JNF activities outside the Green Line have become more dispersed. JNF also funds projects in the West Bank but only a limited number.
What was voted on Thursday would take work beyond the Green Line to another level by allowing KKL-JNF to buy land to expand towns.
The day before the vote, the Blue and White representative on the table sent a letter to KKL-JNF chairman Avi Duvdevani urging him to postpone the issue in order to “avoid national and international controversy at this critical time, “said Haaretz.
Duvdevani, took over in the fall of 2020 and encouraged policy change. Duvdevani is part of the growing influence on Zionist groups like KKL. This move came as a result of pressure from lobbyists who wanted to settle and the group tried to keep it low.
Chairman KKL-JNF Avi Duvdevani (Amos Lozon / KKL-JNF)
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the union for reformed Judaism, North America’s largest Jewish movement, says the KKL-JNF movement stems from recent elections at the World Zionist Congress that gave power to right-wing leaders closer to the Israeli government. .
His group and others who oppose settlements have rejected the proposal. Jacobs worries that the move could halt the KKL for many in the West or spark tensions with the new U.S. administration, which is also opposed to settlement expansion.
KKL-JNF has operated in the West Bank in the past, but Jacobs noted that its activities have fallen sharply over the last two decades before resuming and accelerated in secrecy in recent years.
KKL-JNF, founded in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement and famous for the hundreds of millions of trees he planted throughout Israel, serves as the keeper of the people Jewish for about 15 percent of the land in the country, this regulation is done by the Israeli Land Authority.
A type of NGO officially registered as a public benefit company, KKL-JNF operates in the fields of forestry, water, education, community development, tourism, and research and development. Its parent body is the World Zionist Group.
