Arab Israelis Challenge JNF Land Policy

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) should be forced to distribute land to anyone who wants it, including non-Jews, an Israeli Arab lawyer said.

The JNF said on Monday it would sell lands to non-Jews for a period of three months until a more comprehensive agreement was reached regarding its policy of selling lands to Jews only.

The High Court of Justice postponed the ruling for three months. In the meantime, if the JNF sells any land in Israel to non-Jews, it will receive a similar-sized plot of land from the Israel Lands Authority (ILA).

Adalah, a legal center for Arab rights in Israel, was one of the organizations petitioning the Israeli High Court, demanding the JNF give equal opportunities to both Jews and non-Jews to buy land in Israel.

“The JNF owns about 13 percent of the lands in Israel which is administered through the ILA, a governmental agency established by Israeli law,” said Suhad Bishara, coordinator for the legal department at Adalah.

“According to a covenant between the JNF and the state, lands owned by the JNF and administered by the ILA should be distributed to Jews alone. The ILA, as a governmental agency, can’t distribute land in violation of the rights of equality for all citizens of the state of Israel regardless or their nationality or religion,” she told The Media Line.

Adalah claims that most of the JNF’s lands were given to it by the state shortly after Israel was established in 1948.

“The state of Israel cannot bypass laws and principles of equality by transferring public resources to the JNF, knowing that the JNF claims, holds and administers itself for the benefit of the Jewish people only.”

Adalah is asking the court to declare specific articles in a regulation, which is the legal basis for the JNF’s policy, as invalid, unconstitutional and illegal.

 “This is one of the policies causing segregation in Israel in living spaces. We think it’s problematic in a state that considers itself a democratic state,” Bishara said.

JNF spokesman Mike Nitzan said there was no question about the principle of equal access of all citizens of Israel to state land.

“That’s agreed upon,” he said, but he added there were technical and legal issues that needed to be worked out.

“In terms of policy, it will need to be reexamined,” Nitzan said. “We’re open to discussing it. There are technical solutions to land exchanges of state land and JNF land. There’s no real holiness to particular lots of land. I think we need to discuss the principle of how we preserve the right of international bodies for different lands in the country.”

If the JNF is asked to sell lands to non-Jews, he said, as a law-abiding organization the JNF would respect the ruling.