The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is expected to tell the High Court of Justice today that it will agree to market its lands to non-Jews in the near future, although it has long insisted that JNF lands should be used only for housing Jews. This “tactical retreat” reportedly stems from the JNF’s concern that the High Court will issue a precedent-setting ruling in the petition now before it.
The petition was submitted in 2004 by a group of Arab citizens who were refused permission to bid on an Israel Lands Administration (ILA) tender for residential housing lots in Carmiel. The potential purchasers were told that the land belonged to the JNF, and was therefore intended only for Jewish use. Several Arab rights organizations joined the petition, as did the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
The JNF’s position received a blow in 2005, when Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ruled that the policy was discriminatory and he would not defend it in the High Court. Mazuz reiterated this stance to the High Court four months ago.
Several public figures, including Nobel Prize laureate Robert (Israel) Aumann and former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, will be joining the petition this morning as respondents, arguing that the JNF has a responsibility to its contributors to reserve the lands it purchased with their money for Jews only.
At a meeting in Mazuz’s office last Thursday, however, JNF and ILA representatives agreed to a proposal by Mazuz to market lands to any potential customer, without discriminating based on ethnicity. In exchange, any time JNF land is sold to a non-Jew, the ILA will compensate it with other land, thereby ensuring that the overall amount of Jewish-owned land remains the same.
According to the state’s response to the High Court, which was signed by the head of the Justice Ministry’s High Court department, Osnat Mandel, the new arrangement will be in effect for three months. The brief asks the court to postpone the hearing during this time, which the JNF and the ILA will use to discuss ways for the JNF to preserve its original goals while obeying the law.
The brief states that the JNF has not changed its original position, whereby “rights to the land it owns should not be awarded to those who are not Jewish,” but the ILA, operating on the attorney general’s instructions, recognizes its obligation to market lands, including those of the JNF, without discrimination.
Nevertheless, the JNF has been persuaded to give in for the moment out of concern that the court might issue a ruling undermining the JNF’s policy, similar to its precedent-setting ruling in 2000 in favor of Adel Kaadan, an Israeli Arab who successfully petitioned the court for the right to build a home in the Jewish community of Katzir.
The JNF holds approximately 2.6 million dunams (some 650,000 acres) of land in Israel, which constitutes 13 percent of all state lands.
The response to the High Court indicates that the JNF and the ILA view an exchange of lands as a long-term solution and are looking for a mutually acceptable way to apply it on a large scale. In the past, however, Arab organizations opposed this solution, arguing that it preserves a situation in which large amounts of land in Israel are not available for use by all of its citizens.
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/906491.html
Ha’aretz, 9/24/07
