Adalah — along with the National Committee of Arab Local Authorities, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Bimkom–Planners for Human Rights — filed a petition before Israel’s Supreme Court on 18 August 2016 challenging the role of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in governing land use in Israel. This important case exposes some of the core issues in the ongoing relationship between the Nakba and the law.

The JNF: Private Discrimination on Public Lands

The JNF is a worldwide network of Zionist charities dedicated to acquiring and settling land on behalf of the Jewish people. The JNF’s Israeli branch is a parastatal organization that enjoys special status under Israeli law in the management of land.

Over 93% of the territory inside the Green Line is controlled by the Israel Land Authority (ILA), a governmental body. The ILA controls both land owned by the state as well as land owned by the JNF. The JNF holds 6 out of 14 seats (43%) on the governing body of the ILA, even though it only owns 13% of the land controlled by the ILA. In other words, the JNF ceded management of its own land to the state in exchange for a major share in decision-making power over all state-controlled lands. The petition recently filed by Adalah and its partners challenges the constitutionality of this arrangement.

For the complete article: The Nakba Files website