The annual budget of the Jewish National Fund will increase by 15 percent in the next fiscal year, JNF board chairman Moshe Rivlin reported at a press conference here. The board approved a budget of $100 million this week, subject to approval by the Zionist General Council budget committee.
Rivlin justified the greater spending at a time of overall cuts saying that the more the JNF puts into cultivating the land, the more income the state derives from it. “I am dealing with essential things in Israel. The needs are such that what I am doing is the minimum,” he said. Most of the JNF work is in two main spheres–afforestation and land reclamation.
The JNF will spend some 144 million Shekels (about $16 million) next year on afforestation alone. Presently, there are some 250,000 acres of forests in Israel, about 150,000 of them planted forests. The rest is natural forest, but they too, need the support and the maintenance work of the JNF. At the time of the establishment of the State there were some five million trees in the country. Since then the JNF planted 150 million trees. In recent years the JNF has planted some three million trees annually.
ONE OF THE MAIN OBJECTIVES
“One of our main objects presently is the introduction of the forest and the park to the desert,” said Rivlin. He pointed to several places which have already changed from barren desert land into Islands of greenery. On a line south of Kibbutz Beit Kama near Beersheba, the JNF planted 20 million trees, “There will be no quality of life in the Negev without trees,” Rivlin said.
In the Eshkol Park in the Bessor region there are some 1,000 acres of greenery planned, more than 150 acres have been planted. On Independence Day, the JNF will inaugurate a new park and recreation camping site near Dimona. A similar park is planned near the development town of Yeroham further south.
“There are days on which one can find up to 700,000 people in one park,” said Rivlin. JNF forests serve for youth camps, both those organized by the JNF itself and those organized by the youth movements. Last year some 20,000 youth spent vacations in the forests, 9,000 of them from overseas. At the present there are about 110 JNF parks and camping sites throughout the country. Another 290 are planned.
TASK OF LAND RECLAMATION
The other main sphere of JNF activity is land reclamation. This task is carried out at the request of settlement bodies, such as the Jewish Agency’s Settlement Department and the Ministerial Settlement Committee. “I can proudly state that the JNF carried out, according to schedule, any land reclamation tasks that were imposed on it,” Rivlin said. Last year the JNF reclaimed land to build 30 lookout posts in the Galilee and 10 in the southern Bessor region.
The JNF reclaimed land for 100 kilometers of new roads in the Galilee and removed some 18 million cubic feet of earth for development projects in the south. Presently it is working on another 10 lookout posts in the Galilee and in the Samaria district of the West Bank. It will reclaim next year 11,000 acres of agricultural land and will prepare the terrain for another 30 kilometers of new roads.
The JNF makes special efforts as an educational tool. Some 100,000 children planted trees last Tu B’Shvat, another 200,000 Jewish children did so abroad. The JNF operates in 1,000 schools in the country, and in hundreds of schools overseas. “We bring to them a close link between the child and the land. We see to it that the link is not only historical, but also has a practical meaning,” said Rivlin.
On the occasion of the JNF’s 80th anniversay, Rivlin strongly dismissed arguments which questioned the importance of JNF work. “If the JNF had not existed, one should have to invent it,” he said. Its main value is both in the historical sense of linking the people with the land, as well as on the practical level.
The work of afforestation, for example, he said is also under the responsibility of special authorities in other countries. But most of all, he said, “The JNF symbolizes the care of the Jewish people for its land.” This year the International Bible Quiz will be largely devoted to this subject. The JNF sponsors other projects on the geography of the State and the history of Zionist settlement. In general, a considerable part of Independence Day activities will be linked to the JNF anniversary.
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