Knesset member Yossi Beilin has called on the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Administration to merge and privatize their activities.
Beilin, who unveiled his proposal in an interview this week with the Jerusalem Post, said as many as 1,000 jobs could be lost through the merger.
The Labor Party member told the newspaper that “the areas of [land management] must be privatized.”
“Things that were OK 100 years ago are not appropriate today,” he said. “There is no need for the JNF to exist separately.”
The JNF, a non-governmental body that raises funds in the Diaspora for land reclamation projects in Israel, and the Israel Lands Administration, a government organ that oversees the management and development of 93 percent of the Jewish state’s lands, jointly determine how land is utilized.
Under Beilin’s proposal, both bodies would be greatly streamlined, and much of their work would be contracted out to the private sector.
JNF Chairman Moshe Rivlin blasted Beilin’s plan, saying that “the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel and it must not be privatized. The land must be available to absorb hundreds of thousands” of immigrants.
Rivlin charged in an interview that it is “fashionable” to speak about bureaucracy, and added that both JNF and the ILA have “done a lot to cut corners in recent years.”
Should Beilin’s proposal be implemented, Rivlin said, “the main goal, the vision of JNF would be lost.”
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