The Jewish National Fund has entered a new chapter in its history, undertaking, “the most important land development” program since the establishment of the State of Israel and operating with a budget of about $100 million for 1979, an increase of almost 150 percent compared to the previous year, it was reported here today.
“The JNF of today is no longer the JNF of the Blue Box,” Sam Cohen, executive vice president of the JNF, told a press conference at the organization’s headquarters, underscoring the new challenges of the JNF which was connected throughout the years with the Blue Box, to which people were asked to insert coins for the purpose of planting trees in Israel.
According to Cohen and Jacob Barmore, JNF’s director of information in Jerusalem, who arrived here on a speaking tour concerning the “new JNF,” the JNF is presently engaged in ” enormous development” projects in the north of Golilee and the Negev. JNF’s activities, Barmore reported, involve currently no less than 500 locations throughout Israel: He said these development projects have “a sense of urgency” in view of the peace agreement with Egypt and the importance of inhabiting the Galilee with Jews.
The JNF, therefore, is presently engaged in the task of setting up 28 lookouts (outposts) with the intention of turning them eventually into civilian settlements. All in all, Barmore said, the JNF will be operating in 79 localities in the Galilee, working in close cooperation with the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Housing.
As for the Negev, which is 63 percent of the total land of Israel, Barmore predicted it will eventually become “the most fertile area in Israel.” He said the challenges of the JNF there are even more urgent than those of Galilee since the development programs in the next two years involve the relocations of settlements that were removed from the Sinai as part of the peace with Egypt.
The JNF Negey undertaking calls for preparing the ground for 20 new settlements in the northern Negev in the next three years, Barmore said.” JNF is no long limited to tree planting, “he stressed, noting that the JNF work load in the Negev will include site development, access road construction, the planting of wind-breakers and shelterbelts, and landscaping and gardening.
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