The Jewish National Fund is currently engaged in massive land reclamation work at more than 50 sites all over Israel, JNF chairman Moshe Rivlin reported today. In an address at Yahel, the Reform movement’s kibbutz in the Arava region, he noted that land is being leveled for the first of four new settlements that will constitute the “Pithat Shalom” bloc near the Gaza Strip.
Giant earth-moving machines have to remove some 1.5 million cubic meters of soil to prepare the land for each of the settlements. The heavy equipment is at work “day and night,” he said. He also noted that the JNF has planted some 70,000 trees in the Aravo district in the last three years, extending from Noat Hakikar to the edge of the Dead Sea and as far south as Kibbutz Eilot near the town of Eilat.
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