The Jewish National Fund is now engaged in the urgent task of restoring the war-damaged frontier regions of Israel, it was announced by JNF president Meyer Pesin. He received a report from Jerusalem sent by Shimon Benshemesh, Keren Kayemeth Le Israel director-general, which reveals that “the infrastructure built in recent years by the JNF along the post-1967 borders–settlements, roads, forests and groves–played an important role in strengthening the security of the rear in time of war. So did our heavy equipment which had been placed at the disposal of the army. We are now waiting for at least part of this equipment to be returned in order to heal the wounds inflicted by the war upon some of the settlements and roads, and to resume the operations which were under way till the very eve of Yom Kippur.”
Benshemesh, who stated that the JNF Land Reclamation Department “is all set for repairing of roads and settlements damaged by the war,” also reported:
“We are going to employ some 500, or maybe even more, young volunteers from abroad both in the planting of new forests and in the rehabilitation of the forests destroyed by enemy action, especially in the regions of Menashe (on the southwest outskirts of Emek Yezreel), Birya (near Safed) and Kiryat Shemona, Tel-Hai and Kefar-Giladi (along the Lebanese frontier in the eastern part of the Upper Galilee).”
At the biennial meeting of the JNF here, Pesin was re-elected national president for the next two years. Abram Salomon, executive vice-president, announced that in the last fiscal year ending Sept. 30, $6,299,566 was raised, as compared to $5,019,503 for the preceding fiscal year. He emphasized that the administrative expenses of the JNF in the past two years had decreased.
Ambassador Yosef Tekoah was reported today by a Mount Sinai Hospital spokesman to be in “satisfactory condition.” The spokesman said Tekoah was transferred from the intensive care unit to a regular room in the hospital. The spokesman could not say when Tekoah would leave the hospital.
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