Jewish fund, UK branch continue to help further Illegal land confiscation in West Bank: Report

A new report shows although international law considers all Israeli settlements built on usurped Palestinian land illegal, the Jewish National Fund and its British branch continue to raise money for seizure of more occupied Palestinian lands for the construction of new illegal settlements.

In a new report, the PopularResistance.org revealed that both the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and its branch in the United Kingdom, JNF UK, continue to fund Israel’s land confiscation in the occupied West Bank in direct defiance of international law.

Last month, the parent organization, for the first time in its long history, openly announced that it raised money for further land grab in the occupied Palestinian territories in favor of establishing more Jewish-only settlements, which are condemned globally.

The fund said at the time that its board of governors voted through the allocation of NIS (new Israeli shekel) 38 million to help the Tel Aviv regime further usurp Palestinian land and mushroom Jewish-only settlements, the report said.

Such funding comes as “all Israeli settlements, based on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, constitute a war crime under international law,” the report said.

Furthermore, the JNF UK, the British branch, also continued to be a registered charity, a status that enables it to enjoy tax exemption to collect money for its parent organization, or the JNF, the report added.

“This decision is not an aberration, or a reversal of existing JNF policy, but a clear indication that the settlement expansion driven by Israel’s far right government and emboldened by the support it received from the Trump administration, is set to continue, more blatantly than previously,” the report went on to say.

It was revealed last year that during a two-year period and in a clandestine move, the JNF-KKL spent tens of millions of shekels to usurp territories in the occupied West Bank earmarked for the expansion of illegal settlements.

Simultaneously, Himnuta, a wholly-owned JNF-KKL subsidiary, spearheaded new attempts to force Palestinians from their homes in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds.

“Himnuta and the right-wing settler group Elad have long cooperated to force Palestinian families to leave East Jerusalem. Their eviction has been condemned by a cross-party group of MPs,” the report said.

What the KKL-JNF revealed last month was in fact what it had been doing for decades behind closed doors or through a nexus of subsidiaries, it said.

“In fact, KKL-JNF has been deeply complicit in the ongoing colonization and settlement of Palestinian land, since its foundation in 1901,” the report added.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the KKL-JNF has acquired, in the past decades, at least 65,000 dunams (16,000 acres) of Palestinian land for settlements.

“The KKL-JNF has acted as a parastatal partner in the consequent forced displacement, occupation and apartheid policies” of the Israeli regime, the report further noted.

The British branch of the KKL-JNF, for its part, supports many of the parent organization on both sides of the so-called Green Line and is listed as the office of the KKL-JNF in the UK, it said, adding that much of the activities carried out by the British branch have been presented either as benign environmental projects or disguised through front organizations.

In conclusion, the PopularResistance.org called for the Charity Commission to remove JNF UK’s charity status, as a move aimed at holding UK businesses and organizations accountable for their “complicity in Israeli violations of international law.”

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

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