The Jewish National Fund (JNF)

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was the land acquisition and management arm of the World Zionist Organization. It was established at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 to address the issue of land acquisition. It remains active today and is registered in New York as a tax-exempt organization.

The JNF raised donations worldwide to finance the purchase of land in Palestine. In 1902, it received its first parcel of land as a donation from a Russian Jewish Zionist landowner. In the following years, it carried out its first land purchases and, in 1909, played a key role in the establishment of Tel Aviv.

By the end of the British Mandate, the JNF’s land holdings represented a relatively small portion of the total land area of Palestine—less than 4 percent—but accounted for approximately half of the land held by Jews in Palestine. Through the JNF, the Zionist movement therefore played a significant role in settling Jewish immigrants in Palestine, providing them with land on which they could live and work, even when they lacked sufficient resources—which was the case for many of them—to purchase or lease land on the open market.

The JNF also played an important role after 1948, when it was permitted to purchase “absentee property”—land taken from its Palestinian owners following their displacement—from the state. In 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-established as an Israeli company with extensive influence over the administration of Israel’s lands. The company appoints 10 of the 22 members of the Israel Land Administration’s board, the government body responsible for managing lands designated as state property or JNF property.

After establishing the principal institutions that enabled Zionists around the world to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Zionist movement began translating this support into realities on the ground. In 1908, the Palestine Office was opened in Jaffa, headed by Arthur Ruppin, as the operational branch of the Zionist Organization. Its role was to represent Jews arriving in Palestine in their dealings with the Ottoman authorities and to coordinate land purchases with the JNF.

With the outbreak of World War I and the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist Organization was able to overcome what it regarded as its final major obstacle: obtaining international approval for its colonial efforts. In 1918, Chaim Weizmann, the influential president of the British Zionist Federation and later president of the Zionist Organization, established the Zionist Commission to study conditions in Palestine and report to the British government. He also reorganized the Palestine Office into departments covering agriculture, settlement, education, land, finance, immigration, and statistics, facilitating the development of a quasi-state infrastructure in Palestine under British auspices.

In 1921, the Zionist Commission was renamed the Executive of the Zionist Organization in Palestine, and, in the eyes of the British authorities, served as the Jewish Agency referred to in the Mandate.

Even after the Jewish Agency was expanded in 1929 to include representatives of non-Zionist Jews, its executive body closely mirrored that of the Zionist Organization. Thus, until the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Jewish Agency effectively performed a quasi-state role in Palestine, in coordination with the Zionist Organization, which represented the Zionist movement internationally.

After 1948, the Zionist movement continued, through its institutions, to support Jewish immigration and settlement in Israel, and it played a similar role after 1967 in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In August 1951, the Zionist Organization held its 23rd Congress in Jerusalem for the first time and redefined the objectives of Zionism in the Jerusalem Program as: “strengthening the State of Israel; gathering the exiles in the Land of Israel; and working for the unity of the Jewish people.”

In November 1952, the Knesset passed legislation recognizing the organization as an “authorized agency” to continue operating in Israel to absorb immigrants and settle them in the country, and authorized it to agree with the state. This agreement was signed in 1954.

In 1960, the Zionist Organization adopted a new constitution and became known as the World Zionist Organization. Its subsidiary institutions, including Keren Hayesod, the Jewish National Fund, and the Anglo-Palestine Bank—which was later renamed Bank Leumi and served as Israel’s national bank until 1954—continue to operate as channels connecting Zionist organizations outside Israel with the ongoing colonial state project.