US Jewish organization exposes East Jerusalem settler funding
Palestine-Israel-USA, Politics, 7/22/1998

The US Jewish organization Americans for Peace Now has called on the Jewish National Fund to stop granting assistance to extremist settlers in East Jerusalem.

The group, which self-describes itself as an organization of "American Zionists committed for peace and security for Israel" said on Monday that after the failure of its repeated attempts to meet the executives of the fund, it decided to reveal to the public the behavior of this fund "aimed at dispossessing Palestinian families of property in East Jerusalem for the exclusive benefit of extremist Jewish settler organizations."

The Americans for Peace Now organization said the fund coordinates closely its activities with the Israeli government and settler organizations in a way that is as systematic as it is illegal. The result is that "whole Palestinian families found themselves thrown to the street," the organization said.

"Since the late 1980s, JNF has been closely linked with extremist settler organizations... It's time for JNF to stop helping extremist settlers throw innocent people out of their homes," the organization said in a statement.

It added that a 28-member Palestinian family, including 18 children, is threatened with eviction on July 22, 1998, to the benefit of extremist settlers, while this very family had saved Jewish residents in 1929 during the Arab population's uprising against the occupation of Palestine.

Americans for Peace Now said that the Israeli government in the late 1980s created a mechanism to take Palestinian lands. Under this mechanism, the Klugman committee report in 1992 uncovered "systematic and often illegal government efforts to take ownership and possession of Palestinian properties, particularly in Silwan, and transfer them to Ateret Cohanim and El-Ad," the organization said. Although then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin halted these practices, they have been reactivated under Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.

The organization said that, "Abraham Hilleli, head of the JNF Land Department, testified in Israeli court on May 25, 1998, that settlers often employed a cooperative Palestinian resident to provide testimony (often proven false) that a given property is 'absentee.' Based on that sole evidence presented to the Absentee Property Custodian (whose son worked at the same time for the settler organizations), the property was declared absentee, confiscated, and transferred to a JNF subsidiary, Hemnutah. This subsidiary then instituted eviction proceedings against the residents of the dwellings by means of the settler organizations' attorney. These dwellings were leased even before the residents were evicted."

The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks came to a standstill because of the settlement policy pursued by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which gave in March 1997 the green light for the construction of a new settlement in the Arab part of Jerusalem.

Previous Stories:
  Britain's Cook urges Israel to accept US redeployment proposal   (7/11/1998)
  Serious confrontation between Palestine and Israel, further showdowns expected   (7/3/1998)
  UN Security Council debates acting on Israeli Jerusalem plan   (7/1/1998)

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