KKL-JNF halts most of its funding for West Bank programs, saying it unwittingly supported expulsion of Palestinians

Jewish National Fund-KKL says it has ended most of its funding to West Bank programs for at-risk Israeli youth after realizing that they were tools for expelling local Palestinians.

“Regretfully, under the guise of education, it turned out we were supporting activities aimed at bringing youth at risk to the settlements to help dispossess Palestinians from their land,” JNF-KKL chair Eyal Ostrinsky tells Haaretz.

“These outposts being set up by [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Orit] Strock we won’t be part of it anymore,” says Ostrinsky, referring to the far-right Religious Zionism party ministers who have championed farming outposts as a tool for expanding the Israeli settler grip on the West Bank at the expense of Palestinians.

Ostrinsky says JNF-KKL’s executive committee unanimously passed a decision earlier this month to end the funding to farming outposts, which have also hosted programs for at-risk youth. Last year, the same board passed a decision to temporarily halt the funding as reports mounted revealing the extent to which the farming outposts have become hotbeds for settler violence.

Ostrinsky, who took over JNF-KKL in January, says that funding for a small number of West Bank-based programs will continue after it was determined that they were indeed “purely educational.”

The JNF-KKL chairman also tells Haaretz that the organization will cease its purchase of lands in the West Bank, conduct that exposed the group to criticism that it was taking part in dispossessing local Palestinians of lands they own.