From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Lawmakers vote down Lapid’s bill to privatize Jewish National Fund
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Lawmakers vote down Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s bill to privatize the Jewish National Fund in a preliminary reading, defeating the legislation 26-38.
Lapid slams slams his political allies in the anti-Netanyahu bloc during a debate ahead of the vote, declaring that everyone who signed the recent coalition agreement for the leadership of the JNF and World Zionist Organization “are the new partners of Shas, of [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Orit] Strock, of Miki Zohar, of everything and whoever they claim to be fighting against.”
“If you want to argue otherwise, it’s easy! Publish the agreement. Why are you keeping it a secret? What are you hiding?” Lapid asks, calling on lawmakers to support his bill in its preliminary reading.
In November, Lapid announced that his party will no longer take part in negotiations over the appointment of new leadership roles at the large Zionist institutions, decrying a system he said was steeped in “a culture of corruption and political appointments.”
Following the vote, Lapid’s Yesh Atid party issues a statement calling out the Likud, Shas, Blue and White, and Democrats parties for voting against the bill.
Explaining its opposition, The Democrats party releases a statement stating that Israel is in the midst of a “fierce struggle over democracy and its resources.”
“The JNF is not a symbol. It is power. Land, money, influence. And today the JNF is in our hands — those of the democratic-liberal camp — and we will not hand it over to the Netanyahu–Smotrich government. We will not abandon a single stronghold. We will not give up any resource. We will not relinquish power,” the left-wing party says.
Eyal Ostrinsky, a representative of the WZO’s pluralistic/liberal bloc of parties, was selected last week as the new JNF chairman.
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