How the Jewish National Fund became the face of Israeli expulsion

Abed Shlodi, the family patriarch, at his home in Silwan from which KKL is trying to evict him, June 2026

The Haaretz lead editorial on 24 June 2026:

The website of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), the Jerusalem-based organization also known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF), reveals an abundance of good intentions, with sections on “environment and sustainability,” “forestry and ecology research” and “youth and education.”

But for the Palestinian Shlodi family from East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, KKL has an entirely different appearance – the face of expulsion. Via its Himanuta subsidiary, KKL has recently resumed its efforts to expel members of the family from their home, where they have been living since 1964.

KKL has been operating here as an arm of the Elad settler organization, which has been trying to evict the Shlodi family since 1991. Its eviction effort is through the use of the Absentee Property Law, which aims to permit the state to assume control of property left behind by Palestinian refugees in 1948. To do that, it has created inherent discrimination between Jews and Arabs: Only Arabs can be absentees, and only Jews are entitled to receive that property, which was left on the wrong side of the border.

Since the 1980s, the law has been used by settler organizations to expel Palestinians in Jerusalem. The method is based on declaring that a home is absentee property via the testimony of a Palestinian collaborator and transfer of the property from the state to KKL and from KKL to the settler organization. But in the Shlodi family’s case, the plan went awry, and at the first stage, the Palestinians won their case after it was proven that the owner of the property was in no way an absentee. But KKL-Elad didn’t give up, raising a new argument regarding the absence of the owner’s children.

KKL even hired a private investigator who impersonated a reporter to obtain proof that the father of the household wasn’t living in the house, and therefore, the family had no rights as protected tenants. In 2004, an eviction order was issued, but, for reasons that aren’t clear, KKL didn’t have it carried out. Recently, 22 years after the order, it began demanding huge fees from the Shlodi family, and is also demanding their eviction from the house. Senior Jerusalem District police officers have already visited the house in advance of the forcible expulsion of those living there.

The settlers have also recently enlisted another organization in abusing Silwan residents – the unified Sephardi burial society, which is also an arm of Elad. In recent years, it has been expanding the ancient Sambuski Jewish cemetery, erecting imitation gravestones in an area claimed to be a cemetery. It’s now also demanding thousands of shekels from the Palestinian families who use the road adjacent to the cemetery – the only access road to the neighborhood.

Residents of Silwan, like the other East Jerusalem residents, are stateless. They have zero political power. They live under a government that discriminates against them, and they’re victims of messianic and extremist movements.

The KKL and burial society administrations need to immediately announce they’re suspending the eviction of Silwan residents – unless they’re interested in being recorded as the executive arm of this project of expulsion and dispossession.

This article is reproduced in its entirety