Avraham Granot ^People

He received his Doctorate ofLaw from the Universities of Freiburg and Luzon in 1917. Beginning to work for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) inThe Hague in 1919, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1922 and continued his work with the INF in Jerusalem. Under his leadership, the INF acquired thousands of dunams of land, secu- ring territory for the futureIsraeli state. (A dunam is equal to one quarter of an acre.) As aresult of his success, Grant wasappointed Director-General of the INF in 1940. During his tenure at the ]NE, Grant pioneered initiatives to invest tens of millions of dollars to build new settlementsall across Israel and in the Negev Desert, and to plant millions of trees, reforesting barren areas. These initiatives created infrastructure for the young country and they also created thousands of jobs for new immigrants.Granot was also an academic, and he lectured at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and served on the Board of Governors for both that institution and the Weizmann Institute ofScience. He authored many books, five of which have been translated into English. His most important book, The Land System in Palestine History and Structure, was published in 1952 and explains in great detail how Arab land ownership and land tenure methods economically handicapped Palestine's ma- jority Arab population, essentially neutralizing them as an effective and unified voice against Zionist development.