Avraham Duvdevani took over as global chairman of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund on November 15, 2020, putting him in charge of Israel’s largest environmental organization.
Representing the religious, right-wing World Mizrachi slate, he was elected by the board of directors of KKL-JNF to succeed Danny Atar.
Duvdevani, a religious Zionist who advocates settlement building throughout the greater Land of Israel, caused a stir earlier this year when he initiated a move for KKL-JNF to officially authorize the purchase of land in the West Bank, a major policy change for the organization established in 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine for Jewish settlement.
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Fighting for the rights of Israelis to live in all parts of the Land of Israel, including the West Bank and east Jerusalem, has been a key mission in Duvdevani’s career.
As head of the WZO’s Settlement Division, he said in 2002 that it “was very easy to get permission from the minister of defense and the government to build settlements that strengthened Jerusalem as the capital and the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and that blocked the option of the Palestinians to build in and near Jerusalem.”
KKL-JNF, a powerful nonprofit organization, owns some 13% of the total land in Israel and has planted over 240 million trees in the country. It has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of land and established more than 1,000 parks.
Duvdevani was born in 1945 in Jerusalem. Prior to his military service he studied at the Netiv Meir and the Kfar Hassidim yeshivot, after which he served in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade and fought in the liberation of Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
He has a bachelor’s degree in Jewish history and educational administration and an MA in sociology of education, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lives in Ramat Gan, is married to Dina and is the father of four children.
Duvdevani has a great deal of experience in working to promote Zionism both in Israel and abroad, and he is very well acquainted with Jewish communities worldwide.
In 2010, he was unanimously elected the chairman of the World Zionist Organization, spearheading its growth after its split with the Jewish Agency. Before this, among other roles, he was the director-general of World Bnei Akiva, was the head of the informal education track at Orot Israel College, associate chairman of the KKL-JNF board of directors and vice chairman of KKL-JNF, head of the Settlement Division of the WZO, and an active member of the board of governors for the Jewish Agency since 1991.
He has also been a member of the Executive of the World Mizrachi Organization, a member of the Jordan Valley Public Council, chairman of the Hevruta Community Center in Ramat Gan, chairman of the Ramat Gan branch of Elitzur sports organization, and a member of the central committee of the now-defunct National Religious Party and Bayit Yehudi, formerly led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.