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On July 6, the Knesset failed to update the Citizenship and Entry Law that prohibits Palestinian family reunification. This is good news. However, due to all the wrong reasons, the suspension of the law was realized.
The core of this apartheid law is racism. It not only prohibits Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from obtaining Israeli citizenship or residency after marrying Israeli Palestinian citizens, but also prohibits them from moving to Israel to live with their Palestinian spouses. Together.
The Citizenship and Entry Law was first introduced in 2003 and was originally enacted as a temporary measure to help ensure safety. Avraham Poraz, the former Minister of the Interior who oversaw the Liberal Party Meretz’s 2003 legislation passed, recently pointed out that the law “was passed when buses exploded across the country”.
Polaz is not an honest person. He is very aware that it is very important to make the law a “temporary security measure” to prevent “Palestinian terrorists” from emigrating to Israel, because the prohibition in the law conflicts with Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom and is likely to be affected. abolition. If it is made permanent, it will be decided by the Supreme Court.
Demographic Engineering
Foreign Minister Yail Rapide is much more honest in this regard, so he did not hesitate to reveal the true motivation for updating the law every year. He recently told the media that the Citizenship and Entry Law “is one of the tools designed to ensure the Jewish majority in the State of Israel”, adding: “Israel is a Jewish nation-state, and our goal is to have a Jewish majority. “
He knows that laws like this play a vital role in population projects, preventing Israeli parties from the left-wing Labor Party to the right-wing Likud from seeing Palestinians as “population threats”.
Just to give some thoughts: in the ten years from 1993 to 2003, approximately 130,000 Palestinians, including children, obtained Israeli citizenship or residency through family reunification. This means that in the past two decades, the law has not only succeeded in depriving Palestinians of citizenship and residency rights in the West Bank and Gaza, but also effectively tore apart thousands of Palestinian families, often keeping children away from one of them. family. His parents.
Laws like this can be made legal in Israel because race, rather than citizenship, is the main determinant of the distribution of rights, power, and resources. In addition, race is the representative of nationality, so the government will not register citizens as “Israelis” but as “Jews” or “Arabs.” This is key because it enables the Israeli government to distinguish between citizens and provide first-class citizens for Jews and second-class citizens for “Arabs.”
Considering that more than 80% of the Knesset agrees to these distinctions and therefore also supports the “Citizenship and Entry” law, one might ask, why did Prime Minister Naftali Bennett not pass it?
“Calling and humiliating”
the reason is simple. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is outraged by his removal after 12 years as prime minister and fears imprisonment on corruption charges-instructing all opposition members to vote against their own law since its first introduction It received enthusiastic support.
His goal is to show to the Israeli Jewish public that the new prime minister who prides himself on being more right-wing than his predecessor cannot even get the necessary votes to extend the Citizenship and Entry Law for another year.
Netanyahu’s goal is not to really hinder citizenship and immigration laws, but to create a wedge within the coalition. Therefore, in order to increase Bennett’s embarrassment, Netanyahu’s men also proposed to legislate a basic immigration law that cannot be overturned and will be used as a permanent measure to prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from gaining access to citizenship. The new Israeli opposition leader knows that such a law is unacceptable to the Ram party of Bennett’s clumsy coalition and hopes that it will undermine the government.
The twisted irony of the whole saga is that former Prime Minister Netanyahu is using the same type of “calling and humiliating” strategy deployed by human rights organizations. However, although the goal of human rights organizations is to “eliminate” governments that violate the basic human rights of the people in the territories under their control, Netanyahu is mobilizing a “naming and shaming” strategy to embarrass the new government for failing to pass the apartheid law. .
Those who cannot carry out the crime of apartheid, including those who separate their spouses and children from their parents, are not worthy to continue to be in power in his evil world.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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