{"id":42236,"date":"2018-09-24T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=42236"},"modified":"2018-09-24T10:10:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T00:10:43","slug":"israel-chooses-identity-over-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/israel-chooses-identity-over-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel chooses identity over democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Israel\u2019s new \u2018nation-state law<\/a>\u2019 asserts that \u2018the right [to exercise] national self-determination\u2019 in the country is \u2018unique to the Jewish people\u2019, sets Hebrew as the country\u2019s official language, and establishes \u2018Jewish settlement as a national value\u2019 that the state will work to advance. Liberals denounce the law for infringing on the Arab minority\u2019s civil rights. But it may weaken Israeli democracy in an even more insidious way.<\/p>\n

The new law\u2014the latest move in the reckless drive by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s far-right coalition to turn Israel into an illiberal democracy\u2014contradicts the 1948 Declaration of Independence<\/a> and the 1992 Basic Law: human dignity and liberty<\/a>. Both guarantee the individual rights of all, Jews and Arabs.<\/p>\n

Yet, in practice, the Israeli government has been defying those legal norms for a long time. While Arab Israelis may technically be constitutionally equal to Jewish Israelis that has not stopped the government from discriminating against them. Most state land, for example, is held in trust for the Jewish people.<\/p>\n

Likewise, long before the new law established that the Israeli government would \u2018labor to encourage and promote\u2019 the \u2018establishment and development\u2019 of Jewish settlements, the government was doing just that. Not a single new Arab village\u2014much less a city\u2014has been created since the establishment of the state of Israel 70 years ago, and old villages lack planning and zoning programs. This is why illegal construction is so common in Arab villages.<\/p>\n

Moreover, a broad array of Israeli laws already explicitly and implicitly defines Israel as a Jewish state\u2014a definition on which the international community agrees. The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people. And the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has long been based on the principle that the Palestinians should exercise their right of national self-determination in a separate state on the other side of the pre-1967 borders.<\/p>\n

Most Israeli Jews believe<\/a> that there should be limits on their Arab counterparts\u2019 political influence, with \u2018crucial national decisions\u2019, such as self-determination, being left to the Jewish majority. That is why former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who made social investment in Arab communities a national priority, resisted making the passage of the Oslo Accords dependent on Arab parliamentary support.<\/p>\n

Despite all of this, as of 2017<\/a>, over 60% of Arab Israelis reported that Israel is a good place to live (down from 64% in 2015), and 60% would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world (up from 58.8% in 2015). Furthermore, in 2012<\/a>, 60% of Arab Israelis reported that they accepted Israel as a Jewish-majority state, with official Jewish characteristics, such as Hebrew being the official language and Saturday being the accepted day of rest.<\/p>\n

If the nation-state law\u2019s tenets were already in effect, and generally accepted by the population, why pass it at all? The obvious explanation lies in the fact that, like US President Donald Trump and populist leaders throughout Europe, Netanyahu amasses political capital by appealing to the population\u2019s base tribal instincts.<\/p>\n

With ultra-nationalist and anti-Arab rhetoric, Netanyahu manipulates Israelis into believing that they are under threat, physically, demographically and even existentially, thereby pitting them against their Arab compatriots. He won the 2015 election after having warned that the Arabs were heading to the polling stations \u2018in droves\u2019.<\/p>\n

All of this, together with the demise of the peace process, has left a majority<\/a> of Israelis convinced that their country cannot be both Jewish and fully democratic. So they have accepted the erosion of democratic values that Netanyahu has overseen, determining that they must put identity first. Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that Israeli Arabs\u2019 recognition of Israel\u2019s legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state fell from 53.6% in 2015 to 49.1% just two years later.<\/p>\n

But the nation-state law is not just another means of accumulating political capital among an increasing identity-focused electorate. There is another motivation at play\u2014one that poses an even more serious threat to Israeli democracy.<\/p>\n

Israel is a prosperous, advanced economy, but it is built on a labor market that is too small. Arab Israelis, however, represent a considerable labour pool (as does the Orthodox Jewish community, among whom the labour-force participation rate is much lower than among secular Jews). To advance its interest in Arab Israelis\u2019 economic and social integration, in December 2015 the Israeli government approved a truly historic five-year plan.<\/p>\n

Nearly three years later, the integration of Arab Israelis is progressing apace. According to the 2017 Israel Democracy Institute Index of Arab-Israeli relations<\/a>, 70% of Israel\u2019s Arabs speak fluent Hebrew, and 77% are not interested in separation. Moreover, Tel Aviv University\u2019s Amal Jamal has highlighted the consistent increase in the number of Arab academics in Israel and the emergence of an Arab middle class in the country. This goes, he found, with a rise in national sentiments.<\/p>\n

This is where the nation-state law comes in. The increasing integration and prosperity of Arab Israelis is empowering them<\/a> to push back against discriminatory policies. With the nation-state law in place, however, their legal recourse will be severely constrained.<\/p>\n

But this may not only be a matter of silencing an increasingly empowered minority; Israel\u2019s government could be laying the groundwork to suppress the Arab majority that would emerge if (or when) it annexes the occupied Palestinian territories. In this sense, the nation-state law is a kind of hedge against the government\u2019s own expansionist policies\u2014and a potentially devastating blow to Israeli democracy.<\/p>\n

With the two-state solution all but dead, Israel has determined that its Jewish identity is more important than its democracy. This will be bad not just for its Arab citizens, but ultimately for Jewish Israelis as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel\u2019s new \u2018nation-state law\u2019 asserts that \u2018the right [to exercise] national self-determination\u2019 in the country is \u2018unique to the Jewish people\u2019, sets Hebrew as the country\u2019s official language, and establishes \u2018Jewish settlement as a national …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":42238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[930,106,240,926],"class_list":["post-42236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-civil-liberty","tag-democracy","tag-israel","tag-palestine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsrael chooses identity over democracy | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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