{"id":46477,"date":"2019-03-26T14:39:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T03:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=46477"},"modified":"2019-04-01T11:13:31","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T00:13:31","slug":"nationality-law-and-the-israeli-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nationality-law-and-the-israeli-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationality law and the Israeli election"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Does Israel belong to all of its citizens or to the Jewish people alone? As the Israeli election scheduled for 9 April draws near, this question has once again attracted a lot of attention. Israel has always struggled with the contradictory pulls of presenting itself as a modern nation-state that belongs to all Israeli citizens regardless of race or religion and of cleaving to the very powerful Zionist idea of a homeland of the Jewish people regardless of where they live.<\/p>\n

This dilemma has been exacerbated by the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967. According to Israeli projections, soon there will be as many Arabs as Jews<\/a> in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. As the prospect of a two-state solution has receded, the spectre of a bi-national state with equal rights for all citizens has begun to haunt the Zionist right. The nationality law passed by the Knesset in July 2018<\/a> by a vote of 62 to 55, which declares Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, was a pre-emptive measure to rule out that option.<\/p>\n

The legislation may be consistent with the original Zionist idea, but it has grave implications for Israel\u2019s claim to be a state of all its people, including the Palestinian Arabs who constitute one-fifth of its population. It\u2019s claimed that more than 65 laws<\/a> have been passed since Israel\u2019s establishment that restrict the rights of Palestinian citizens in all fields, including housing and employment. However, this is the most blatant attempt to legally delineate the Palestinian inhabitants of Israel as second-class citizens.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described<\/a> the passage of the law as \u2018a pivotal moment in the annals of Zionism and the State of Israel. We enshrined in law the basic principle of our existence.\u2019 In contrast, Ayman Odeh, the head of the Joint Arab List group of parties at the time, declared<\/a> that by passing the bill the Knesset had approved a \u2018law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens\u2019.<\/p>\n

The debate surrounding the law became more heated when Israel\u2019s elections committee, made up of members of the outgoing parliament, voted 17 to 10 to bar the joint Arab party Raam-Balad from participating in the election, a decision later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. Signalling his support to the election committee\u2019s decision, Netanyahu tweeted<\/a> that \u2018Those who support terrorism will not be in the Israeli Knesset!\u2019<\/p>\n

Recently, Netanyahu re-emphasised his commitment<\/a> to the nationality law in response to a comment posted on social media by Israeli TV personality Rotem Sela. In a strongly worded statement, Sela declared: \u2018When the hell will someone in this government broadcast to the public that Israel is a country for all its citizens. And every person was born equal. Arabs, too, God help us, are human beings.\u2019<\/p>\n

Netayahu\u2019s response on Instagram read, \u2018Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the\u00a0Nation-State Law\u00a0that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People\u2014and them alone.\u2019 In the same posting, he wrote that the upcoming elections are crucial for Israel\u2019s future. Playing to his ultra-nationalist base, he argued that, \u2018It\u2019s either a strong right-wing government led by me, or\u00a0Yair Lapid\u00a0and Benny Gantz\u2019s left-wing government with the support of the Arab parties. Lapid and Gantz have no other way to form a government, and a government like this will undermine the security of the state and citizens.\u2019 The statement clearly implied that the loyalty of Israel\u2019s Arab citizens is suspect and therefore they should never be accepted as part of a coalition governing a Jewish nation-state.<\/p>\n

In a remarkable instance of the head of state refuting the head of government, Israel\u2019s president Reuven Rivlin, while not mentioning the prime minister\u2019s remarks directly, criticised<\/a> what he said were recent \u2018entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel \u2026 There are no first-class citizens, and there are no second-class voters. We are all equal in the voting booth.\u2019<\/p>\n

Netanyahu seems to be taking a calculated risk by escalating his anti-Arab rhetoric. The strategy may backfire, as it could energise Arabs<\/a> to vote in larger numbers and tilt the balance against the Likud-led coalition, thus bringing the opposition to power possibly with the help of Arab parties turning Netanyahu\u2019s warnings into a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n

Considering the narrow margin by which the Knesset passed the nationality law, the election could act as a referendum on the character of the Israeli state. The Israeli electorate will be passing judgement not only on Netanyahu\u2019s fitness to govern the country in light of the corruption charges<\/a> levelled against him, but more importantly on the issue of whether Israel is a state of all its citizens or that of the Jewish people alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does Israel belong to all of its citizens or to the Jewish people alone? As the Israeli election scheduled for 9 April draws near, this question has once again attracted a lot of attention. Israel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":46485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,240,218,926],"class_list":["post-46477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-elections","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNationality law and the Israeli election | 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\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nationality-law-and-the-israeli-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nationality law and the Israeli election | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Does Israel belong to all of its citizens or to the Jewish people alone? 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