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Israel
approves loyalty oath
Sunday, October 10, 2010 10:37:40 PM,
Agencies
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Jerusalem:
The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved a bill requiring new
immigrants to pledge loyalty to the "Jewish and democratic" state.
The language has triggered charges of racism from Arab politicians
who see it as undermining the rights of the country's Arab
minority.
The bill is backed by Yisrael Beitenu, an ultra-nationalist party
whose leader, Avigdor Lieberman, has been a vocal critic of
Israel's settlement freeze.
Sunday's vote may be a way to soften Lieberman's opposition to
extending the slowdown, though officials have denied there is any
connection.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli
prime minister while expressing support for the proposal before
the vote, said, "The State of Israel is the national state of the
Jewish people, and it is a democratic state for all its
citizenship."
"There is no other democracy in the Middle East. There is no other
Jewish state in the world. Unfortunately, there are many today who
tried to blur not only the unique connection of the Jewish people
to its homeland, but also the connection of the Jewish people to
its state."
Although the Labour party is part of the ruling coalition in
Netanyahu's government, the Israeli left has voiced significant
opposition to the new citizenship bill.
"There is a whiff of fascism on the margins of Israeli society,"
Isaac Herzog, the social affairs minister, who belongs to Labour,
told army radio on Sunday.
"There have been a tsunami of measures that limit rights ... I see
it in the halls of the Knesset [parliament], in the commissions
and departments responsible for legislation."
It has raised tensions with
Palestinians at a time when peace talks are deadlocked over
Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on new building in West
Bank Jewish settlements.
Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Knesset, told Al Jazeera that
the bill is aimed at Palestinians - and not at Jewish newcomers to
Israel - since they already enter on Israel's Jewish Law of
Return.
"Palestinians will have to say that this country is for Jews, and
Palestinians are only guests. If you are saying you are
democratic, you should treat citizens with equality," Tibi said.
He said that Israel was trying to impose this on the Palestinian
Authority as a pre-condition for peace talks.
"The law will make it impossible for the Palestinian refugees and
their descendants to return to their homeland," Marwan Bishara, Al
Jazeera's senior political analyst, said.
"That's why such a law also preempts the final status
negotiations...Palestinian refugees cannot vow allegiance to the
legitimacy of a Jewish state; that's de facto vowing allegiance to
the Zionism that dispossessed them."
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