OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 9 July — The Israeli Cabinet has approved a bill proposing that state land be sold only to Jews "for security reasons", a government official said yesterday.
The text was approved by 17 ministers to two late Sunday after being presented by rabbi Haim Druckman, a deputy for the far-right National Religious Party, to overturn a March 2000 ruling by the Supreme Court.
The background to the current ruling lies in a lawsuit presented to the Supreme Court by Adel Kaadan, an Israeli Arab who wished to buy land in the cooperative village of Katzir in Galilee, but was rejected because he was an Arab.
The village was set up in 1982 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, whose mission is to set up Jewish communities in Israel, which meant non-Jewish Israelis could not build houses there.
As a result of his petition, the Supreme Court ruled by a majority of four judges to one that there should be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs in the distribution of state lands, even if it is managed by the Jewish Agency.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the state holds title to 93 percent of all land in Israel.
The Cabinet decision effectively overturns the Supreme Court ruling by allowing the Jewish Agency to allocate land in accordance with its goals, that is, to establish exclusively Jewish communities.
"This regrettable decision by the Israeli Cabinet amounts to apartheid," Kaadan told the Israeli daily Maariv.
"Peace-loving people, both Arabs and Jews, are struggling to bring people closer together and strengthen coexistence, and in one moment a government rises and in one unfortunate decision kills these budding flowers of peace," he said.
The head of the left-wing opposition party Meretz, Yossi Sarid, called it "a racist stain on Israel."
"No other government in the democratic world would have adopted such a law," he said. But Druckman welcomed the adoption of his proposal, which still has to be passed by Parliament, calling it a "victory for Zionism."
In another development, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met the Palestinian finance minister yesterday, the first Cabinet-level talks between the two sides in four months, but no peace breakthroughs were expected.
Israeli officials said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave the go-ahead for the meeting between Peres and Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Faiad on condition the talks did not touch on peace issues.
In Ramallah, Palestinians staged protests against President Yasser Arafat’s dismissal of the West Bank’s powerful security chief but the fallen official says the dispute will not spark a revolt.
Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security service in the West Bank until last week, said Arafat’s decision to replace him with an outsider in a shakeup of security organs was "a big mistake" and he had urged him to reconsider.
He spoke after 1,000 Palestinians, mainly security men, marched in the West Bank city of Hebron holding up portraits of Rajoub in the biggest display of dissent over his sacking yet.
But they twinned chants of "Rajoub is an innocent man" with "Arafat is our leader". Rajoub said in an interview with Reuters the issue was not his personal status, but the qualifications of the successor chosen by Arafat.
Israeli daily Ha’aretz quoted a senior military source as saying Arafat’s standing had been declining since US President George W. Bush called for his removal in a speech on June 24.
The Palestinian president’s position is so weak that he could be sidelined by his own people in six months, he said.
"Chances are increasing that within six months, Arafat’s standing will have declined so much that he won’t be able to prevent a new, pragmatic leadership from emerging, which will lead the Palestinians to a compromise with Israel," Ha’aretz quoted the source as saying.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops yesterday arrested eight Palestinians. Israeli soldiers also raided the offices of Jordanian radio and television in Ramallah, confiscating films and travel documents of two staffers.
An Israeli military judge yesterday extended the detention without trial of Marwan Barghouti, a chief of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, by 11 days.
At a White House news conference last night President George W. Bush said that some "progress" had been made toward reforms in the Palestinian Authority which he has demanded as a condition for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
