OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 24 October — The Israeli Parliament yesterday rejected a proposed bill that would ban from the assembly any party trying to incite the expulsion of Palestinians or Arab Israelis from their land, officials said. The Knesset voted down the proposal, drafted by the communist Hadash party, by 51 to 23 out of 74 members present, parliamentary officials said.
Deputies from the right-wing majority parties voted against the motion which was backed by Arab Israeli deputies and the left-wing opposition Meretz party, as well as Hadash, which has three seats.
Several members of the center-left Labour party, which sits in the right-wing government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, also voted in favor, although most did not participate in the heated debate.
The idea of transfer — moving large segments of the Arab population either from Israel to the Palestinian territories, or from the Palestinian territories to Arab states — has gained currency recently in the country’s right as the low-level war with the Palestinians moves into its third year.
Hadash’s Arab deputy Mohammed Barakeh said that "incitement to transfer is in fact a call to ethnic cleansing and should be subject to Israeli law which bans any incitement to racial hatred."
Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said that a call for "voluntary transfer" could be considered legitimate, saying it was no more shocking than calls by the left to expel 200,000 Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Recent polls show that 20 to 30 percent Israelis favor some form of transfer, whose champion Rehavam Zeevi, a former general and ultra-nationalist tourism minister, was assassinated last year in revenge for an Israeli target killing of a Palestinian activist.
At the last general election in 1999, Zeevi’s far-right National Union party won four seats on its platform to "transfer" Palestinians abroad. His successor Benny Elon advocates the same position.
After two years of the latest Palestinian uprising and the failure of the army’s reoccupation of the West Bank to stop bombings, the concept has gained new currency. "At the beginning of the intifada, one of the most popular slogans among the right wing, was: ‘Let the army win the war.’ You don’t hear that anymore," says Danny Rubinstein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Haaretz daily.
"People think: ‘We won, so what’s going on here with this victory if we can’t stop the intifada.’ So in the right-wing corner, you see graffiti slogans for transfer. It’s become more popular to talk about it."
US special envoy William Burns arrived here to push a new peace roadmap, but Israel’s leadership was due to give the plan a frosty reception. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who is expected to meet Burns today, denied Washington had leaned on Israel to stay its hand after Monday’s bombing. "The army will react at the time and place of its choosing," said Ben Eliezer.
Burns has been touring the region touting a roadmap to tackle the Palestinian uprising. The assistant secretary of state for the Near East is discussing the blueprint of the diplomatic "quartet" of Washington, Moscow, the European Union and United Nations which aims to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005.
But the daily Haaretz quoted Sharon, who will meet Burns this evening, as slamming the plan, which calls for a Palestinian state with temporary borders by 2003. "It’s not credible that Israel takes irreversible steps while the other side only makes statements," he was quoted by the daily as telling a delegation of American Jews.
