The Israeli Cabinet ministers on Sunday will be asked to approve an amendment to the Citizenship Law whereby anyone seeking citizenship, including people moving to Israel and 16-year-olds obtaining their first identity cards, would have to make the following vow: “I pledge to be loyal to the State of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, to its symbols and values, and to serve the state in any way asked of me in military service as required by law.”
Mohammed Barakeh, the chairman of Hadash party, lambasted Netanyahu for “kicking off the season of racist legislation that he is leading himself.”
Barakeh said “the addition to the Citizenship Law is entirely racist and transparent, and will clearly find the majority needed with the help of (Foreign Minister Avigdor) Lieberman and (Defense Minister Ehud) Barak.”
“The book of laws in Israel has long turned into a guidebook for the most discriminatory and racist regime in the world and in history”, he said.
The amendment was proposed by Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman and has already been adopted by Netanyahu.
“Israel is the Jewish people’s homeland,” the prime minister explained. “It is so in its essence, in its government, its symbols, holidays and language, and that should be reflected by its Citizenship Act,” he said.
The bill, initiated by Knesset Law Committee chairman David Rotem of rightist Israel Beiteinu party, would also empower the interior minister to cancel the citizenship of Israelis who do not fulfill their compulsory military or alternative national service.
An Israeli government official in July said the wording of the declaration was designed to make it more difficult for Palestinians married to Arabs inside Israel to gain citizenship on the basis of family unification.
Currently there are an estimated 25,000 Arabs married to Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Ahmad Al-Tibi, Knesset member of United Arab List party, said that Netanyahu's decision “to force citizens to pledge allegiance to a Jewish Israel is a political decision rather than one of leadership. “It is meant to cement the Arabs' inferior class status by law. No amendment will be able to negate the Palestinian narrative, which has been recognized worldwide.”
For its part, the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee said is preparing a position paper on the matter and intends to send a letter to the Middle East peace quartet demanding it condemn the action.
The committee added that the protest letter will also be sent to the Arab League and to the Palestinian Authority.
Balad party leader Jamal Zahalka, who helped draft the position paper and letter, said that no time should be wasted in bringing the matter to the attention of the international community.
“The sole purpose of this law is to target Israeli Arabs and proves that Lieberman has become the spiritual father of the government,” Zahalka said, referring to the right-wing minister's fierce advocacy of the amendment.
“The racism in Israel has set itself as a precedent in the international arena,” Zahalka said, adding that no other country in the world would demand its citizens to declare ideological loyalty. “The word democratic should be erased from the proposal because it is impossible to call this state democratic in such an anti-democratic proposal. The correct definition is a Jewish state, and not a democratic one,” he said.
