Discriminatory citizenship law highlights Israel’s growing fanaticism

Any law that discriminates against a specific minority in society should be unthinkable and have no place in a country that aspires to be a liberal democracy. Hence, last week’s vote by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approving the so-called Citizenship and Entry Law is a stain on democracy. It bluntly discriminates between Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens, apportioning a certain right to one community that happens to represent the majority in the country, while depriving the minority of the very same right.

By approving this law, the Knesset effectively bars Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza, as well as citizens of countries regarded as enemy states — Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq — who are married to Israeli citizens from acquiring citizenship or residency in Israel. In other words, Israeli citizens who happen to choose to spend their lives with those who already live under Israel’s oppressive occupation can do so but will only enjoy full rights outside of Israel. One does not necessarily expect laws to promote romance, but nevertheless they should not be so cruel as to prevent married people from living together and enjoying full rights in the country of which at least one of them is a citizen or has the right to reside.

This new law is not the first, the only or probably the last to discriminate against Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line. But the fact that those who promoted it shamelessly admit that it is about demography and not security, as has been argued in the past, is testimony to the downward spiral of the denigration of Palestinians’ human rights by Israel. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly states that there should be no limitation due to race, nationality or religion to the right to marry and found a family, and the family “is entitled to protection by society and the state.” Family life is expressed in numerous provisions in international human rights and humanitarian laws as including the right to maintain a family life together. Israel’s Citizenship and Entry Law is an assault on this very right when it comes to its Palestinian citizens.

The Citizenship and Entry Law has a long and checkered past, dating back nearly two decades. Israel’s legislators themselves have not always felt comfortable with it, but enough of them have caved in to the security narrative to support it. The Knesset first passed this law in 2003, prohibiting the granting of any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians from the 1967 Occupied Territories who were married to Israeli citizens. It was a temporary measure, supposed to apply for one year only, but then it was renewed, year after year, ostensibly for security reasons, with the claim that family unification could be misused by terrorist organizations to harm Israel.

This so-called emergency provision was first enacted at the height of the Second Intifada and, even then, a substantial number of legislators questioned both its effectiveness in stopping terrorism and, most categorically, the morality of such a provision. In actuality, it was disingenuous from the very beginning as it did not prevent married couples from living together, but from acquiring citizenship and residency, so it was more about depriving them of rights and deterring them from coming to live in Israel rather than protecting Israeli security.

The days of the Second Intifada have long gone and Israel is not in a state of emergency today as was the case 20 years ago. And, as was the case back then, there is no evidence that allowing the unification of couples originating from different sides of the Green Line poses a security threat — that has always been a hypothetical argument, not one anchored in facts.

Sadly, Israel’s High Court of Justice has also played its part in prolonging this security argument charade by taking a very lenient — some might argue forgiving — approach in maintaining that, since the law was a temporary measure, it was probably not worth its time to reconsider it. However, 20 years cannot be considered as temporary and, for families that have suffered uncertainty for this length of time, it is inhuman and must feel like an eternity.

With a new coalition government in place, there was faint hope that common sense and humanity would prevail and that the wishes of Israeli citizens, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, to choose their partner for life and have that partner granted full rights would be respected, but these hopes have now been quashed.

At first, the coalition could not garner enough support to extend the law and it was revoked. However, in the intricacies of Israeli politics, Ayelet Shaked — one of the most ultranationalist Israeli politicians, who also happens to be a close ally of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — is in charge of the Interior Ministry and, despite having no legal authority, she still barred family reunification, even before the law was renewed last week. Now, who will stop a very keen Shaked from applying it to the letter?

After the vote, she declared unashamedly, and apparently blind to the incongruity in her argument, that this was a victory for a “Jewish and democratic state” over a “state of all its citizens.” Perhaps Shaked and those who support this law do not want to acknowledge the obvious contradiction, but there is no democracy where a state discriminates against a minority within it. In this case, the Palestinian minority, which comprises more than a fifth of the population, is being deprived of one of its most basic rights by a law that has no parallel in any democratic country.

There is an inherent tension in the notion of “Jewish and democratic,” but not one that is insurmountable. The same rights can still be conferred on every single citizen. Sadly, this is not the way Israel is heading at the moment. It is becoming increasingly xenophobic and fanatical when it comes to supporting its Jewish majority and, in the process, it is losing its humanity. The Citizenship and Entry Law, and the so-called nation-state law before that, are sad testimony to this fact.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg