66 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, even the most ubiquitous term employed to describe the political nature of Israel as a “Jewish democratic state” is no longer valid. The Netanyahu government and its right-wing coalition partners are preparing a law, which will exclusively define Israel as a “Jewish State” for the “Jewish people”. For independent observers, who do not wear rose-colored Zionist propaganda glasses, Israel was never a democracy in the classical Western sense of the term, but always a Jewish democracy or a democracy sui generis, i.e. full democratic rights for Jews only.
Jewish and democratic just does not fit. It’s an oxymoron. Nonetheless, the Zionist propaganda (hasbara) has left no stone unturned in order to hammer this contradiction in terms into the awareness of the Western public. The Israeli Palestinians have always been treated as second class citizens. The Israeli political class regards them as a fifth column that cannot be trusted. The definition of Israel as a Jewish state is making visible, even to the politically blindest admirer of Israel, that all non-Jews are citizens with inferior rights.
The new Basic Law that will be up for adoption in the Israeli parliament shows that Israel, after 66 years of its existence, is completely in the dark about its identity. It is the proof of Israel’s shortcomings. From the very beginning of Israel’s foundation there existed a built-in contradiction: On the one hand, Israel was established as a “Jewish State in Eretz Israel”, on the other hand, the same declaration promised to “ensure complete equality of (…) political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion”. Historically, it has turned out that Israel could not be both.
In the “Law of Return”, the Jewish element was given precedence over the democratic one. The law stipulated that every Jew could immigrate to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship, while the expelled Palestinians owners of the land were denied to return to their homes. The contradiction was reestablished by the “Nationality Law” of 1952, which reads: “A person who, immediately before the establishment of the State, was a Palestinian citizen (…) shall become an Israel national”.
Under the presidency of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak the Basic Law “Human Dignity and Freedom” was passed, which established the phrase “Jewish and democratic state” for Israel. The right-wing parties are up in arms about this phrase and the High Court of Israel (HCI) in general. Some extremists even want to abolish this institution and replace it by a religious court. Due to its large Palestinian population, former Israeli governments downplayed the Jewish component for the democratic one. But since right-wing parties dominate Israel’s political landscape and parliament, the public mood got even more susceptive to racism and open discrimination of Israel’s Palestinian minority.
As a consequence of this racism, the Netanyahu cabinet has discussed versions of a new Basic Law that will finally establish Israel as a racist pariah state. The cabinet version received 14 yes votes, 6 liberal oriented members voted against. Should this bill become law, Israel is an open ethnocracy. The question which then arises for Israel’s friends in the US and Europe is, how can these Jewish-particularistic values agree with democratic ones. One does not need to be prophet to foretell that the West will also have an explanation for this, as it previously has justified Israel’s human rights violations, colonialism, violation of international law and all the war crimes and committed atrocities of the Israeli army against Palestinians.
In Israel, this draft caused an outcry by the liberal spectrum. Even President Reuven Rivlin spoke out against Netanyahu’s “Jewish state bill”. He called for a referendum and said that “democracy and Judaism must remain equal”. He asked at a conference in Eilat: “Does promoting this law, not in fact, question the success of the Zionist enterprise in which we are fortunate to live?” Rivlin was a former Knesset member of Netanyahu’s Likud party who has political scores to settle with the Prime Minister. Rivlin decried the elevation of Israel’s Jewish dimension over its democratic one, which is proposed in the intended new law.
The tainted atmosphere that led to this proposed law will neither vanish in the Knesset nor in the Israeli public. If the “Jewishness” of the State of Israel will prevail over the democratic one, the “Nation-State of the Jewish people” is going to admit that it is an ethnocracy guided by racist ideology. In future, the political discussion must turn on the racial aspect of Jewishness and Jewish culture in Israel and not so much around colonial Zionism, which serves as a vehicle for Israeli Jewish expansionism. Israel has always been a Jewish state, and finally it admits that it has little to do with democracy. How will the US Empire and Israel’s European friends react to this new definition of the State of Israel?
At the end of the day, Israel has to choose between a Jewish state with some democratic embedded particles or a democratic state with a Jewish preponderance. It cannot have the cake and eat it, too. The critics of the term “Jewish democratic state” asked for a “Jewish state”. For some, a “Jewish state” might be the solution of the Israeli dilemma, but for others this might be the nail in the coffin for the Zionist enterprise. As a state of all its citizens, as proponents of a one-state solution require, Israel is light years away.
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Israeli FM proposes bribes for 1948 Palestinians to leave Occupied Palestine
A Palestinian boy is seen during a protest against Israeli security's raids in al-Ram district of Jerusalem on November 18, 2014. Anadolu / Issam Rimawi
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed on Friday that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship be offered financial incentives to leave Occupied Palestine and relocate to a future Palestinian state.
As one of the most strident voices in favor of the separation of Israelis and Palestinians, Lieberman added that Palestinians living in Jaffa and Acre, two mixed cities on the Mediterranean coast far from the West Bank, should be encouraged to move if they want.
"Those (1948 Palestinians) who decide that their identity is Palestinian will be able to forfeit their Israeli citizenship and move and become citizens of the future Palestinian state," he wrote in the manifesto, entitled Swimming Against the Stream, published on his Facebook page and his party's website.
"Israel should even encourage them to do so with a system of economic incentives," he said.
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who account for about 20 percent of the population in Occupied Palestine, are the descendents of Palestinians who remained on their land when the Zionist state was established in 1948.
The majority of Palestinians were killed, expelled from their homes, or detained in work camps.
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship complain of routine discrimination, particularly in housing, land access and employment, and anger has risen in recent months over Israel's assault on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 Palestinians – mostly civilians – dead. More than 700 Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories were arrested in protests across the country against the attack over summer.
Lieberman’s proposal echoes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s challenge earlier this month for 1948 Palestinians to go and live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza, after many protested against the deadly police shooting of a young Palestinian with Israeli citizenship during an attempted arrest.
"To all those who are demonstrating and shouting their denunciation of Israel and support of a Palestinian state, I can say one simple thing: you are invited to move there – to the Palestinian Authority or to Gaza," Netanyahu said.
"I can promise you the State of Israel will not put any obstacles in your way," he told a meeting with Likud legislators.
The demonstrations in northern Occupied Palestine came against a backdrop of soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions in annexed East Jerusalem, where there have been near-daily clashes over Israeli violations at the al-Aqsa mosque compound as well as illegal settlement activities.
Around 7,000 Palestinians, including hundreds without charge, are currently being held in Israeli prisons, more than 2,000 of whom were arrested by Israeli forces over this summer amid heavy tensions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Lieberman, whose ultra-nationalist party is a core part of Netanyahu's coalition, has previously spoken about redrawing borders but not about using incentives to encourage Palestinians to uproot to a Palestinian state.
A poll carried out in 2010, after Lieberman addressed the United Nations and set out plans for the borders of a future Palestinian state to be redrawn to include Palestinian-majority towns in Occupied Palestine, showed that 58 percent of 1948 Palestinians opposed the idea.
Moreover, Lieberman had called on Palestinians in the past to take a loyalty oath if they want to remain in Occupied Palestine, a measure that Netanyahu denounced at the time.
But Netanyahu is now backing a contentious bill that would define Israel as the Jewish state and enshrine certain rights for Jews.
Earlier this week, the Israeli cabinet voted in favor of the proposal to anchor in law Israel's status as the national homeland of the Jewish people.
Israel would no longer be defined in its Basic Laws as "Jewish and democratic," but instead as "the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
Critics, including the government's top legal adviser, said the proposed change to the laws that act as Israel's effective constitution could institutionalize discrimination against its 1.7 million Palestinian citizens.
The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) said that the state's Jewish identity is already contained in its 1948 declaration of statehood.
"However, that declaration also emphasizes the Jewish state's absolute commitment to the equality of all of its citizens – an essential component missing from the proposals being presented to the government today," IDI president Yohanan Plesner said in a statement.
The version of the “Jewish state” bill approved by ministers on Sunday represents a nod from Netanyahu to the most hardline elements of his party and ruling coalition as talk grows of an early election.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly expressed his refusal to compromise the longstanding Palestinian stance against recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinians fear that identifying Israel as such will cancel the right of return of Palestinian refugees or the right to reparations for those affected by the creation of Israel in 1948.
Palestinian leaders continue to demand the establishment of an independent state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, with East Jerusalem – currently occupied by Israel – as its capital.
In November 1988, Palestinian leaders led by Yasser Arafat declared the existence of a state of Palestine inside the 1967 borders and the state's belief "in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations."
Heralded as a "historic compromise," the move implied that Palestinians would agree to accept only 22 percent of historic Palestine, in exchange for peace with Israel. It is now believed that only 17 percent of historic Palestine is under Palestinian control following the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) this year set November 2016 as the deadline for ending the Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967 and establishing a two-state solution.
According to PA estimations, 134 countries have so far recognized the State of Palestine, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.
It is worth noting that numerous pro-Palestine activists support a one-state solution, arguing that the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel would not be sustainable. They also believe that the two-state solution, which is the only option considered by international actors, won't solve existing discrimination, nor erase economic and military tensions.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
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