- JERUSALEM -- Israel's Parliament
has passed a law preventing Palestinians who marry Israelis from living
in Israel. The move was denounced by human rights organisations as racist,
undemocratic and discriminatory.
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- Under the new law, rushed through yesterday, Palestinians
alone will be excluded from obtaining citizenship or residency. Anyone
else who marries an Israeli will be entitled to Israeli citizenship.
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- Now Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from the West
Bank or Gaza Strip will either have to move to the occupied territories,
or live apart from their husband or wife. Their children will be affected
too: from the age of 12 they will be denied citizenship or residency and
forced to move out of Israel.
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- Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch sent a joint
letter to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, urging members to reject the
bill. "The draft law barring family reunification for Palestinian
spouses of Israeli citizens is profoundly discriminatory," Amnesty
said in a statement. "A law permitting such blatant racial discrimination,
on grounds of ethnicity or nationality, would clearly violate international
human rights law and treaties which Israel has ratified and pledged to
uphold."
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- B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, joined
in the criticism of the law. Yael Stein, a spokesman, said: "This
is a racist law that decides who can live here according to racist criteria."
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- Some Israelis believe they are sitting on a demographic
time bomb, with an Israeli Arab community, already 20 per cent of the population,
growing faster than the Jewish population.
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- The discrimination is not only against Palestinians,
according to human rights groups, but against Israel's own 1.2 million
citizens of Palestinian origin as well. The overwhelming majority of Israelis
who marry Palestinians are the so-called Israeli Arabs - Palestinians who
live in Israel and have Israeli citizenship.
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- "This bill blatantly discriminates against Israelis
of Palestinian origin and their Palestinian spouses," said Hanny Megally
of Human Rights Watch. "It's scandalous that the Government has presented
this bill, and it's shocking that the Knesset is rushing it through."
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- The government pushed the vote through at speed, even
agreeing to consider it a vote of confidence to get it through. It was
passed by 53 votes to 25, with one abstention.
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- Gideon Ezra, a cabinet minister, said: "This law
comes to address a security issue. Since September 2000 we have seen a
significant connection, in terror attacks, between Arabs from the West
Bank and Gaza and Israeli Arabs."
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- Since 1993, more than 100,000 Palestinians have become
Israeli citizens through marriage, Mr Ezra said. But B'Tselem pointed out
that only 20 of those 100,000 have been involved in suicide bombings or
other militant attacks. Human rights groups said security concerns could
not justify the new law, which amounts to collective punishment. Noam Hoffstater,
another spokesman for B'Tselem, said: "Those who voted for the bill
and those who support it are making a very cynical use of security arguments
to justify it, even though they used no data. This in fact was a cover
for the real reason, which is the racist reason, the demographic reason."
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- Many on Israel's right fear that it will be impossible
to maintain Israel's identity as an officially Jewish state if the Arab
sector becomes too large.
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- "Today I lost hope," Sa'id abu Muammar, an
Israeli Arab, told Reuters news agency. He has been hiding his Palestinian
wife from the police since their marriage a year ago. "This is what
we've been doing and this is probably what we will have to continue to
do."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=429490
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