A State Of All Its Nationalities

June 10, 2005

[JPN Commentary: Ahmed Tibi is an Israeli Palestinian member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). In the article below he discusses the citizenship law, which aims to prevent marriage between Palestinians inside of Israel with Palestinians from the OPT, or with Arabs from anywhere else. He argues that the aim of the law isn't to counter a "security threat", but rather to promote demographic considerations, which are based on racist attitudes towards the Palestinians. RG]

http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART/932/352.html

The citizenship law began as a government decision at the beginning of the intifada, and turned into a piece of legislation, supported by the ultimate Jewish argument of ?security threat.? This was a lie to which everyone consented. This is a law from the school of Avi Dichter, who himself made an unusual appearance at the Internal Affairs Committee meeting, and presented numbers and diagrams, ?fireworks,? in order to prove that, for security reasons, an Arab from Taibe should not be allowed family unification with a resident of Tulkarem. He did not mention how many new immigrants from the former
Soviet Union murdered, raped, robbed, or attacked other Jews, under the law of return.

I am in this exact situation. I am married to May from Tulkarem. If this law were to be applied retroactively, I would not be free to form a family, since my wife would be considered a security threat.

The real reason for this legislation is not security, but demography and racism. Eli Yishai, when he was interior minister, and Gideon Ezra, as the Knesset Liaison Minister, said as much, when arguing against what they called ?the right of return.?

The argument of the law?s defenders, that this is a matter of preventing free immigration to Israel, as argued Professor Amnon Rubinstein, is not precise. Even before this legislation, an Arab from Taibe or Um El Fahem, who wanted to marry a Palestinian from the occupied territories, had to go through seven circles of hell until his wife received, if even then, permanent residence status in Israel, what was referred to as the ?graduated process,? that took at least five years.

The arguments of Dankner [Ma?ariv editor, Amnon Dankner] and others in favor of the law are anti-liberal arguments, at best nationalistic, and otherwise essentially anti-Arab.

Citizens without citizenship

It is very important to add that the prime minister of Israel, more than a year ago, instructed the head of the Shabak to freeze recommendations for family unification between Arab citizens of Israel and Arab women from the entire Arab world, not just
Palestinians from the areas of the Palestinian authority. Sharon understands his ?subjects.? Israeli public opinion today will tolerate almost any anti-Arab decision.

It should be said that the state of Israel is a multi-cultural immigrant state, perhaps one of the most multi-cultural communities in the world. Jews come from all cultures and join the native Arab population of this land, who were expelled in ?48, or had to flee for other reasons, and are not allowed to marry or to live where they choose. Moreover, they are even humiliated when they report to the Israeli embassy in Jordan in order to request a tourist permit to visit their relatives.

The derision of the above writers in dutifully defining the state as ?Jewish and democratic,? ignores the fact that in practice ?democratic? refers to Jews, and the Arabs are nothing more than citizens without citizenship.

On the subject of mixed marriages: As I have always been opposed to the demand that the Palestinian woman use her womb as a demographic weapon, I also oppose telling the Arab woman or man whom they can or cannot marry. In an enlightened society this matter must be left a personal decision.

One of the black laws

This is the place to say, once and for all, that the Arabs in Israel are not calling for ?a state of all its citizens,? but for a ?state of all its nationalities,? in a democratic and multi-cultural framework, with full civil partnership. This situation would not only guarantee the rights of individuals, as in a state of all its citizens (a demand that Shulamit Aloni made in the 1980s), but rights of individuals on one hand, and collective rights on the other.

This law is one of the blackest laws in the law book of the state of Israel. Indeed, Amos Shocken was right. This is an apartheid law. Domination, superiority, and tyranny of the majority will never bring peace and quiet between the two nationalities that live in Israel, between the Jewish majority that is now celebrating Israel?s independence, and the Arab-Palestinian minority, that is still licking the wounds of dispossession and expulsion, struggling against the policies of exclusion and delegitimation, and wants to build a new type of relationship between majority and minority, of real Jewish-Arab cooperation, based on mutual respect and the principle of equality as the highest democratic value.

We will never agree to the situation in which Dankner, Margalit, or Yemini will be preferred to Ahmed, simply because of their national identity. Jews should understand this better than others.