Anthology of bigotry
The Israeli state is trying desperately to foreclose all exceptions to its unequivocally racist land laws
By Jonathan Cook
Israel’s parliament last week approved by an overwhelming majority the first reading of a bill to ensure that much of the country’s inhabited land remains accessible to Jewish citizens only — a move described by one leading local newspaper as turning Israel into a “racist Jewish state”.
The private member’s bill, called the Jewish National Fund Law, has received cross-party support. The first reading was approved by 64 legislators, with 16 — most of them Arab MKs — opposed. Supporters ranged from former premiere Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, to Ami Ayalon, a recent challenger to head the Labour Party.
The legislation is designed to nullify the threat posed by a Supreme Court judgment, reached in 2000, that potentially opens the door to thousands of Arab families leaving the tightly controlled areas assigned to them and choosing where they live. Currently Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of the population, are barred from buying homes in most of the country.
The move is the latest in a series of battles since Israel’s establishment in 1948 to ensure exclusive Jewish control of land through an international Zionist organisation known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF). By the time of Israel’s founding, the JNF had bought about six per cent of historic Palestine for Jewish settlement. Rather than demanding that these territories be handed over by the JNF, the new state authorities assigned the organisation a special, quasi- governmental status. The JNF was also given a significant share of the lands and property confiscated from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled during the 1948 War.
