The 'Jewish Nation-State' Law Passed in Israel

According to Reuters, the Israeli parliament approved the government bill 'Jewish Nation-State' in a third and final vote early Thursday, July 19, turning it into law. The Jewish Nation-State Law defines Israel as a country for Jews with superiority rights over other residents; it recognizes Hebrew as the only official language and increases construction privileges for Jews in Jerusalem and settlements. This law, passed seventy years after the establishment of Israel, emphasizes the importance of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Israeli media reported that this law was approved after a series of sessions in the parliament and various committees. The final voting session lasted eight hours, continuing into the early hours, with 62 out of 120 Knesset members supporting the law; 55 members voted against it, while others either abstained or left the session. The government and its supporters insisted that the bill be passed before the parliament's summer recess starting Thursday. Until now, Arabic, alongside Hebrew, was considered one of the two official and administrative languages of Israel, but with the new law, Arabic no longer holds official status in Israel. The new law states that Arabs will benefit from government services in their language, which has a 'special status'; however, Arabs viewed the removal of Arabic's official status as marginalization. One million eight hundred thousand minorities, including Palestinian Arabs, Christians, Druze, Circassians, farmers, Bedouins, Ahmadis, and nomadic Arabs, make up 21% of Israel's 9 million population, mostly living in the north or the Negev desert in the south. According to the initial version of the Jewish Nation-State Law, settlement councils and Jewish areas could prevent the settlement of Arabs and others in these areas to 'maintain homogeneity'; a provision that faced severe criticism from the President of Israel, the Attorney General, and other opponents, leading to its amendment. The approved version states that the expansion of Jewish settlements is considered 'a national value' that must be strengthened. The Jewish Nation-State Law was passed while Reuven Rivlin, the President of Israel, had requested in a letter to Knesset members last week to suspend this legislative process; Israeli media deemed his intervention 'unprecedented'. Rivlin emphasized that many provisions of this bill contradict the Declaration of Independence and the democratic nature that has been upheld in Israel for seventy years, harming the country's image and potentially leading to discrimination against Jews worldwide. In light of Rivlin's and others' opposition, some initial provisions of the bill were removed to secure majority support for its enactment. The nation-state law emphasizes 'the right of all Jews worldwide to immigrate to Israel and receive Israeli citizenship' and 'strengthening relations between Israel and Jews worldwide' and 'preserving the cultural, Jewish, and historical heritage of the Jewish people globally'; half of the 14 to 17 million Jews worldwide live outside Israel. According to Maariv, Emmanuel Juppe, the EU representative in Israel, stated last week that such a law 'smells of racism'; under Netanyahu's orders, this European official was summoned to the Israeli Foreign Ministry for reprimand. According to Reuters, Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the law's approval, calling it 'a decisive moment' in the fate of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. He stated last week that civil rights are guaranteed in Israel's democracy, but 'the majority has the right to decide, and the majority wants the characteristics of the Jewish state and country to be guaranteed for future generations.' However, opponents of the law have long emphasized that prioritizing Jewish identity over its democratic nature contradicts the principles under which Israel has been governed and presented to the world. Palestinian Arab representatives in the Israeli parliament, who are staunch opponents of this law, regarded its approval as 'the death of democracy and the emergence of racism and apartheid against non-Jews.' In a symbolic act, they tore up the draft of the law. According to Ynet, Dr. Ahmad Tibi, one of the Palestinian Arab representatives residing in Israel, said: 'With great sorrow and deep regret, I announce the death of democracy'; this famous phrase was uttered by the then-head of the Israeli Prime Minister's office at the moment of announcing the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in the fall of 1995, a phrase etched in the memory of Israelis. Mr. Tibi spoke in Arabic in the Knesset to express the depth of his opposition to this law, although he is also fully proficient in Hebrew.