Does Israel belong to all its citizens or to the Jewish people alone? The Israeli election scheduled for April 9 will have an important bearing on this issue. Israel has struggled with this question from its birth. The dilemma has been exacerbated by the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 that has led to projections that soon there will be as many Arabs as Jews in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
As the prospect of a two-state solution has receded, the spectre of a bi-national state with equal rights for all citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, has begun to haunt the Zionist right. The Nationality Law passed by the Knesset in July 2018 by a vote of 62 to 55, which declares Israel the nation state of the Jewish people, was a pre-emptive measure to rule out this option for all time to come. More than 65 discriminatory laws have been passed since Israel’s establishment restricting the rights of Palestinian citizens. However, this is the most blatant attempt to legally define the Palestinian inhabitants of Israel as second-class citizens.
While the opposition denounced the law as racist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described its passage as “a pivotal moment in the annals of Zionism and the State of Israel. We enshrined in law the basic principle of our existence.” The controversy around this law has heated up following the decision of Israel’s elections committee, now under appeal in the Supreme Court, to bar the joint Arab party Raam-Balad from participating in the coming election. Signalling his support to the election committee’s decision Mr. Netanyahu tweeted, “Those who support terrorism will not be in the Israeli Knesset!”
Mr. Netanyahu re-emphasised his commitment to the Nationality Law when in response to criticism of it he wrote on Instagram, “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People — and them alone.” In the same post he argued that a government led by his opponents Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid will be dependent on the support of Arab parties and will, therefore, “undermine the security of the state and citizens”. Mr. Netanyahu clearly implied that the loyalty of Israel’s Arab citizens was suspect and that they should never be a part of a coalition governing Israel.
Considering the small margin by which the Nationality Law was passed, the election is likely to become a referendum on the basic character of the Israeli state. The electorate will be passing judgment not only on Mr. Netanyahu’s fitness to govern considering the corruption charges levelled against him, but more importantly on whether Israel is a state for all its citizens or for the Jewish people alone.
The writer is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Center for Global Policy, Washington, DC