[Kapitein Nemo]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door LiberaalNL

Israel heeft desondanks een Arabische minderheid van 20% binnen de grenzen van 1967. Zij hebben volledige rechten als de Joodse Israeliers.

The status of Palestinians in Israel as a Jewish state is problematic. From 1948 until 1966 the Palestinians in Israel lived under military rule and in fact under military occupation. Palestinians faced restrictions on the freedom of movement, restrictions on the freedom of press and opinion and legal confiscation of land and property. Under military law Palestinians faced the possibility of deportations, illegal detentions without trial, curfews, house arrests etc. The end of military rule in 1966 did not end this legal and institutional discrimination.

The inequality under the law is felt in almost all aspects of social, political and economic life, including a discriminatory educational system where curriculum is routinely biased in favour of Jewish customs and norms at the expense of Arab culture. The notion of collective rights and protection of the Palestinian minority are absent from the Basic Law.

An example of an explicit discriminatory law is the “Law of Return” which grants every Jew, wherever he or she resides, automatic Israeli citizenship if desired, at the expense of refugees and stateless persons who have lived on the land for generations.

The fact that non-Jews (with the exception of the Druze) cannot perform military service bars them from a broad spectrum of services and benefits and effectively diminishes the opportunity for social mobility that any Jewish Israeli would have.

This inequality is also evident in the fact that only a fraction of government budgets allocated funds for the maintenance and building of infrastructure in Palestinian towns in Israel. Palestinian citizens face similar building restrictions that are known in the Occupied Territories.

This active policy of under-development also becomes clear in the case of the “unrecognised villages”. About 100.000 people live in these villages, mostly in the Negev and in the North, which officially do not exist. This means that even the most basic services are not made available to their inhabitants, such as running water, health services, sanitation, electricity, safe roads, adequate education facilities or postal and other communication services.

Recently the Knesset adopted the “Nationality and Entry into Israel (Temporary Order)“ law that bars Palestinians married to Israelis from living with their spouses in Israel. Since the outbreak of the Intifada the issuing of residence permits for Palestinian spouses has been frozen “in light of the security situation and because of the implication(s) of the immigration and the establishment in Israel of foreigners of Palestinian decent”.

Bron: Written Intervention of Pax Christi International - The Status of Palestinian Citizens in Israel (United Nations: Commission on Human Rights), 2004