JERUSALEM – Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party plans to propose legislation requiring residents to swear loyalty to the Jewish state, a move critics denounced as a serious onslaught on the rights of Arab citizens.
The ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party intends to seek cabinet approval for the Bill before presenting it to parliament where it would have to pass three votes and a committee review before taking effect, a party spokesman said yesterday.
The chances of parliament approving the measure seemed uncertain, though greater than in 2007 when a similar Bill presented by Mr Lieberman’s deputies failed to pass.
Yisrael Beitenu grew to be Israel’s third largest political party in a February election, reflecting a shift to the right by the Israeli public. Mr Lieberman’s party is junior partner in prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which is more likely to support the legislation.
Party spokesman Tal Nahum said the measure would require all Israelis to declare loyalty “to the state of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state” before they can be issued a national identity document. The law requires all Israeli residents over 16 to carry their identity cards at all times.
Mr Nahum said the cabinet would discuss the Bill on Sunday.
Yisrael Beitenu this week proposed a separate Bill to be discussed in parliament that would ban public demonstrations of grief over Israel’s independence. Many Arabs mark the founding of Israel each year as the Naqba, or catastrophe. The Bill proposes a three-year jail term for any violators.
The measure could deprive anyone refusing to take such an oath of a document needed to conduct ordinary daily business such as opening a bank account or procuring a driver’s licence.
Israeli critics saw the Bill, which also seeks to force residents to either serve in the military or perform national service, as targeting Israeli Arabs, most of whom are not drafted for military duty that is compulsory for Jews.
Arab citizens make up about a fifth of Israel’s population and are descended from those who remained while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled what is now Israel or were driven out during the 1948 war.
The Bill calls for enabling the interior minister to lift someone’s citizenship if he or she fails to either serve in the Israeli army or do a term of national service.
Anyone not born in Israel would have to take the same oath.
Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, denounced the loyalty Bill as “total fascism”. The measure could also hurt other Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews who object to the establishment of a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah, Mr Feller said. – (Reuters)