In
a razor thin 6-5 vote, the Israeli Supreme Court this week upheld the
revised Family Unification Law which denies the right of Palestinians to
join their Israeli Arab families in Israel. The revised law made
provisions for Palestinian males over 35 and women over 25 to be able to
apply for unification. It will mean that many families will be left
separated and without access to state benefits.
In 2004, when I worked on international
advocacy in Israel with the Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab
citizens of Israel, the British Parliament had 84 members sign a petition
expressing human rights concerns with the legislation. Even the US State
Department’s Human Rights Report included concerns about the legislation.
The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also
raised concerns. We gave many briefings to embassies and took affidavits
from couples affected by the law.
The so-called demographic threat which has been instrumentalized as a
political wedge by the Israeli right wing establishment like Benjamin
Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, have been given legitimacy for their
offensive public views by the Supreme Court decision. They will no doubt
continue to support the ethnic transfer of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians
in
East Jerusalem.
The Supreme Court decision flies in the face of international law and
within the context of the various peace processes shows that the European
Union, the United States and the UN will simply allow this brazen public
policy positioning to continue.
The argument that security concerns can form the basis for legitimately
discriminating on ethnic grounds is profoundly flawed. It highlights one
of the many issues in trying to build a state based on ethnicity.
Democratic forms can even be instrumentalized for political purposes.
These deformations of language and political process serve as the basis
for unequal treatment. Institutionalizing a second-class system within the
state itself without fear of repercussions on the international stage is a
luxury that Israel could only afford with the support of the European
Union and the United States.
Not only is the Separation Wall there as a physical barrier, but Israeli
law itself reinforces further discrimination. The normalization of such
inequality over the function of time is driven as much by the demographic
debate within Israel, which is legitimized by the mainstream Israeli
press, as much as it is by the security argument. On that basis alone,
Israel seems perfectly comfortable with the idea that as long as public
policy can be argued on the basis of security before the highest court of
the land, international law is merely a guideline rather than something
legitimate that needs to followed as a basis of domestic law. Herein lies
the fundamental paradox -- without any effective international pressure to
the contrary, how can Israeli policy actually be shifted?
Am Johal
is a Canadian freelance writer. He can be reached at:
am_johal@yahoo.ca.
Other Articles by Am Johal
*
The Battle
for the West Bank and East Jerusalem
* What Will Be
the Sharon Legacy?
* North
America's First Heroin Prescription Program Introduced in Canada
* The
Republican War
* The End of
the Arafat Era
* Breaking
Sharon's “Iron Wall”
* Madonna,
Mr. Big and Richard Gere Do Israel
* Breaking
the Impasse
* Hell
in Hebron
* Israel
Splitting Families Apart
* Anatomy
of a Home Demolition
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