The latest from the Only-Democracy-in-the-Mideast(TM):
Tue., January 18, 2005 Shvat 8, 5765
Racist legislation
In the summer of 2003, the Knesset promulgated a disgraceful law. The amendment to the Citizenship Law applied a sweeping prevention of unification of families and marriages between Israeli Arabs and Arabs from the region. Since the law was passed by the votes of 53 MKs - including Shinui - there has been a total halt to any requests by Israeli Arab citizens, including those who were already married and had children, to enable them to live in Israel with their relatives.
In effect, the state left its Arab citizens only one choice: to live in another country with their non-Israeli spouses. The amendment institutionalized discrimination against Arabs compared to any other non-Jewish citizen. Since it was passed, Israeli citizens could marry any non-Jew in the world and live with them in Israel, but if they married Arabs "from the region," they could not live as a family in Israel.
In the summer of 2004 the government extended the temporary amendment by six months, and this week a memo went out from the Interior Ministry ahead of a further extension. Since there have been petitions to the High Court of Justice against the law in the meantime, and the court has already hinted it will intervene if the law is extended again, the government is now trying to make the law a little more flexible to prevent the court from intervening.
According to a new, "easier" formula, a man over the age of 35 or a woman over the age of 25, already married to an Israeli, can get a permit to stay in the country for six months. The underlying assumption apparently is that people who must extend their stay in Israel every six months, and whom the law denies citizenship even if they are model residents of the country, will prefer to live elsewhere.
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haaretz.com |
