Israel’s hugely controversial “nation-state” law, explained
Supporters call Israel’s new Jewish nation-state law a “defining moment.” Critics say it’s “apartheid.”
The law does three big things:
- It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”
- It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”
- It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”
1) “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
This declaration doesn’t just say that Israel is the historic homeland of Jews, which is a core part of
Zionist ideology and the argument for the Jewish state’s existence in what’s now Israel. Instead, this goes further to unequivocally state that Jews — and only Jews — have the exclusive right to “self-determination” within Israel.
In other words, only Jews have the right to determine what kind of state and society they live under. Which means that by default, non-Jews — such as Palestinian citizens of Israel, some of whom are Muslim and some of whom are Christian — don’t have that same right.
Supporters of this declaration say that Jews have the right to a place of their own just like other people have, and that enshrining this principle in the law is necessary to ensure that Israel remains under Jewish control.
Critics, on the other hand, say this measure is
undemocratic and essentially enshrines two separate classes of citizens: Jews, and everyone else. Some even liken it to the strict racial segregation in South Africa under
apartheid, in which the indigenous black African population was ruled by a colonial regime based on white supremacy.
3) The law mandates that the “state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development,” without specifying where.
This clause, interestingly, has angered both the law’s supporters and its opponents. The former say it doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t specify Jewish settlements
in the West Bank.
This is a fundamental issue for many religious and religious nationalist Israelis. They argue that the West Bank is part of Israel, both because Israel captured the land in 1967 and because it’s part of the biblical Holy Land. And since it belongs to Israel, the argument goes, Jewish Israelis are free to build settlements — small enclaves — in the West Bank.
Most of the international community, as well as Palestinians and more than a few Israelis, disagree. They say that the West Bank belongs to a future Palestinian state, and that Israel has been illegally occupying it since it seized the territory in 1967. As such, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
So by not specifically mentioning the West Bank, this provision in the new law walks a fine line, enshrining “Jewish settlement as a national value” without explicitly saying where those settlements might be.
Even so, opponents of this measure say it’s damaging not just with respect to West Bank settlements but also for Arab Israelis, as the law appears to create a legal right to separate Arabs from living in Jewish communities.
Supporters call Israel’s new Jewish nation-state law a “defining moment.” Critics say it’s “apartheid.”
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