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02.07.03, 16:16
Israel takes another leap towards institutionalized apartheid
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 26 June 2003
During the Apartheid era in South Africa, marriage or any love realationship
between members of different racial groups was forbidden. In all public
institutions and offices, in public transport and on public toilets, racial
segregation was in force.
A law forbidding Israeli citizenship for Palestinians from the Occupied
Territories who marry Israelis passed its first reading in the Knesset on
June 18. This is another milestone on Israel's road to open,
institutionalized apartheid.
According to Ha'aretz, the bill forbids the granting of Israeli citizenship
in cases of reunification between families split between Israel and the
Occupied Territories and will strictly limit the ability of Palestinians to
obtain Israeli residence or to legally remain within the country.
Such laws targeted at a specific ethnic community are an odious violation of
all international human rights norms.
Jewish-Israeli Knesset member Zehava Gal-On called the bill "racist and
discriminatory." Palestinian-Israeli Knesset member Wasil Taha compared it to
Germany's 1930s Nuremberg laws which targeted Jews and limited their civil
rights, including the right to marriage. The Israeli bill is also reminiscent
of apartheid-era South African laws which banned interracial marriages. And,
until the Supreme Court overturned them, the United States had a long
tradition of laws, specifically restricting Africans, Chinese and Japanese
from obtaining citizenship, owning land or marrying whites.
Israel has also used zoning regulations, land seizures, and the quasi-
official Jewish National Fund (which controls expropriated Palestinian land
and leases it exclusively to Jews) to achieve essentially the same purposes
as apartheid South Africa's Group Areas Act