BY NORM DIXON

On July 31, Israel's Knesset (parliament) overwhelmingly passed an apartheid-like marriage law. The law forbids Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from obtaining Israeli citizenship or permits to live with their spouses and children in Israel.

Israelis who marry Palestinians from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip will either have to move to the Occupied Territories, or live apart. From the age of 12, their children will be denied Israeli citizenship or residency and forced to move out of Israel.

The law only applies to Palestinians. Persons from any other country who marry Israelis are entitled to become Israeli citizens. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian-Israeli marriages are between Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.

B'Tselem, the Israel-based Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, stated that the law “makes a cynical use of flimsy security arguments to disguise blatant discrimination. The bill is racist”.

Jafar Savah, from Mossawa, an advocacy centre for Palestinians living in Israel, said: “We see this law as the implementation of the `transfer' policy by the State of Israel.”

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch sent a joint letter to the Knesset, urging members to reject the bill. “The draft law barring family reunification for Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens is profoundly discriminatory”, Amnesty said in a statement. “A law permitting such blatant racial discrimination, on grounds of ethnicity or nationality, would clearly violate international human rights law and treaties which Israel has ratified and pledged to uphold.”

From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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