The Israeli cabinet is to ban Palestinians from marking the Nakba, (the Catastrophe) of the 1948 creation of Israel.
A draft law is up for parliamentary approval next week and will propose punishment of up to three years in prison for breaches of the prohibition, an official said on condition of anonymity.
The Nakba recalls the time when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were subjected to an Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing, losing their homes and land.
They and their descendants, an estimated 4.5 million people, are not allowed to return to their rightful homes till this day.
The descendants of 160,000 Palestinians who remained despite the Israeli campaign are called the Israeli Arab community, which comprises around 1.2 million people of the country’s total population of about seven million.
The government’s legal commission brought forward the law at the instigation of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s extremist Yisrael Beitenu party.
Israeli Arab MPs immediately slammed the proposal, branding it the act of an ‘apartheid regime’.
Civil rights association chairman Sammy Michael condemned the draft law, stating, ‘For the past year we have witnessed a worrying deterioration in Israel of the right to expression and other democratic rights.
‘Commemoration of the Nakba does not threaten Israel at all. It is a legitimate expression of the feelings of individuals and an entire people,’ he said.
Yisrael Beitenu, Israel’s third biggest party with 15 of the 120 seats in parliament, targeted Israel’s Arab minority during this year’s election campaign, adopting the slogan ‘No Citizenship Without Loyalty’.
Israeli Arabs have voting rights and enjoy a better standard of living than Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, but are still the target of discrimination.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman – accused by critics in Israel of ‘fascism’ and ‘racism’ – will require Israelis to take a loyalty oath, a move aimed mainly at the large Arab minority.
David Rotem, an MP with Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party who wrote the proposal said the full Knesset now has to approve it in three votes for it to become law.
The pledge of allegiance was a key element in Yisrael Beitenu’s campaign for the February general election.
The pledge states: ‘I pledge loyalty to the state of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state, to its symbols and values, to serve the state as much as I am required in military service or alternative service, as decided by law.’
Under this law, the interior ministry can revoke the citizenship of anyone who does not perform his military service or other civil service.
The bill by the secular nationalist party is aimed at Arab citizens – some 20 percent of Israel’s population – and at the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community who do not do military service that is mandatory for Israelis.
Israel has often come under international criticism for ‘racism’ and mistreatment of its Arab minority. They are the original inhabitants of the land – one fifth of today’s total population – descendants of Palestinians who remained despite being subjected to the Israeli campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’.
Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that creating their own state is a ‘legitimate right’ for Palestinians and necessary for Middle East peace and Israeli security.
‘No one would think seriously about peace in the Middle East without giving the Palestinians a state they have been persevering for for years.
‘It is their legitimate right,’ he said ahead of a formal visit to the United Arab Emirates.
‘The best guarantee for the security of Israel is setting up an independent, democratic, modern and viable Palestinian state.’
Sarkozy said that the construction of Jewish settlements – illegal under international law – in the occupied West Bank and occupied Jerusalem should stop as it is an obstacle to peace, adding that he would not compromise Israel’s right to live in peace.
‘I’m a true friend of Israel and will not compromise the right of Israel to live in peace and security,’ he added.
Sarkozy’s comments come ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 3rd in Paris.
Last week France denounced Netanyahu’s statement that Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal undivided capital.
The French president will arrive in the oil-rich UAE Gulf state later on Monday to inaugurate France’s first permanent military base in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will continue to expand settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank despite calls by the US to stop.
‘I have no intention to construct new settlements, but it makes no sense to ask us not to answer to the needs of natural growth and to stop all construction,’ he told the the cabinet.
During Netanyahu’s first official visit to Washington last week, US President Barack Obama told him that ‘settlements must be stopped,’ a call echoed by other senior administration officials and on Capitol Hill.
Israeli settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank are a major stumbling block in the Middle East peace process. Obama has vowed to push forward despite the new right-wing government in Israel.
Ultra-nationalist Lieberman ruled out a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders, saying such a move ‘would not end the conflict, would not guarantee peace or security. It would simply move the conflict to within the ‘67 borders,’ he said, referring to Israel.
Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and east Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and continues to occupy the territories with half a million illegal Jewish settlers.
The Peace Now anti-settlement group says more than 50 outposts have been erected since March 2001 and that the West Bank has more than 100 outposts.
The international community considers all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem to be illegal.
Briefing ministers on his Washington trip, Netanyahu said ‘clearly we need to have some reservations about a Palestinian state in a final status agreement. When we reach an agreement on substance, we will reach agreement on terminology.’
For the first time since he returned as prime minister Netanyahu publicly said the words ‘Palestinian state’ but stopped short of endorsing the concept, favoured by Washington, which Israel agreed under the 2003 ‘roadmap’ Middle East peace plan.
‘If we talk about a Palestinian state, we have to first and foremost verify what kind of sovereignty and rights this state will have,’ a senior official quoted Netanyahu as saying.