Racist Israeli parliament extends its racist law preventing re-unification of Palestinian families

Israeli Knesset extends racist law against Palestinian families

[ 04/07/2008 - 09:11 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)--

The racist Israeli parliament (Knesset in Hebrew) has endorsed on Thursday the extension of a racist law denying Palestinian families the right to reunite with each others.

Human rights and legal organizations strongly condemned the law, and described it as flagrant violation of human rights of selecting their partners in life.

The law was mainly meant to break up Palestinian families as it disallows Palestinian couples of uniting with each others if one of the partners was a resident of the 1948-occupied lands, and the other resides in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian legal sources opined that the extension of the law for the fifth years was a prelude to make a permanent law with the aim to keep hundreds of Palestinian families scattered.

"Even during the era of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the supreme court there had abolished a similar law and agreed that it isn't allowed to separate a husband from his wife or a couple from their children", said Arab Knesset member MP Jamal Zahalqa during the Knesset meeting.

"You should learn lessons from South Africa, and you should know that the racist court [in that African country] had prohibited what you are trying to impose on the Arabs", Zahalqa underscored while addressing the Knesset members, adding that the "law exposes the ugly face of those who formulated and supported it".

Furthermore, Zahalqa underlined, "the Knesset couldn’t just brag about being democratic while enacting racist laws. What is indeed happening now was a a serious deterioration towards the road of apartheid being paved by a series of laws enacted by the Knesset every week".

Seconding Zahalqa's remarks, MP Saeed Naffa'a, another Arab Knesset member, pointed out that the law was a blatant violation of the Arab's civil rights, describing that law as clear discrimination between Arab youths and Israeli youths as it doesn’t apply to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Naffa'a also shrugged off the security reasons highlighted by the Knesset to justify the law, saying, "The mere existence of such an apartheid law in the Israeli constitution would simply mean that Israel is a racist state. Is this the state you want?".

For his part, MP Mohammed Baraka underlined that those who prepared such a serious racist law should stand an international trial, pointing out that although the Israeli supreme court rejected such a law and warned of its bad repercussion, the Israeli occupation government was hell-bent on imposing such a racist law.

"Only in Israel love and marriage are considered as security threats, which per se is a clear hallucination that destroys the lives of thousands of Arab families," said Baraka.

Finally, Baraka emphasized, "the majority bloc in the Knesset and the government that imposes whatever it wishes of laws should remember that it won't stay forever".

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