By passing the nation-state bill Israel has entrenched and exacerbated 70 years of inequality and discrimination against non-Jews in a law with constitutional status Amnesty International tweeted on Thursday.
“Palestinians making up 20% of Israel’s population are now officially second class citizens” Amnesty’s tweet read. “Israel must uphold human rights for all.”
The Israeli Knesset voted 62 to 55 early Thursday to approve the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law that constitutionally enshrines the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
It guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion racism and systemic inequality. It is considered as the “law of laws” capable of overriding any ordinary legislation.
The danger of the law lies in the act that it denies the Palestinian citizens their right to self-determination to instead be determined by the Jewish population. The Jewish Nation-State bill officially legalizes apartheid in what observers dubbed one of the most dangerous laws adopted in recent decades to legalize discrimination against Arabs.
