Apartheid

170
since Orthodox rabbis (who alone are authorized to perform weddings in Israel) refuse to
officiate at what they view as mixed-marriage ceremonies. An Israeli who wishes to marry a
non-Jew must leave the country to marry. And even then the Interior Ministry may not accept
the validity of such a marriage. Prior to the outbreak of the Second Intifada, it declared that
non-Jewish spouses could not enter Israel under the Law of Return, but had to apply under
regular immigration rules.’ 338
On June 18, 2003, a new law passed a first reading in the Israeli Parliament, the
Knesset, although it was compared by a minority of oppositional Knesset members, Jews and
Palestinians, to the Nazi Nuremberg laws and other racist laws forbidding interracial
marriage, such as those in apartheid South Africa and in the USA. The law forbids
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who marry Israelis, whether Jews or Arabs, from
ever gaining Israeli citizenship, thus making residence and even employment more difficult.
The law also targets children of marriages between Israelis and Palestinians from the occupied
territories, who will be denied citizenship and residency and forced to leave Israel after the
age of 12. Aside from several Knesset members, human rights organizations such Amnesty
International, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and Human Rights
Watch, and intergovernmental organizations such as the UN Human Rights Commission
(UNHRC), the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD), the
UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (UNCEDAW), the
European Parliament, among others, have also condemned the law as racist. The ‘temporary’
law, which only referred to Palestinians from the ‘region’ and not to any other group of
people, remained in force for three years. It then became permanent by passing a Supreme
Court vote in 2006. Human rights groups who tried to influence High Court judges to drop the
law were severely hindered by the fact that there is no guarantee of equality in Israeli law, a
highly inconvenient fact for anyone who is not Jewish. Since 1993, 22,000 Palestinians have
applied to be united with their spouses in Israel but only 6,000 have been allowed to do so. 339
And from now on, no one will be allowed at all. The differences to South Africa are of course
huge from a legal point of view. Interethnic marriage and interethnic sexual relations are not
formally banned in Israel. But in practice, the results – ethnicism and ethnic segregation – are
fully equivalent to apartheid in South Africa and elsewhere.
So why is Israel so racist? There is a hysterical fear among elite Jews of becoming part
of an ethnic minority. ‘We have to bring over here in the coming 10 or 12 years another
million Jews,’ Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon said in 2001 as he tried to drum up support
for increased immigration of Jews in Israel from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia,
Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. ‘We have by the year 2020 to create a situation
where most of the Jewish people are living here. If we want them to stay Jews, if we want
them to be Jews, then they have to live here…Every effort should be made to bring Jews over
here,’ he added. 340
338 Szamuely, George: Laws of Return, New York Press, December 14, 1999
339 Cook: Israel’s Marriage Ban Closes the Gates to Palestinians, 2006; Urquhart: Palestinians Married to Israelis
Lose Court Battle for Residency, 2006; Abuminah: Israel: One More Step into Open Apartheid, 2003; N.N.:
Racist Legislation, January 18, 2005; Laor: Racism by Any Other Name, 2005; Dadoo: Love and Marriage in
Israel: Palestinians and Non-Orthodox Israelis Need Not Apply, 2004
340 N.N.: Israel’s Sharon Urges Jewish Migration to Homeland, February 27, 2001. Later in the same year,
Sharon publicly reiterated his plan, provoking an angry response from the Palestinian general delegate to Britain,
Afif Safieh, who commented: ‘It is a dangerous dream, a nightmare. He is a pyromaniac on a powder keg.’ Israel
had already attracted almost one million immigrants over the previous decade, illegally placing many of them in
settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. See N.N.: Sharon Says Wants One Million More Jews in
Israel, November 7, 2001. Despite Sharon’s and many others’ efforts to this effect, immigration to Israel dropped
28 per cent in 2001 and then a further 27 per cent in the first six months of 2002. The violence during the Second
Intifada and a worsening economic recession appeared to be the main factors behind the change. Britain and
France were the only two original home countries of immigrants to Israel that manifested an increase in output in
2002. Russia presented the biggest drop. N.N.: Immigration to Israel Down 27 pct, August 13, 2002