JERUSALEM
Palestinians who remained on their land – on which Israel was created in 1948 –have since reeled under a host of "discriminatory" laws issued by consecutive Israeli governments, Palestinian activists say.
"We're talking about 45 laws that can be considered discriminatory against Arab citizens of Israel," Hassan Jabareen, who heads the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), told Anadolu Agency.
"The discrimination started with laws related to land before it turned to laws related to humans; new laws now target citizenship, identity and freedom of speech," he added.
According to Jabareen, the first such law was established only one year after the Nakba – a term that means "catastrophe" in Arabic and refers to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land when the state of Israel was founded in 1948.
That law, he said, designated the menorah as the emblem of Israel and the flag of the Zionist Movement as the flag of the nascent Israeli state, while restricting national holidays to exclusively Jewish ones.
In 1950, the Israeli government issued five laws that are still adversely affecting the lives of the Palestinians – namely, the laws of absentees' property, return, citizenship, access to Israel and land acquisition, he said.
Based on the latter law, Israel confiscated between 1.2 and 1.3 million dunams of Arab land, he said. One dunam of land is roughly equivalent to 1,000 square meters.
The absentees' property law, meanwhile, was the main tool for Jewish families to assume ownership of the property of Palestinians displaced by the Nakba, as well as Islamic waqf property.
The Absentees' Property Law defined an "absentee" as a person who, at any time during the period between Nov. 29, 1947 and May 19, 1948, was the legal owner of any property (land, houses, assets, etc.) situated in the area of what is now Israel or who enjoyed or held the property in question and ceased to exist in their usual place of residence.
The law also gave the Israeli government the right to appoint a "Custodianship Council for Absentees' Property" to manage confiscated property.
While fast-tracking land-related laws, the Israeli authorities also enacted legislation to encourage Jewish immigration while restricting the return of Palestinian families to their land.
According to the Adalah NGO, the 1950 Law of Return gave Jews the right to live in Israel and to gain citizenship once they arrived in the newly-founded state.
The law was modified in 1970 to extend the right of return to non-Jews who have a single Jewish grandparent and their spouses.
Israel, however, did not make any similar law granting Palestinians the right to return to their land – even if they were born inside Israel.
To make things worse, the NGO said, the 1952 nationality law prevented Palestinians who left their land in 1948 from obtaining the Israeli nationality or a residence permit with the aim of closing the door to a return of Palestinian refugees to their land.
Later, the Israeli government issued the State Education Law (1953), which called for enhancing the "values" spelled out in Israel's Declaration of Independence.
Another law mandated the country's broadcasting authority with broadcasting programs to reinforce Israel's status as a "Jewish" and a "democratic" state, the NGO said.
Israeli law also banned the registration of any party if it opposed the existence of Israel as a "Jewish" and "democratic" state, the NGO added.
"All these laws are a shame for Israel because, if they meant anything, it would mean that it's an undemocratic state," Wadie Abu Nassar, a Palestinian expert in Israeli affairs, told Anadolu Agency.
"The number of such discriminatory laws has increased recently with the aim of restricting the Arab presence in Israel and the existence of any power that might advocate for the Palestinian cause," he said.
Abu Nassar cited a 2011 law that criminalizes Israeli citizens or organizations that promote the boycott of Israeli institutions or Jewish settlements.
Jabareen, a prominent Arab Israeli lawyer who has challenged such laws in court, told Anadolu Agency that many of the laws considered "discriminatory" against Arabs and Palestinians were issued in the 1950s, but added that many others had been issued since 2001.
"Israel used the Second Palestinian Intifada as a pretext to pass many unfair laws, which they employed to establish the separation barrier in the West Bank and isolate the Gaza Strip," he said.
"It also prevented the reunion of Palestinian families whose members are separated between Israel and the West Bank under the pretext of security," he added.
Under the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law of 2003, citizens of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are considered ineligible for automatic Israeli citizenship and residency permits, which are generally available through marriage to an Israeli citizen – even if he or she is of Palestinian descent.
The law has torn apart thousands of Palestinian families whose members have been forced to live in either Israel on one hand or the Gaza Strip or West Bank on the other.
"The law sparked an international outcry, as the Israeli Supreme Court cited security reasons for sanctioning the law, while the objective is demographic in principle," Jabareen said.
"So after the focus of Israeli laws had been on targeting Palestinian land, it shifted to identity, citizenship and freedom of speech," he added.
"For example, it mainly targets Israeli citizens; mainly, the Arabs who make up the main community calling to boycott Israeli institutions and products from Jewish settlements to pressure the Israeli authorities to end the occupation and stop discriminatory practices," Jabareen said.
"So that law mainly targets Arabs in Israel," he added.
Today, there are around 1.4 million Arabs in Israel who account for around 20 percent of the country's total population, according to official Israeli figures.
The Israeli Arab community is constantly complaining of "discrimination" – an allegation repeatedly denied by Israel.
But Jabareen fears the victory of the right-wing Likud Party in recent parliamentary elections will lead to more "anti-Arab discrimination" in Israel.
He expects that Likud's electoral victory will give another push to the notion of Israel as the "national homeland of the Jewish people."
"The rise of the right wing will embolden it to strip the Supreme Court of its powers to rule on the constitutionality of laws passed by the Knesset [parliament]," Jabareen said.
"I think they [right-wing parties] will also try to target human rights watchdogs. And all the popular support they have will probably just encourage them further," he added.
