http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/09/international/middleeast/09MIDE.html?ex=1027280726&ei=1&en=e4d073ab97b90780

Plan to Keep Israeli Arabs Off Some Land Is Backed

July 9, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG

JERUSALEM, July 8 - A cabinet vote endorsing a bill that
would bar Israeli Arabs from buying homes in Jewish
communities built on state land caused an uproar here
today, with critics in and outside the government calling
it racist.

On Sunday the cabinet voted, 17 to 2 with one abstention,
to support the bill submitted by Rabbi Haim Druckman, a
lawmaker from the rightist National Religious Party.

The bill, which would amend an existing law, says that
state land allocated to build communities in Israel will be
"for Jewish settlement only."

More than 90 percent of the land in Israel is state owned
or controlled; home purchases on such land are in effect
long-term leases. The bill seeks to entrench this
mechanism, which was designed to keep land in Jewish hands.


For full parliamentary approval, the bill must be voted on
three times. Today the Labor Party, a major partner in the
governing coalition, expressed opposition to it,
diminishing its chances.

Yet the cabinet's vote of support sharpened the debate here
over whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic, with
equal rights for its million Arab citizens.

Cabinet members from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud
joined religious and far-right ministers in voting for the
bill, with the exception of Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit,
who abstained. Mr. Sharon had left the cabinet meeting
before the vote took place, as had all but one Labor
minister, who voted against the bill. While a spokesman for
Mr. Sharon said he supported the legislation in principle,
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor Party
leader, accused the Likud ministers of stealing a vote
behind the backs of the absent Labor ministers.

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, who attends cabinet
meetings but is not a member, argued against the bill. In a
statement released by his office, he said he had "urged
ministers not to adopt an unnecessary law that could
further unravel the delicate threads bridging the divide
between Jews and Arabs."

The bill was designed to counter a March 2000 Israeli
Supreme Court decision that there could be no
discrimination between Jews and Arabs in allocating state
lands.

The court decision was handed down in a case involving an
Israeli Arab, Adel Kaadan, who was turned down when he
applied to buy land to build a home in the Jewish village
of Katzir in Galilee. Like many rural communities in
Israel, Katzir was built by the quasigovernmental Jewish
Agency, and Mr. Kaadan was rejected because he was an Arab.


The court ruled that the state could not discriminate in
allocating land, even if it was acting through the Jewish
Agency, part of whose mission is to establish communities
for Jews in Israel.

The bill seeks to invalidate the ruling by legislating that
communities be built exclusively for Jews. An explanatory
note attached to the bill asserts that the court decision
undermines the Jewish Agency's mission to settle Jews in
Israel - that the court "preferred the principle of
equality of a state of all its citizens to its value as a
Jewish state."

The attachment also says giving preference to settling Jews
is in keeping with a government policy "that recognizes the
need to Judaize various areas across the country."

In a column today in the daily Maariv, Rabbi Druckman
called the cabinet vote a "victory for Zionism" over a
court decision that had "created a dangerous precedent
undermining Israel's very right to exist as the state of
the Jewish people."

Mr. Kaadan, on the other hand, said that sponsors of the
bill sought to "create a new apartheid," and that ministers
supporting the legislation had forgotten Israel's
declaration of independence, which promises equal rights to
all citizens.

He recalled that he had wanted to move his family to Katzir
because it had better schools and services than those
available in his town, Baka al-Gharbiya. Israeli Arabs have
long complained of discrimination in state budgeting
decisions, which they say have hampered development of
their communities, fomenting high levels of poverty and
unemployment.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the
court petition on behalf of Mr. Kaadan, said "the nature of
democracy in Israel, as defined in the Israeli declaration
of independence," was at stake.

Yossi Sarid, leader of the opposition Meretz Party, was
more blunt. The government was "turning Israel into a
racist state," he said, "perhaps the most racist in the
family of democratic nations."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company