As of 2008.
"Constitutional Equality There is no provision in Israeli law for the concept of constitutional equality. It is absent from The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, which since 1992 has served as Israelās constitutional Bill of Rights.
9 While laws exist which protect the equal rights of disadvantaged groups such as women and the disabled, no general statute relates to the right to equality for all citizens. Moreover, there is no statute which specifically protects equal rights for the major Arab minority in Israel.
Military Service The Israeli Government uses military service as a requirement for various public benefits. Given that the vast majority of Palestinian-Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli military, this requirement camouflages as a racist policy. This limits the ability of many Palestinian-Arabs to receive āhousing loans preference in public employment, and financial aid for university study.ā
10 However, Yeshiva students who are granted exemptions from military service when requested, nonetheless receive some of these benefits due to the ātraditional place of Torah study in Jewish heritage.ā
11 Citizens without Citizenship The Israeli Law of Return grants automatic citizenship and financial benefits (oleh status) to any Jew looking to immigrate to Israel, to her/his spouse, children, grandchildren, and their respective spouses.
12 The right to acquire Israeli nationality automatically and without preconditions, on the basis of the Right to Return, was not merely granted to Jewish immigrants after the establishment of Israel, but was given retroactively to Jews who had immigrated to Palestine or had been born there before the creation of the State. However, Palestinian-Arab refugees who were expelled from their land and homes in 1948 are not granted the Right of Return and not even entitled to residency or citizenship status. Indeed, even spouses of Arab citizens of Israel can only gain citizenship of residency status thorough complicated and exhausting legal procedures. Like other states, to be born in Israel is one of the ways of acquiring Israeli nationality, provided that one of the parents is an Israeli citizen.
13 Therefore, an Arab born in Israel who is not included under Nationality Law and not granted the Right to Return and whose parents had not acquired Israeli nationality through residence in Israel (i.e. belonging to an āunrecognized villageā or denied status as an internally displaced person) would also not get Israeli citizenship on the basis of being born in Israel. Yet, the Jewish child automatically acquires Israeli nationality according to the Law of Return and is granted this nationality without other conditions.
14 Education The Israeli education system is based on the State Education Law of 1953. This Law established a system of schools designed to meet the explicit demands of the Jewish community. The objectives the Israeli education system as explicitly stated in Article 2 of this Law are to exclusively advance Jewish culture and Zionist ideology.
15 Discriminatory Curriculum The Minister of Education and Culture is authorized to set education curricula for each state institution and the Arab schools are not outside of the boundaries of Article 2 of this law. As no autonomous educational system has been established for the Arab community, Palestinian students are subjected to an educational curriculum which has been developed by and for the Jewish population: e.g. Arab students are expected to spend more time studying the Torah than their own religious texts; Zionist literature and poetry are included in the standard curriculum, but not Palestinian classics; matriculation exams include questions on Judaism, but not the Muslim, Christian, or Druze faiths.
16 In addition, studies have found that Israeli textbooks contain persistent negative and racist references to Arabs and Palestinians.
17 The Ministry of Education does not deny that the reason for such direct discrimination in the curriculum is fear that Arab history, culture, elements and symbols will ārouse national feelings among the Arab citizens.ā
18 In fact, the renowned works of Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish can be taught in the Israeli-Jewish curriculum, but are vehemently excluded from the Arab education system due to such fears, thus denying the needs of this community as a minority with a heritage and national affiliation. Discriminatory Funding for Education The inferior status of Arab schools is also largely due to discriminatory budget allocations, resulting in a lack of funding and resources. While nearly 1/3 of all Jewish students have received support from governmentfunded enrichment programs for impoverished students, Arab students are not eligible for these programs. In fact, there is no funding for educational enrichment programs for Arab students in Israel.
19 Also, government funded pre-schools do not operate in Arab towns or villages, and more than half of the tens of thousands of Arab children with special needs are denied access to appropriate classes or schools. The result of these and other societal discrepancies is that the education opportunities available to Arab students is vastly inferior to that provided to Jewish students and is reflected in the drop-out rates which, among 16-17 year olds is 40% for Arabs and 9% for Jews.
20 4 Political Participation Election to the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) is limited by 2 laws which require political parties to accept the āexistence of the State of Israel as a state of the Jewish people.ā21 In practice, these laws dictate that a political party calling for full equality of the Palestinian-Arab community in Israel may be disqualified. In order to become a politician of the Knesset, a Palestinian politician is forced to essentially negate her/his own identity, history and entitlement to equal rights. Unrecognized Arab Villages Approximately 100,000 Palestinians in Israel (10% of the Palestinian population) reside in villages which have been deemed āillegalā by the State and therefore cannot be found on any map, have no local council or government representation, and receive no government services such as: health facilities, running water, connection to a sewage or electricity network, safe access to major roads, postal services, connection to telephone network, adequate education facilities, environmental upkeep and security.22 These villages are known as āunrecognized villagesā and total 45 in the Naqab/Negev Valley and 9 in the Galilee. Most of these communities existed prior to the establishment of Israel and their residents continue to struggle to survive as citizens of a state that denies them their most basic rights and needs. In 1965 the Knesset passed the Planning and Construction Law, a national plan for future development. Dozens of Palestinian villages were denied official recognition by this discriminatory law and therefore excluded from development planning schemes.
23 Overnight, all buildings in these āunrecognizedā villages became retroactively āillegalā and āunlicensedā and therefore subject at any moment to demolition. At the same time, planning authorities were given the right to plan projects on these lands, establishing exclusively Jewish settlements on the remains of the villages. Land Confiscation There exists in Israel a multi-faceted framework of laws and military regulations which have granted the State the legal authority to confiscate Palestinian land and property. In addition to legal manipulation, Arab citizens of Israel are faced with a number of administrative practices to limit their use of the land, including discriminatory national planning and zoning regulations, as well as forced evictions and housing demolitions. Absentee Property Law In 1950 the Israeli government passed the Absentee Property Law which defined all those who were expelled, fled or left the country in the first few years of the war (1948-1952) as āabsenteesā and their property as āabsentee property.ā
24 The lands and properties of the refugees were also confiscated, transferred to an ad hoc custodian, and eventually used for the purposes of Jewish settlement. Those who remained within the State, even those who became Israeli citizens, were classified as āpresent-absenteesā and prevented from reclaiming their lands and possessions. Jewish National Fund Law The Jewish National Fund Law of 1953 dissolves and re-organizes the JNF from a company in the UK to an Israeli company, passing on its racist policies to the State. Under the said Law, the JNF was transferred to Israel and all its assets situated in the area of Jurisdiction of the Government. Much can be said about the racist policies of the JNF, but the story of the destroyed and uprooted Arab villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba for the erection of āCanada Parkā is an example that is indicative, not only of much of JNF activities beyond the Green Line, but also of JNF activities inside Israel-proper.
5 Basic Law: Israel-Lands Law and Israel-Lands Administration Law In 1960, these two laws were formulated on behalf of Israel government deeming that the land controlled by the JNF would now be administered by a single authority, the Israel Land Administration (ILA).25 However, it was agreed that āthe lands controlled by the ILA shall be administered according to the principles of the JNF,ā meaning that a Jew has a right to receive land controlled by the ILA, but a non-Jew does not enjoy this right āunless the apartment or plot of land is located in the special 'zone of residence' assigned to non-Jews.ā26 The JNF effectively controls the ILA and dominates committees set up to vet applicants to hundreds of rural communities. Given the JNFās declared goal of āpurchasing and developing land as a national resource of the Jewish people, by the Jewish people, and for the Jewish people,ā it forbids the ILA from selling or leasing of the land to non-Jews.27 This arrangement has allowed it to discriminate against Arab citizens on behalf of the Israeli government, denying them access in the form of leasing and cultivation to 93% of the land.
Special Status for Jewish Organizations Under the World Zionist Organization ā Jewish Agency Law of 1952 major Jewish and Zionist organizations are granted special status as quasi-governmental bodies. These organizations manage land, housing and service provision, almost exclusively serving the Jewish population.
30 As no non-Jewish organizations are granted similar status, this produces a remarkably lower quality of life for the Palestinian-Arab community. Israel: A Democracy for Jews Only Israel purports to be an ethnic democratic state, but these terms are self-contradictory. Section 1a of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom states that the purpose of the law is āto protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establishā¦ the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.ā
31 However, by establishing a hierarchy placing the interests of Jewish citizens above all others, the Israeli legal system creates the basis for a pervasive system of legal and social discrimination against its Palestinian-Arab citizenry.
http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=219
