Israel’s Apartheid Breach of Loyalty Law
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Institutionalized racism defines Israeli rule – separate and unequal official policy under all coalition regimes.
Throughout its history, Israel ruthlessly discriminated against its Arab citizens and occupied Palestinians – denying them rights under international and its own laws afforded solely to Jews.
A nation affording rights to its favored citizens over others is profoundly anti-democratic – what Israeli apartheid rule is all about.
Israeli nation-state legislation was introduced in 2011, aiming to enshrine it into Basic Law, substituting for constitutional law, absent in the country.
It failed to be enacted earlier. A new version under consideration yet to become law defines Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people…(the) right to self-determination…unique to the Jewish people” – wanting discrimination against Arab citizens codified into law.
It recognizes Israel’s Jewish character over democratic values when both are at odds. They’re always at odds in a nation contemptuous of rule of law principles – democracy the way it should be considered heresy.
Last March, Knesset members approved a so-called “breach of loyalty” amendment to Israel’s 1952 Entry into Israel Law, letting the interior ministry revoke permanent residency permits from Jerusalemite Palestinians for “breach of allegiance” to the Jewish state – a flagrant violation of international law.
Residency documents can be also revoked for Palestinians considered a threat to the state – no evidence needed proving it, Israel’s High Court prohibited from overruling the interior ministry.
Joint (Arab) List MK Dov Boris Knenin blasted the amendment, calling it “bad and dangerous legislation,” adding:
“Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem contradicts international law. The residents of East Jerusalem live there not because they chose to be Israelis but because it is their home.”
Balad party MK Jamal Zahalka sharply said Israelis “entered (and annexed) East Jerusalem (illegally), and you have to leave it,” adding:
“This law is a crime. The real law should be the entry of the police and the Israeli authorities into East Jerusalem, and in order to enter there, you will need a passport and visas.”
Israel wants Jerusalem as its exclusive capital, the city being systematically Judaized by land seizures, home demolitions, and dispossession of its lawful Palestinian residents – an agenda ongoing for decades.
After Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967, it underwent legal and bureaucratic changes to its physical, cultural and spiritual character under Israel’s Judaization plan.
Illegal settlements were established and expanded, Arabs dispossessed for exclusive Jewish development and use.
Under military occupation, Israel transformed Jerusalem from a multi-cultural, multi-religious city into a predominantly Jewish one under its exclusive control.
Its goal is Judaizing the entire city, wanting Arabs to leave voluntarily, by dispossessions, or harsher means.
Israel’s July 1980 Jerusalem Law annexed the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
Months earlier in March, UN Security Council Resolution 465 declared that “all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation…and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development (and) have been established in breach of international law.”
Throughout its history, Israel consistently breached fundamental international laws, including countless Security Council Resolutions prohibiting its practices – acting with impunity, the world community doing nothing to hold its regimes accountable for high crimes, including preemptive wars of aggression.
In response to enactment of Israel’s “breach of loyalty” law, PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi blasted it, saying:
“By unethically stripping the residency of Palestinians from Jerusalem and depriving the rights of those Palestinians to remain in their own city, the Israeli government is acting in defiance of international law and is violating international human rights and humanitarian laws.”
The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel called the measure illegal under international law, explaining:
Jerusalem “Palestinian residents are a protected civilian population…(It’s) to impose upon them an obligation of loyalty to the occupying power, let alone to deny them the permanent residency status on this basis.”
Trump’s unlawful Jerusalem declaration heightened tensions throughout the Territories.
Around 30 amendments to the Entry into Israel Law were enacted since Israel’s 1967 seizure of East Jerusalem, “breach of loyalty” legislation the latest.
Thousands of Palestinians were evicted from the city in the last half century – the pace of expulsions perhaps to accelerate with the most one-sidedly pro-Israel regime empowered in Washington.
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