Racism spectre in Israel housing bill

By ERIC SILVER in Jerusalem

Opposition was mounting last night to a controversial plan by Ariel Sharon's Government to build state housing within Israel exclusively for Jews.

Left-wing and Arab MPs denounced as "racist" the Cabinet's decision to back a private member's bill barring Arabs from buying homes in new "Jewish" townships, built on state-owned land.

Israel has about one million Arab citizens, nearly 20 per cent of the population.

Shulamit Aloni, a veteran civil rights campaigner and former minister, said: "If we are not an apartheid state, we are getting much, much closer to it."

Azmi Bishara, of the Arab Balad party, said: "Racism has become an official ideology of the state of Israel."

Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein yesterday warned the Government that the law was likely to deepen the rift between Jewish and Arab citizens, and he urged ministers to think again.

The bill will be presented to Parliament after the long summer break. It is unlikely to pass into law, if at all, until next year. Even then, it could be subject to appeal in the Supreme Court.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Labour ministers and MPs would oppose the bill when it was debated.

Ben-Eliezer, the party leader, did not explain why his ministers refrained from fighting the measure at Monday's Cabinet meeting.

The decision was supported by 17 right-wing and religious party ministers. Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh was the only Labour representative who openly opposed it. Other ministers either left the chamber or muttered reservations.



The bill, promoted by Rabbi Haim Druckman, a National Religious Party MP, is designed to reverse a landmark Supreme Court ruling of March 2000, that it was unconstitutional to prevent an Israeli Arab, Adel Ka'adan, from moving his family into the new community of Katzir in the mostly Arab Wadi Ara valley northeast of Tel Aviv.

Katzir was itself an act of demographic engineering; an attempt to change the Arab-Jewish balance in the area.

Ka'adan is a nurse in the emergency ward of a hospital in the town of Hadera, where he has often treated victims of Palestinian suicide bombings.

He said yesterday that in one stroke the Government had destroyed the conciliatory efforts of peace-loving people on both sides.

Druckman, a veteran ideologue of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, hailed the Cabinet vote as "one of the Government's finest hours under Sharon's leadership", and an act that "brought back the colour to the cheeks of Zionism".



Critics have also condemned the timing of the bill. Israel is struggling to convince a sceptical world that it is not a racist state; that in the conflict with the Palestinians it has right on its side.

It is feared this measure will give Israel's enemies fresh ammunition in the public relations war.

- INDEPENDENT

Feature: Middle East

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