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The 'democratic' state of Israel

What is democracy?

The former East Germany called itself the German Democratic Republic, although nobody could realistically claim that it was actually a democratic state. So what is democracy? According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th edition) democracy is:

1. a. a system of government by the whole population, usually through elected representatives.
   b. a state so governed.
   c. any organization governed on democratic principles.
2. an egalitarian and tolerant form of society.

1. a. government by the people; especially rule of the majority.
   b. a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
2. a political unit that has a democratic government.

A system of elections does not guarantee the representation of the people. When the main two political parties have been bought by large corporations (as in the United States), or where the choice of candidates is limited to those with particular viewpoints (such as in the Communist Soviet Union), the holding of elections every four or five years is nothing more than an empty ritual.

Israel is a special case, the only current example of an "ethnic democracy". One wonders if the term could be applied to Germany in the 1930s as an "Aryan democracy". Since many people feel that the Oxford meaning 2 ("an egalitarian and tolerant form of society") is very important, it would imply that there is an inherent contradiction between "ethnic" and "democracy".

The situation in Israel

In Israel where the state is legally considered to be both Jewish and democratic, Israeli social scientists tended, until recently, to underplay the inherit contradiction in this definition, arguing that Israel is part of the enlightened, civilized and liberal Western-world, although geographically located in a region known for its infamous characteristics of despotism, irrationality and backwardness. Yet, this demagogic line of explanation could not hold forever, as in Israel lives a remnant of the indigenous Palestinian population. In 1997 they numbered about one million (within the pre-1967 Green Line), comprising 19 percent of Israel's population. The legitimacy and the proclaimed raison d'être of Israel as a state that attends to the needs and interests of the Jewish people – both its citizens and those who reside in other countries – relegate these Palestinians to a status of second class citizens, thus violating the principles of equality and shared citizenry which lie at the heart of the democratic experience.

– Israel As Ethnic Democracy: What Are The Implications For The Palestinian Minority? by Ahmad H. Sa'di, 2000.

Arabs in Israel, although full citizens under the law, suffer political discrimination based on decades of social exclusion. As an ethnic democracy, the nationalism inherent in Israel’s foundation as a "Jewish state" is at odds with its political basis of democratic governance vis-à-vis the Arab minority. Although there is no official policy of discrimination, Arabs are restricted from military service and political organizing as a 1985 law has required that to participate in elections Arab parties must accept the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.

– Assessment for Arabs in Israel from MAR (Minorities At Risk), 31 December 2003.

Political Participation

Palestinian Arabs' [i.e. Israeli Arabs'] rights to run for elections to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, are limited by their acceptance of the notion of the Jewish state. These limits are expressed in the Law of Political Parties (1992) and, in particular, the amendment of section 7A(1) of the Basic Law: The Knesset which prevents candidates from participating in the elections if their platform suggests the "denial of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people." Under this section a party platform that challenges the Jewish character of the state, that for example calls for full and complete equality between Jews and Arabs in a state for all its citizens, can be disqualified, as lists have been in the past. The law demands that Palestinian Arab citizens may not challenge the state's Zionist identity.

– Discrimination in Israeli Law from The Arab Association for Human Rights, 12 June 2002.

Education

The Israeli government operates two separate school systems, one for Jewish children and one for Palestinian Arab children. Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children colors every aspect of the two systems. Education Ministry authorities have acknowledged that the ministry spends less per student in the Arab system than in the Jewish school system. The majority's schools also receive additional state and state-sponsored private funding for school construction and special programs through other government agencies. The gap is enormous – on every criterion measured by Israeli authorities.

– Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools from the Human Rights Watch.

Land

What would we say if an American institution, holding a seventh of all the land in the United States, adopted statutes that allowed it to sell or rent land only to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants?

We would not believe it. And it is, indeed, impossible.

But that's the way things are in Israel. This is now the subject of a stormy public debate.

These are the facts: The Jewish National Fund (in Hebrew Keren Kayemet le-Israel – KKL) holds 13% of all the land in Israel. Its statutes explicitly prohibit the sale or rental of land to non-Jews. This means that every Jew in the world, living anywhere from Timbuktu to Kamchatka, can get land from the KKL, without even coming to Israel, while an Arab citizen of Israel, whose forefathers have lived here for hundreds – or even thousands – of years, cannot acquire a house or an apartment on its land.

The debate arose after a recent ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court which proscribed discrimination between citizens in the distribution of land. On the strength of this, the KKL has been sued. Now the Attorney General has decided that the Government cannot discriminate against Arab citizens, even while distributing land belonging to the KKL.

This is all very nice, but there is a 'but'. The best legal brains looked for a way out: How to keep the discrimination alive in spite of the court's decision? No Problem. The Attorney General simply proposes that for every dunam (1000 square meters, a Turkish measure still applied in Israel) that the KKL will have to distribute – God forbid – to Arabs, the government will compensate it with another dunam somewhere else. The alternative land will be in the 'peripheral' areas, the Negev and the Galilee, where it is much more profitable. And for good measure, the government will guarantee that the annual revenues of the KKL will reach half a billion Shekels. Thus the cake will be divided but remain whole.

The KKL, by the way, appoints almost half the directors of the 'Israel Land Authority', the government body that is in charge of all state-owned land in Israel.

In this situation, 20% of the citizens of Israel are denied the right to buy a home in large parts of the country, while this right is enjoyed by Jews living in Brooklyn and Odessa.

– Dunam After Dunam by Uri Avnery, 05 February 2005.

World chairman Shlomo Gravetz of the JNF [Jewish National Fund] does not deny that the land in Israel does and should continue to belong to the Jewish people. “This land and our souls are inseparable,” he says. “It gives us a sense of freedom and liberty. It belongs in Jewish hands. It is our rule, our mission and our historical duty.”

He added that “Arabs should not forget that this is Jewish land and they are a minority. We deserve it after what happened 50 years ago. We hope the minority Arabs will internalize it and understand it. After all, they are only 20 percent of the population, so they shouldn't try to force us to change.”

Gravetz insisted that Arabs would be wise to “adjust to the system which is a Jewish state” and not “dare to doubt Jewish sovereignty over it.” He hastened to add, however, that Israel is a liberal and democratic country that is “providing all the elements of a free society to all its citizens.”

– The Jewish National Fund and World Zionist Organization: The Hidden Faces of Israeli Racism by Maureen Meehan, July/August 1999.

Marriage

On July 31 2003, the Knesset amended the Citizenship Law (1952), denying citizenship to applicants who are spouses of Israelis if these spouses come from the West Bank or Gaza. The amendment will stand for at least one year and then come up for renewal. It will immediately affect more than 20,000 families, while limiting the marital prospects of many more.

No Israeli law prevents Arab citizens from marrying Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. A new amendment to the Citizenship Law, however, makes such marriages impossible unless the Arab citizen leaves Israel. It freezes all naturalization procedures aimed toward family unification, where these concern Palestinians who have already married Arabs in Israel. It even forbids their continuing to reside in Israel as non-citizens. It does not help if the spouse has long been living here, has children here, and was well underway toward family unification.

The new amendment places such "mixed" couples before difficult choices: Either the Palestinian living in Israel must become illegal and go underground, or the family must split, or – and this would appear to be the law's hidden intent – the entire family must pull up stakes and move to the Occupied Territories.

– A Wall Through Arab Families by Michal Schwartz, December 2003.

Citizenship and Nationality

On every identification card issued before April 2002 there is a space for recording the card owner's nationality. The term 'nationality' here refers to one's nation as opposed to one's political citizenship. In Hebrew, this is expressed by two different words: ezrahut – citizenship; leom – nationality.

In most countries, nationality is synonymous with citizenship – a person who was born in a country is its citizen and also belongs to its nation. For the majority of Israeli citizens, however, the question of nationality is more complicated. When asked to define a Jewish citizen by the two very different terms nationality and religion, one comes up with the same answer: Jewish. In other words, a Jewish citizen also belongs to the Jewish nation, therefore his or her nationality is Jewish and citizenship is Israeli. The Ministry of the Interior is responsible for assigning nationality to Israeli citizens. Currently, the possibilities include Jewish, Arab or Druze. Individuals who do not fall into these three nationalities are registered by their country of origin or, alternatively, until recently the space on the identity card was left blank.
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Nationality would continue to be recorded in the Population Registry (Mirsham Ha-uchlusin), together with other personal details that do not appear on the identification card.

– The Teudat Zehut – Identification Card from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.