By a razor-thin 6–5 margin the Israeli Supreme Court recently upheld a provision in the Citizenship Law that denies permanent residency rights to Palestinian spouses of Israelis under a certain age. Some Palestinian spouses are able to obtain temporary residency permits but the thrust of the law is to limit the number of mixed Palestinian-Israeli Arab couples living inIsrael.
Opponents of the law argued that it is discriminatory. Admittedly in distinguishing Palestinian spouses there is a discriminatory element in the law.
The ultimate argument for the amendment to the Citizenship Law under discussion however is extra-constitutional: necessity. The provision was first enacted in 2002 after a Palestinian Arab married to an Israeli blew himself up in aHaifarestaurant killing 15. In the nine years prior to that 140 000 Palestinians were granted residency inIsraelunder the “family reunification” provision of the Citizenship Law. These new residents were responsible for 10 percent of the terrorist acts committed by Arabs resident inIsrael.
No state in the world grants citizenship to citizens of states with which it is in an active state of belligerency. That comes close to describing the Palestinian Authority and certainly the Hamas government inGaza. Even the “moderate” Palestinian Authority refuses to recognizeIsrael’s right to exist as a Jewish State and glorifies those who have carried out terrorist attacks onIsrael. Since the onset ofOslo the official Palestinian media and education system have whipped the population into a frenzied death cult celebrating the killing of as many Jews as possible. What sense would it make to offer admission to those who grew up in such an educational system or to require the Israeli government to determine on a case-by-case basis that the Palestinian spouse represented a security threat?
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