Military Rule in Israel 1948-1966 (II)125
“The decision of the Israeli Supreme Court to uphold this law which allows housing
discrimination against Palestinians is no surprise. It is part of the same containment
policies as during the military regime; therefore, the court’s decision will result in the
continued concentration and containment of the Palestinian population in Israel. It is a
clear message from the Jewish State of Israel to its Arab citizens: stop asking or even
dreaming of having Arabs in Jewish communities.
In the past there was no need for commission committees because of two things; first,
there was no need for any admission law, because no Palestinian would ever want to live
in a Jewish-only community and, secondly, they knew that they would never be accepted.
Every Palestinian child knows since early age that these are Jewish communities, Jewish
villages or cities so there is no place for them. Only one Palestinian lawyer decided that, if
Israel claims to be a democratic state,then he wants to live in a high quality village and to
send his children to a good school, but this was part of the small parenthesis of the illusion
of Israel becoming a normal State.
The trick that Israel uses, like any other colonial state, is that it wants to maintain the
homogeneity of the community; each community should be homogenous for the good
of everyone. Their narrative is that it is good to have a poor neighborhood, a rich
neighborhood, a Jewish one and an Arab one, and why mix them?”
The other framework allowing for admission committees to decide which
citizens can live in certain cities was created by the Israeli Parliament with the
Admission Committees Law in 2011. The Law legitimized existing committees
in 434 communities with fewer than 400 families in the Naqab (Negev) and
in the Galilee, constituting approximately 43 percent of all residential areas
in Israel.126 The Admission Committees Law makes it possible for the JewishIsraeli majority communities to reject people who want to move to such
locations, if the latter fail to meet the “social suitability” criteria described
in the law.127 A clause was added in the legislative hearings in order to forbid
admission committees from discriminating on the basis of race, religion,
gender, nationality or disability. However, it is still possible for the members
of the committees to discriminate, as long as they claim that candidates are
rejected because they are found “unsuitable” to fit in with the community’s
125 BADIL’s interview with Michel Warchawski, founder of the Alternative Information Center, “Military
Rule in Israel 1948-1966”, Jerusalem, October 2015
126 Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “Israeli Supreme Court upholds “Admission
Committees Law” that allows Israeli Jewish communities to exclude Palestinian Arab citizens”, 17
September 2014. Available at: http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8327; Human Rights Watch,
“Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens”, 30 March 2011. Available at: www.hrw.org/
news/2011/03/30/israel-new-laws-marginalize-palestinian-arab-citizens
127 Human Rights Watch, “Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens”, 30 March 2011.
Available at: www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/30/israel-new-laws-marginalize-palestinian-arab-citizens
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