Israeli govt fails to extend citizenship law
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Natali Bennet suffered defeat on Tuesday as lawmakers failed to extend a law that denies Israeli citizenship and residency rights to Palestinian spouses from the West Bank and Gaza.
The ban first enacted in 2003 during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, has been justified by supporters on security grounds but critics derided it as a discriminatory measure targeting Israel’s Arab minority.
Bennet supports the measure that has highlighted cracks in his ideologically disparate eight-party coalition, which has a wafer-thin majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.
In talks that ran through the night, the coalition sought a deal that would see nearly all of its members vote for the measure, including Jewish let-wingers and two Arab lawmakers from the Islamic Raam party.
In exchange, the government would grant residency or citizenship rights to more than 1,500 Palestinians with pending requests who have been living in Israel for many years.
But that compromise failed when a member of Bennet’s hawkish Yamina party, Amichai Chikli, voted with the opposition, tweeting on Tuesday that the fracas over the bill exposed “the problematics of a government” that relies on the nominally anti-zionist Raam party and the Jewish let.
“Israel needs a functioning Zionist government, and not a mismatched patchwork,” said Chikli, a vocal sceptic of the coalition crated by his party leader Bennet last month.
His defection let parliament tied at 59 votes to 59, meaning the measure was to lapse later on Tuesday.
Bennet had called for members of the rightwing opposition led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to support the measure in a plea for unity on national security grounds.
According to Israel’s N12 website, Netanyahu told members of his Likud party “the importance of toppling the government is greater” than renewing the ban.
“This isn’t just a law. It’s a law that exposes the fault line in this government,” added Netanyahu, who has made no secret of his desire to oust Bennet and reclaim the premiership he held for 12 consecutive years.
Ra am leader man sour ab bas, the first arab party chief to ever join an Israeli coalition, told army radio that the coalition needed to “take stock” ater the setback and would hold talks on the next steps.