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Families fight 'racist' Israeli citizenship law
By Heather Sharp, BBC News, Jerusalem
"To leave my children, I would die. I couldn't do it," says Lana Khatib.
Five years ago, Israel's controversial citizenship law marred her first year of marriage and still looms large over everything from supermarket shopping to her fears the family might face the prospect of separation.
Born and raised in Israel, they are too young to understand that their parents both consider themselves Palestinian, but their father Taiseer is an Israeli citizen while their mother is from the occupied West Bank.
And that means, under the current law, Mrs Khatib cannot apply for citizenship.
The law is at the centre of a long legal battle in Israel's Supreme Court, with the latest hearing last week.
For the Israeli government, it's about life and death - the prevention of lethal attacks and the survival of the only majority Jewish state in a post-Holocaust world.
For the law's critics, who include Jewish Israelis as well as Israeli Arabs, it's a struggle to use Israel's self-proclaimed standards of democracy and equal rights to overturn what they see as racist legislation.
Israeli Arabs - people of Arab descent who stayed in Israel after its creation in 1948 - make up about 20% of Israel's population.
They have long faced discrimination, and some Jewish Israelis fear them as a potential "fifth column".
The Citizenship and Entry Law was passed in 2003, during the second Palestinian uprising, as waves of suicide bombings targeted Israeli public places.
Many were launched from the West Bank, some with the help of Israeli Arabs.
Initially, the law - emergency legislation that has since been extended yearly - said that no-one with a West Bank or Gaza ID card would be given permission to move to Israel to be with a spouse there.
It was amended in 2005, allowing women over 25 and men over 35 to apply for temporary permits to live in Israel, but still ruling out citizenship for all but a handful of cases.
In 2007, it was expanded to apply to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
In contrast, other non-Jews who marry Jewish Israelis can apply for citizenship through a five-year process, subject to individual security checks.
Since the founding of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust, any Jew has been able to move to Israel and claim citizenship.
The law's critics argue that it contradicts Israel's self-declared commitment to equal rights for all its citizens.
Sowsan Zaher, a lawyer for the Israel-Arab rights organisation Adalah - one of several that have petitioned the Supreme Court against the law - says the principle behind it is "very, very dangerous".
"It stereotypes every person just because he belongs to a national and ethnic group and discriminates against him because of that," she says.
Likud MK Danny Danon: "I don't think it's a racist law but we have to make sure Israel stays a Jewish democratic country". If the law is overturned, eventually Israel will become "a Muslim state", he says, "the Jewish people will become a minority in their own country", and thus be "exterminated".
"Israel is not like any other country; it was founded on the idea that it will be place for all the Jews in the world as a refuge place," he says.
out of my place, of the place of my great, great, great, grandfather - before they came here to this land," he says.
The Supreme Court is likely to rule within the next few months.
BBC News - Families fight 'racist' Israeli citizenship law
By Heather Sharp, BBC News, Jerusalem
"To leave my children, I would die. I couldn't do it," says Lana Khatib.
Five years ago, Israel's controversial citizenship law marred her first year of marriage and still looms large over everything from supermarket shopping to her fears the family might face the prospect of separation.
Born and raised in Israel, they are too young to understand that their parents both consider themselves Palestinian, but their father Taiseer is an Israeli citizen while their mother is from the occupied West Bank.
And that means, under the current law, Mrs Khatib cannot apply for citizenship.
The law is at the centre of a long legal battle in Israel's Supreme Court, with the latest hearing last week.
For the Israeli government, it's about life and death - the prevention of lethal attacks and the survival of the only majority Jewish state in a post-Holocaust world.
For the law's critics, who include Jewish Israelis as well as Israeli Arabs, it's a struggle to use Israel's self-proclaimed standards of democracy and equal rights to overturn what they see as racist legislation.
Israeli Arabs - people of Arab descent who stayed in Israel after its creation in 1948 - make up about 20% of Israel's population.
They have long faced discrimination, and some Jewish Israelis fear them as a potential "fifth column".
The Citizenship and Entry Law was passed in 2003, during the second Palestinian uprising, as waves of suicide bombings targeted Israeli public places.
Many were launched from the West Bank, some with the help of Israeli Arabs.
Initially, the law - emergency legislation that has since been extended yearly - said that no-one with a West Bank or Gaza ID card would be given permission to move to Israel to be with a spouse there.
It was amended in 2005, allowing women over 25 and men over 35 to apply for temporary permits to live in Israel, but still ruling out citizenship for all but a handful of cases.
In 2007, it was expanded to apply to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
In contrast, other non-Jews who marry Jewish Israelis can apply for citizenship through a five-year process, subject to individual security checks.
Since the founding of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust, any Jew has been able to move to Israel and claim citizenship.
The law's critics argue that it contradicts Israel's self-declared commitment to equal rights for all its citizens.
Sowsan Zaher, a lawyer for the Israel-Arab rights organisation Adalah - one of several that have petitioned the Supreme Court against the law - says the principle behind it is "very, very dangerous".
"It stereotypes every person just because he belongs to a national and ethnic group and discriminates against him because of that," she says.
Likud MK Danny Danon: "I don't think it's a racist law but we have to make sure Israel stays a Jewish democratic country". If the law is overturned, eventually Israel will become "a Muslim state", he says, "the Jewish people will become a minority in their own country", and thus be "exterminated".
"Israel is not like any other country; it was founded on the idea that it will be place for all the Jews in the world as a refuge place," he says.
out of my place, of the place of my great, great, great, grandfather - before they came here to this land," he says.
The Supreme Court is likely to rule within the next few months.
BBC News - Families fight 'racist' Israeli citizenship law
