Israel's Discriminatory Laws

There is no law in Israel which prevents discrimination against non-Jews. All such discrimination is completely legal. It is legal for a person to refuse to let a flat to an arab for instance. Insidious discrimination against non-Jews, such as this condoned by the law, is an everyday fact of living for Palestine arabs living in Israel.

As well as this unwritten discrimination, many of the actual laws of Israel are essentially anti-non-Jew. Some of these were passed soon after the 'State of Israel' was declared in 1948 and have never been repealed.

The Law of Return (1950) allows any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate to Israel and to reside there, yet Palestinian refugees do not have this right. Any Jew arriving in Israel automatically gains Israeli Nationality (Nationality Law 1952) yet a Palestinian arab must be 'naturalised' and fulfill stringent conditions to gain citizenship.

A series of land laws passed between 1945 and 1950 enabled vast areas of land belonging to Palestinian arabs to be confiscated. For example The Emergency Land Requisition (Regulation) Law, 1949 allowed government-appointed "competent authorities to requisition land or buildings needed for a number of purposes, including state defence, public security and the absorption of immigrants. Defence (Emergency) Regulations, 1945, article 125 granted military Governors the power to declare specific areas closed. Palestinian arabs were thus forbidden to enter those areas to cultivate their land. These "uncultivated" lands could then be confiscated by the Minister of Agriculture under Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste (Uncultivated) Lands) 1949. Then, under Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 1953, ownership of this confiscated land could be transferred to the State of Israel.