Conditional citizenship

[Poll_Blind]

From Ha'aretz:

One day, MK Gilad Erdan (Likud) came up with an idea for how to punish Arab Knesset members who travel to Beirut and Damascus: declaring that they have "broken faith" with the state and stripping them of their citizenship. The initiative added a patriotic headline to Erdan's collection of press clippings.

(The Ministerial Committee on Legislation adopted the plan this week, being sent to Knesset for possible legislation)

"Breach of faith" will presumably not include, for example, a decision to send the nation into an unnecessary and failed war, or expanding the corrosive occupation of the territories, or governmental corruption in general. Rather, this bill belongs among the plethora of initiatives aimed at effecting a "transfer" of Arabs.

The idea of overt transfer, fruit of the nationalist thought of David Ben-Gurion and the religious racism of Meir Kahane and others, has in recent years given way to pseudo-legitimate initiatives such as Avigdor Lieberman's proposal to draw new borders that would leave many Arab Israelis outside the country. Similarly, there are currently people writing learned working papers that ostensibly deal with ways to change the system of government. But in practice, more than a few of these proposals are aimed at crushing Arab Israelis' electoral strength and their Knesset representatives.

The State of Israel grants citizenship with intolerable ease to anyone whom it defines as a Jew. But in recent years, it has become one of the most benighted countries in the world when it comes to granting citizenship, or even mere residency rights, to people who are not Jewish. In this context, it developed a mechanism for the mass deportation of foreign workers. Not many are aware of this, and few object to it. The withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantlement of the Gush Katif settlements also failed to create a real trauma, and to some degree, it even bolstered the option of a mass expulsion. Similarly, one cannot rule out the possibility that an expulsion of Arab Israelis would pass without widespread opposition - for instance, on the pretext that they had "broken faith" with their country.
--snip--

PB