Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday his decision to promote a Basic Law defining ‘Israel’ as a ‘Jewish state’

Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday his decision to promote a Basic Law defining ‘Israel’ as a ‘Jewish state’.

“Israel already has Basic Laws that give adequate expression to the country’s democratic nature, and now needs one that articulates its Jewish character,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting adding that it will do so “without infringing on the individual rights of any Israeli citizen.”

Netanyahu said this law would reinforce the status of the Law of Return as a Basic Law, and anchor into a Basic Law the status of national symbols such as the flag, the national anthem, the status of Hebrew, “and other components of our national identity.” Netanyahu said these elements of ‘Israel’s national identity’ are under “constant and continuous attack” from abroad as well as from home.

The State of Israel’s existence, he said, flows from it being the “national home of the Jewish people and the deep link between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel.”

“There are, of course, those who do not want Israel to be defined as the nation state of the Jewish people,” he said. “They want a national home for the Palestinians to be established alongside us, and that Israel will gradually turn into a bi-national, Arab-Israeli state, inside shrunken borders.”

But, Netanyahu said, it is impossible to hold the “national stick” at both ends.
“They cannot say they want to separate from the Palestinians in order to prevent a binational state, something which has a certain logic, and on the other hand sanctify a binational, Israeli-Arab state within the permanent borders of the State of Israel,” he asserted.

Netanyahu said that the wording of the law will be formulated in consultation with all the coalition partners, so that “it preserves the values of Israel as a Jewish democratic state.”

The head of one of those coalition partners, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua), said in a Zionist Radio interview that she is adamantly opposed to the law currently being discussed, and to “any law that gives superiority to the Jewish nature of the state over the country’s democratic values.”