accessed and dated 8 Jun 2009:
“A community in northern Israel has changed its bylaws to demand that new residents pledge support for “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land” in a thinly veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission.
Critics are calling the bylaw, adopted by Manof, home to 170 Jewish families in Galilee, a local “loyalty oath” similar to a national scheme recently proposed by the far-Right party of the government minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Other Jewish communities in the central Galilee – falling under the umbrella of a regional council known as Misgav – are preparing similar bylaws in response to a court petition filed by an Arab couple hoping to build a home in Misgav.
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Traditionally some 700 rural communities in Israel, including 30 in Misgav, have weeded out Arab applicants by issuing automatic rejections through special vetting committees. Arab citizens make up one-fifth of the country’s population.
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However, the vetting system has been under threat since a court ruling in 2000 that required the committees to consider Arab applicants and justify their decisions.
In line with the ruling, the Zbeidats demanded the right to take a suitability test when their application was turned down in 2006. Examiners found Fatina too “individualistic” for life in a small community while her husband lacked “knowledge of sophisticated interpersonal relations”.
The Zbeidats then petitioned the courts against the use of vetting committees, saying they enforced “blatant discrimination” against Arab applicants.
Earlier this year, in an indication that the court was preparing to back them, it demanded that the attorney-general explain why the vetting committees should continue.
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The bylaw, accepted by an overwhelming majority in Manof, stipulates that applicants must share “the values of the Zionist movement, Jewish heritage, settlement of the Land of Israel … and observance of Jewish holidays”.
It also proposes that local children be encouraged to join the Zionist youth movement and the Israeli army.
A similarly worded proposal will come before another Misgav community, Yuvalim, later this month.
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Misgav promotes itself, in the words of its website, as a model of “ethnic pluralism” because it includes 5,000 Bedouin.
However, critics note that Misgav’s Bedouin live in a handful of separate communities deprived of the land available to the Jewish communities.The Bedouin inhabitants are generally denied basic services such as water and electricity, as well as schools and medical clinics. In one, Arab al Naim, the inhabitants are forced to live in tin shacks because permanent structures are demolished by the state.”
