MK Betzalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) attacked the prime minister and the attorney general this morning, Sunday, following the intention to formulate a new and softened version of the controversial clause in the Nationality Law.
Earlier, a compromise was reached on the Nationality Law, after Prime Minister Netanyahu met this morning with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and it was decided to soften the clause that allows for Jewish-only communities, Srugim reported.
It was agreed that the wording of the law would explicitly say that the state would encourage, consolidate, and strengthen Jewish settlement, in a manner that makes it clear that encouraging Jewish settlement is a legitimate realization of the Zionist vision and is not illegal discrimination or inequality.
Smotrich said the compromise "castrated" the Nationality Law and emptied it of practical content.
"Those who do not know how to defend the fact that the State of Israel is a Jewish state in practice should return the keys and go home. The attempts by Netanyahu and Mandelblit to castrate the Nationality Law and empty it of practical content are one capitulation too much.”
According to Smotrich, "Zionism has always been based on the establishment of Jewish settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel, out of recognition of the fundamental fact that where the plow passes, so do security and sovereignty. The Nationality Law was designed to correct the distortion that the Supreme Court created with the help of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which turned Zionism into the dead territory of the state and of policy.”
"Netanyahu capitulated on infiltrators, capitulated in the face of kite terror, and now he also capitulates on the Nationality Law and denies the most basic values of Zionism," Smotrich said.
"One who cannot, in the year 2018, utter the words ‘Judaization of the Negev and the Galilee’ has lost it. Netanyahu is giving up on the Judaization of the Negev and the Galilee and is surrendering to the left," Smotrich said.