The Cabinet, meeting yesterday, approved the establishment of new exclusively-Jewish towns in the Galilee. The decision was made in response to a Supreme Court ruling in April 2000 forcing the town of Katzir to accept an Arab family that wished to buy a home there. Seventeen ministers voted in favor of the plan, and only two ministers opposed it. One of them, Minister Dan Meridor (Center Party), told Israel Radio this morning that it is absurd that a Jew who did not serve in the IDF may live in a community while a high-ranking Druze military commander may not. Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, who abstained, said that it would be a hard law to defend internationally. Labor Party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who, together with the other Labor ministers, did not take part in the vote, said that his party would vote against the new law in the Knesset, and that the Cabinet vote was a \"grab.\" MK Rabbi Chaim Druckman, who sponsored the bill, dismissed this claim, saying that the ministers receive the agenda for the weekly Cabinet meeting days in advance.
A Jewish resident of Katzir, Gil Ronen, told Arutz-7 today that the Arab family\'s motives in wanting to move there were clearly of a provocative nature: \"They played soccer during the sounding of the siren on Memorial Day, they would walk around with reporters and tell us that they plan to get rid of us in democratic ways, they said they would demand to build a mosque, and the like...\"
MK Rabbi Druckman (National Religious Party), the new bill\'s sponsor, explained to Arutz-7 today that he began working on this proposal after the Katzir ruling:
\"I was amazed to see that the Supreme Court ruled that the Jewish Agency could not set aside land for an exclusively-Jewish town and that there could not be an all-Jewish community in the State of Israel, the State of the Jews! ... First I thought that I had misunderstood, since the law governing the Jewish Agency says that one of its functions is to encourage settlement of the Land - and obviously this refers to Jewish settlement! But since the Court ruled otherwise, I wanted to fix this loophole...
\"In addition, at one point when a Jewish family wanted to live in a Bedouin neighborhood, another Supreme Court panel did not allow it to, out of concern for the special character of the neighborhood, etc. Why this double standard? ... Equality means that every group must have neighborhoods in which to live...\"
Rabbi Druckman said that he hoped that the commonly-heard predictions that the Supreme Court would strike down the new law would not come true: \"The Court said that all-Jewish towns are against the law, so that if the law changes, there should be no objection.\"
Chief Justice Aharon Barak, addressing the World Zionist Congress last month, said that the controversial ruling forcing Jewish communities to allocate land to Arab citizens who wish to live there \"is a Zionist ruling in the true sense of the term. It is the embodiment of Zionism, which seeks to see Israel as the National Home of the Jewish People, between whose walls exists complete equality of all its residents.” When informed of this today, Rabbi Druckman responded:
\"With all due respect to Justice Barak, we do not yet live by his word as to the meaning of the concept of Zionism. I do not think that Zionism means that an Arab must live specifically in a Jewish community. I understand that there must be equality, that they must also have communities - but that they must live in Jewish towns is equality? I wonder in which lexicon he found that!\"
A Jewish resident of Katzir, Gil Ronen, told Arutz-7 today that the Arab family\'s motives in wanting to move there were clearly of a provocative nature: \"They played soccer during the sounding of the siren on Memorial Day, they would walk around with reporters and tell us that they plan to get rid of us in democratic ways, they said they would demand to build a mosque, and the like...\"
MK Rabbi Druckman (National Religious Party), the new bill\'s sponsor, explained to Arutz-7 today that he began working on this proposal after the Katzir ruling:
\"I was amazed to see that the Supreme Court ruled that the Jewish Agency could not set aside land for an exclusively-Jewish town and that there could not be an all-Jewish community in the State of Israel, the State of the Jews! ... First I thought that I had misunderstood, since the law governing the Jewish Agency says that one of its functions is to encourage settlement of the Land - and obviously this refers to Jewish settlement! But since the Court ruled otherwise, I wanted to fix this loophole...
\"In addition, at one point when a Jewish family wanted to live in a Bedouin neighborhood, another Supreme Court panel did not allow it to, out of concern for the special character of the neighborhood, etc. Why this double standard? ... Equality means that every group must have neighborhoods in which to live...\"
Rabbi Druckman said that he hoped that the commonly-heard predictions that the Supreme Court would strike down the new law would not come true: \"The Court said that all-Jewish towns are against the law, so that if the law changes, there should be no objection.\"
Chief Justice Aharon Barak, addressing the World Zionist Congress last month, said that the controversial ruling forcing Jewish communities to allocate land to Arab citizens who wish to live there \"is a Zionist ruling in the true sense of the term. It is the embodiment of Zionism, which seeks to see Israel as the National Home of the Jewish People, between whose walls exists complete equality of all its residents.” When informed of this today, Rabbi Druckman responded:
\"With all due respect to Justice Barak, we do not yet live by his word as to the meaning of the concept of Zionism. I do not think that Zionism means that an Arab must live specifically in a Jewish community. I understand that there must be equality, that they must also have communities - but that they must live in Jewish towns is equality? I wonder in which lexicon he found that!\"