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Israeli president criticizes right wing for nationalistic legislation

Xinhua, February 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin criticized right-wing politicians on Tuesday over recent legislation, charging it is discriminatory against Israeli Arabs.

The right wing politicians see Israel as a "democratic state for Jews," Rivlin said at the first Israel Conference on Democracy in an interview with the Ha'aretz daily newspaper, the daily reported.

"This is not something I will be willing to put up with," Rivlin said, adding that "peace (with the Palestinians) will come only when we are willing to live together without threatening them or them threatening us. We need to build confidence."

Proposed by the right wing Likud and Jewish Home parties, the controversial "Jewish State" bill was adopted by the Israeli government in September.

It seeks to enshrine the definition of Israel as a nation state of the Jewish people, signals out the Jewish "national rights" and downgrades Arabic from an official language to a language with a special status.

Reuven Rivlin, a former member of the Likud party known in the past for his nationalistic stance and objection to the two-state solution, became more and more known in recent years for his anti-discriminative and democratic stances.

He also criticized the law back in November, saying then that the law "places Jewishness before democracy."

The President also criticized Tuesday hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for his proposed plan to exchange territories where Israeli Arabs live with the Palestinian Authority amid any future agreement, advocating a transfer of Israeli Arabs to a Palestinian state. Israeli Arabs constitute 20 percent of the Israeli population.

"Even if the right will come and say that Um El Faham (an Arab village in northern Israel) was outside of the state of Israel's borders, this would be impossible. A treaty (with the Palestinian Authority) would not alter topography or the demography," he stressed.

Right-wing parties like the Likud, the Jewish Home and the ultra-Orthodox party Shas refused to take part in the conference (whereas center-left politicians did attend), since it was sponsored by the New Israel Fund.

Israeli right wing politicians charge the U.S.-based NGO, advocating for an equal civil society in Israel, supports groups they deem to be "anti-Zionist" like Adalah, the legal center for Arabs rights in Israel, as well as Betzelem, an Israeli NGO advocating for the rights of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Endit