Israel and the risks of a law of identity

Editorial of the "World". The original promise of the Zionist project at the dawn of Israel was egalitarian. The Declaration of Independence of 1948, reference text after the Basic Laws, states that the state "will develop the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants" and "will be based on the principles of freedom , justice and peace ". In addition, "it will ensure full equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, regardless of belief, race or bad".

This distinction between citizens is, however, at the heart of the Basic Law adopted by the Knesset on July 19, which defines the state as "national home of the Jewish people." Israel, Jewish state: historical evidence for seventy years. But the message conveyed by this law, wanted by Benyamin Netanyahu, is excluding, even if its future translation remains obscure. It addresses the Arab minority (20% of the population), to signify that its members will forever be second clbad citizens. It undermines this formula that the leaders of the Hebrew State like to quote as a slogan that we never tire of without quite grasping the duties it imposes: "Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East -East.

This law is meant to be an identity marker. It recalls things acquired, such as the attributes of sovereignty: the anthem, the flag, the national holidays. But it also degrades the status of the Arabic language, considered until now as state language in the same way as Hebrew. He is promised a vague "special status" . This only symbolic humiliation is a slap given to Israeli Arabs.

Enemies of the Interior

Similarly, the law states that the state shall promote "the development of Jewish communities" considered as "national value" . In its original version, the text allowed a homogeneous community – to understand Jewish – not to accept an outside person. Despite the change in wording, the article gives a constitutional value to the establishment of municipalities populated by Jews. A form of de facto urban separation is thus validated. Yet Jewish settlers buying homes in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem claim the right to live everywhere.

This Basic Law creates a framework whose interpretation by the courts will be a major issue in the years to come up. What will the Supreme Court, guardian of the rule of law, say when it is seized in cases of discrimination against the Arab or Druze minority? What will be the room for maneuver if a company only wants to recruit Jews? Or if municipalities categorically refuse the purchase of property by non-Jewish people?

Like other European rights, the Israeli right is engaged on a slope of identity that requires to designate enemies, from the inside and from outside. Led by Mr. Netanyahu, she imagines herself at the forefront of Western civilization, facing the Islamist threat, as in the treatment of African migrants. In the last parliamentary elections, in March 2015, Mr. Netanyahu electrified his electorate in a video. "The rule of the right is in danger, he said. Arab voters go to polling stations in large numbers. NGOs on the left bring them by bus. The Basic Law is an extension of this ethnicizing vision of society.