The schism within the coalition over the contentious Citizenship Law remained unresolved Monday night, although efforts to form a compromise between the government and coalition partner Ra’am (United Arab List) were ongoing as of press time.
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked (Yamina) and Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas were in discussions over various measures to improve the legal status of Palestinian spouses married to Arab-Israelis in return for his party’s support. But he is facing opposition from his own MKs to any such deal.
Although the Likud and other opposition parties have denounced the coalition over its inability to extend the law, which expires on Tuesday, they were yet to reveal whether they would vote against the measure as of Monday night, thereby guaranteeing its fall.
Their reticence to topple the law is because the security establishment deems the measure important to national-security interests, and the Likud and other opposition parties are concerned about their image should they vote against it.
Shaked has offered to improve the legal status of 1,500 to 2,000 of the 9,200 Palestinians who have a very basic “stay permit” in Israel in return for Ra’am’s agreement not to vote against renewing the law, the N12 news site reported.
The law would be extended for six months, during which efforts would be made within the coalition to find a long-term resolution.
Although Abbas has indicated a willingness to back the compromise, his own MKs are reportedly strongly opposed.
If the compromise would fail, the law was expected to still be brought to a vote in the Knesset plenum late Monday night, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid hoping the Likud and other opposition parties would chose not to vote against.
During a Yamina Party faction meeting, Bennett called on the opposition parties to vote in favor of the Citizenship Law, saying they needed to put national responsibility ahead of politics.
“I say to my friends in the opposition: There are things you do not play with,” he said. “The security of the country is a redline, and the country needs to control who enters and who gets citizenship.”
“Allowing thousands of Palestinians into the country and their naturalization for a quarter of a political point is simply not the correct thing to do,” he added.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was well aware of a recent assessment by the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) that failure to pass the law would harm Israeli security, Bennett said.
The Likud failed to make a decision as to how it would vote during a faction meeting just before 9 p.m., saying it would do so later in the night.
The Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law of 2003 prevents Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from obtaining citizenship, which other foreign national are able to secure. It is strongly opposed by Ra’am and left-wing Meretz, both coalition partners.
The law is scheduled to expire on Tuesday if it is not renewed. Netanyahu has refused to provide a safety net to the coalition to pass the measure. It was more important to topple the government than to ensure the Citizenship Law is extended, he said Monday.
The law was first passed in 2003 as a temporary statute that needs to be renewed every year due to security concerns that Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens could abuse their entry into Israel to commit terrorist attacks.
Lapid, Shaked and other senior coalition members have said the law is important to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority.
The law has imposed significant humanitarian problems on married couples in which one spouse is an Arab-Israeli and the other is Palestinian. It has been opposed by Meretz and Ra’am over such issues and for what they say is its “racist” nature, since it is designed to stop a particular ethnic group from gaining citizenship in the country.
Bennett called on the opposition to vote in favor of the Citizenship Law, saying “playing” with the security of the country was a “redline.” he called on the opposition parties to put national responsibility ahead of politics.
Speaking at a Yamina faction meeting Monday afternoon, Bennett said the state needs to control who enters the country and who gets citizenship. Netanyahu was well aware of a Shin Bet assessment that failure to pass the law would harm Israeli security, he said.
Lapid also called on the opposition to vote in favor of the law during the Yesh Atid faction meeting, adding that his party had always done so while it was in the opposition.
But if the law is toppled, it would “not be a catastrophe,” he said, and requests for residency and citizenship made for Palestinians under family reunification laws would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the Interior Ministry, implying that the granting of mass citizenship for Palestinians could therefore be avoided.
Netanyahu accused Bennett and Lapid of having “cooked up a porridge” of a government with left-wing Meretz and Ra’am, saying it was Bennett’s responsibility if he could not pass the Citizenship Law.
“Now they’re turning to us after they cooked up this porridge and are saying, ‘Help us eat this porridge we cooked for ourselves,’” he said.
“They say, ‘Show responsibility.’ Where was your responsibility when you formed this government? You formed a government that for the first time in the history of Israel is dependent on anti-Zionist elements,” he added.
Instead of renewing the Citizenship Law, the coalition should support the opposition’s far-reaching Basic Law for Immigration, which would permanently prevent Palestinians from obtaining citizenship through naturalization by marriage to Israeli citizens, Netanyahu said.