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<\/p>\nBy Isabel Kershner, The New York Times<\/p>\n
JERUSALEM \u2014 The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved contentious draft legislation that emphasizes\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u2019s Jewish character above its democratic nature in a move that critics said could undermine the fragile relationship with the country\u2019s Arab minority at a time of heightened tensions.<\/p>\n The promotion of a so-called nationality law has long stirred fierce debate inside\u00a0Israel<\/a>, where opponents fear that any legislation that gives pre-eminence to Israel\u2019s Jewishness could lead to an internal rift as well as damage Israel\u2019s relations with Jews in other countries and with the country\u2019s international allies.<\/p>\n The vote on Sunday also highlighted political fissures within the governing coalition amid increasing talk of early elections. The bill, a proposal for a basic law titled \u201cIsrael, the Nation-State of the Jewish People,\u201d passed 14 to 6, with two centrist coalition parties opposing it. Parliament still has to approve the bill for it to become law.<\/p>\n Answering critics who have questioned why such legislation is necessary 66 years after the founding of the state, Prime Minister\u00a0Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>defended the push for legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many who are challenging Israel\u2019s character as the national state of the Jewish people,\u201d he said before the cabinet vote. \u201cThe Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0refuse to recognize this, and there is also opposition from within.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cThere are those \u2014 including those who deny our national rights \u2014 who would like to establish autonomy in the Galilee and the Negev,\u201d referring to areas of Israel with large concentrations of Arab citizens, who make up more than 20 percent of the population.<\/p>\n Mr. Netanyahu is expected to amend the draft before any final vote in Parliament to ensure, as he put it, the principle of \u201cequal individual rights for every citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n But Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, said there had long been tension between the halves of the term \u201cJewish democracy,\u201d as Israel defines itself.<\/p>\n Speaking by telephone from New York, where he was attending a conference at the United Nations, Mr. Tibi said the proposed legislation \u201cconfirms that the Jewish and democratic state is fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n He described Israel instead as a \u201cJudocracy\u201d that would never recognize the collective rights of a minority that has long suffered discrimination.<\/p>\n Adding to the rancor surrounding the vote, many here saw it as a cynical political maneuver intended by Mr. Netanyahu to buy the loyalty of hard-line members of his conservative Likud Party ahead of party primaries.<\/p>\n Among other things, the initial drafts promoted as private initiatives by right-wing lawmakers and approved on Sunday relegate Arabic from an official language to one with a \u201cspecial status.\u201d<\/p>\n In what appeared to be a political deal, Mr. Netanyahu promised government support for the hard-line versions of the bill in a first reading in Parliament this week on the condition that the law would be moderated before any final approval.<\/p>\n Israeli legal experts said such legislation would be superfluous, at best, and in its more radical form, undemocratic.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an unnecessary piece of legislation because Israel\u2019s Jewish and democratic nature is established in judgments and parliamentary legislation and in the Declaration of Independence,\u201d said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research center in Jerusalem, and a former member of Parliament.<\/p>\n Avinoam Bar-Yosef, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, another Jerusalem research center, said in a statement that any distortion of the balance between Israel\u2019s Jewish and democratic character \u201cmay stain Israel in the eyes of the free world and distance diaspora Jews who are counted as supporters of the Zionist project.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has no constitution; instead its constitutional character is made up of basic laws, judgments and the Declaration of Independence of 1948, which enshrines the right of the Jewish people to their own sovereign state and also pledges to \u201cuphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Yair Lapid, the minister of finance and the leader of Yesh Atid, one of the coalition parties that opposed the preliminary bill, said he had spoken on Sunday with the family of Zidan Saif, a Druse police officer who was killed while protecting Jewish worshipers from two\u00a0Palestinians<\/a>\u00a0who\u00a0attacked<\/a>\u00a0a Jerusalem synagogue with butchers knives and a gun last week.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will we say to him? What will we say to them?\u201d Mr. Lapid asked. \u201cThat the deceased is a second-class citizen in the state of Israel because there are primaries in the Likud?\u201d<\/p>\n Tzipi Livni, the centrist justice minister, also opposed the bill and posted a copy of the Declaration of Independence on\u00a0her Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n The stormy cabinet debate came against the background of heightened Muslim-Jewish tensions over a revered holy site in Jerusalem, protests and a recent wave of deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the city and beyond.<\/p>\n The fatal police shooting of an Arab man<\/a>\u00a0in a village in northern Israel set off days of rioting.<\/p>\n In response, Mr. Netanyahu said he was pushing for new legislation to revoke the rights of residents who \u201cparticipate in terrorism or incitement against the state of Israel,\u201d including the throwing of stones and firebombs. Mainly referring to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, he said those who attack Israel, and their families, should not enjoy welfare benefits.<\/p>\n