Israeli lawmakers reinstate controversial citizenship law

Israeli lawmakers passed a law Thursday reinstating a ban on Palestinian spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip from obtaining citizenship via marriage to Israeli nationals.

The law was passed after a fractious late night session that exposed deep fault lines in the governing coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Known as the “citizenship law”, it reinstates a ban that was first enacted in 2003 during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

The legislation had been renewed continuously until last July, when Bennett’s freshly sworn-in coalition – which pulls in parties from across the political spectrum – did not unite around it and failed to muster support from the opposition.

But on Thursday, hawkish opposition lawmakers helped push the bill across the finish line in a 45-15 vote.

Bennett’s hawkish Yamina party allied with right-wing factions in the opposition to pass the legislation above protests of more liberal parties inside and outside government.

Dozens of lawmakers in the 120-seat chamber did not cast votes on the highly divisive legislation.

Under the terms of the citizenship law, which will be valid for a one year period, Palestinian spouses of Israelis can obtain temporary, two-year residence permits, although they can be revoked on security grounds.

The restored legislation will have an outsized effect on Israel’s 20% Arab minority, who share language, family and cultural ties with Palestinians in the territories Israel has occupied since 1967.

“The combination of forces between the coalition and the opposition led to an important result for the security of the state and its fortification as a Jewish state,” said Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, the driving force behind the bill and a member of Bennett’s party.

Bezalel Smotrich of the nationalist Religious Zionism bloc said that the law was “a correct and good outline.”

Dovish and Arab lawmakers blasted the bill.

Lawmaker Gaby Lasky of the dovish Meretz party called the law “a black spot on the book of laws in Israel” and wrote on Twitter that “Meretz as a whole voted against racism.”

Mansour Abbas, the head of the Raam Islamist party, also opposed the legislation.

Several rights groups have announced that they will challenge the law in Israel’s Supreme Court.

“The justices will now have to decide whether, when faced with the law’s explicit language, they will continue to allow this racist Law to be protected under the eternal pretext of temporality,” said the Adalah advocacy group in a statement.