ISRAEL was accused of implementing one of the “most racist and discriminatory laws in the world” today as a leading Palestinian rights group filed a petition to the Supreme Court.

Adalah — the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — is demanding the repeal of legislation that effectively bars citizens and residents of Israel from marrying Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and then living in Israel.

The law also extends to the so-called “enemy states” of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Adalah says it “overwhelmingly affects the citizenship status and family life of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.”

The Citizenship & Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) 2022 was adopted by the Israeli Knesset last week and incorporates provisions from an earlier temporary order, initially enacted in 2003 for a period of a year but extended 21 times.

It blocks families from being reunited in Israel, with quota limits set on the number of entry permits that can be issued by the interior minister on humanitarian grounds. Those from the so-called enemy states are deemed a security threat.

Section one of the legislation describes Israel as “a Jewish and democratic state.”

Adalah lawyers argued that the new law “constitutionally enshrines Jewish supremacy over Palestinians and has distinct characteristics of apartheid.

“The [law] is not only the most racist law in the Israeli law books, but there is no country in the world that harms the status of citizenship or residency of its own citizens or residents, the core of which is family life, based on ethnic or national affiliation,” they said. 

“There is no country in the world that restricts the right of its citizens or residents to family life with spouses from their own people.

“Even the Supreme Court in South Africa in 1980, during apartheid, in a precedent-setting judgement, struck down a similar law which prohibited the unification of black families in areas where whites lived, arguing, among other things, that apartheid was never intended to harm family life,” Adalah’s lawyers said.

“For the first time, the law explicitly states that the ban on Palestinian family unification is intended to serve the Jewish character of the state. The legislators themselves stated that they saw fit to do so, given the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law.”

The Supreme Court refused to grant an immediate injunction but ordered the state to respond by May 15.