Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Apartheid Israel-style


Law to keep Jews and Arabs apart

by Jonathan Cook
Global Research

"The pretty two-storey home with a red-tiled roof built by Adel and Iman Kaadan looks no different from the rows of other houses in Katzir, a small hilltop community in northern Israel close to the West Bank.

But, unlike the other residents of Katzir, the Kaadans moved into their dream home this month only after a 12-year battle through the Israeli courts.

The small victory for the Kaadans, who belong to Israel's Palestinian Arab minority, dealt a big blow to a state policy that for decades has reserved most of the country's land for Jews.....

Arab citizens, meanwhile, are largely restricted to living in 124 towns and villages, and control 2.5 per cent of Israel's territory.

Planning and building laws confine the development and expansion of Arab communities, leading to overcrowding. Tens of thousands of Arab families, forced to build in non-zoned areas, live in homes under demolition orders.....

But the rightwing Jerusalem Post newspaper backed the legislation, saying Israeli Jews "should have the right to live in a community where they are not threatened by intermarriage or by becoming a cultural or religious minority"."

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