A State of All Its Citizens: Between Reality and Fantasy

By Amin Zaher

By chance, I came across a new political party that I had not known about before, which was registered about three years ago.The party’s name is “All Its Citizens”, a name that, in my understanding, carries a strong, sharp, and clear message to both the Arab and Jewish peoples. The phrase “All Its Citizens” took me back to my time as Assistant Minister of Construction and Housing in 1996, and to the Ka’adan family’s petition to the High Court of Justice (HCJ) 6698/95 in 1995 against the Israel Lands Administration, the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the Tel-Iron Local Council, and the Jewish Agency. The petition was submitted because the Israel Lands Administration and the Jewish Agency refused to sell land to the Ka’adan family for building in the community settlement of Katzir, claiming that the Jewish Agency “is engaged in the settlement of Jews in the State of Israel,” and that the cooperative association, for its part, in practice accepts only Jews as members. The result was that, in such a situation, an Arab could not build his home on state land allocated to the Agency. (Quotation from the court ruling.)

The deliberations at the High Court of Justice lasted five years, until the ruling was delivered on March 8, 2000. This ruling shook the Israeli government, as it determined that “the state is not authorized to discriminate directly on the basis of religion or nationality in the allocation of state lands… nor is the state authorized to permit such discrimination in state lands.” The justices declared: “We declare that the state was not authorized by law to allocate state lands to the Jewish Agency for the purpose of establishing the community settlement of Katzir on the basis of discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.”

In effect, the Court sharpened its declaration by stating that the state “is a state of all its citizens and has no right to discriminate against citizens on religious, sectarian, or national grounds, and must act with equality, particularly regarding land.” Thus, the High Court compelled the Israel Lands Administration—the state—to sell state lands to Arabs just as it sells them to Jews.

In 2003, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu was appointed Minister of Finance in Ariel Sharon’s government. At the Herzliya Conference on December 15, 2003, Netanyahu declared that “Israel does not face a demographic problem with the Palestinians under Palestinian control, who will in the future enjoy ‘self-determination,’ but rather with the Arabs of Israel. If they reach 40 percent, the state is finished.” In effect, Netanyahu was saying that Arab demographic growth threatens the existence and security of the State of Israel.

During the periods of Sharon, Olmert, and Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu was on the margins and even withdrew from political life, and his influence on policy was minimal. In 2009, he was elected prime minister again. In 2012, thinking began about tools and methods to halt the Arab demographic expansion that “keeps Netanyahu awake at night.” There were several attempts to legislate a Basic Law: the Nation-State, until in 2018 the law was finally approved. This law, implicitly or explicitly, prevents the sale of state lands to Arabs (the right of settlement in the Land of Israel belongs to Jews), delays planning and construction development in the Arab sector, and, to add insult to injury, the Kaminitz Law was enacted to stop Arab demographic expansion. More recently, in order to dispossess Arabs of what remains of their private lands, a clause was approved in first reading (this article was written before the second and third readings) in the budget law imposing a property tax of 1.5% on vacant lands designated for construction. And who holds most of the private land in the state? Indeed—the Arabs.

“All Its Citizens” is not merely an election slogan; it is the dream of every Arab citizen in the State of Israel, and also the dream of the democratic, free, and enlightened Jewish people. From my experience, I argue today that there is no existing Jewish or Arab party in Israel that speaks truthfully to the voter. As long as they address us as Arabs and others as Jews, they err, sin, and mislead. In a state governed by law, there should never be laws for Arabs and laws for Jews; the law applies to all citizens of the state without distinction of religion, gender, or race. When laws are enacted in the Knesset, they ostensibly relate to us as equals—“as a state of all its citizens”—but the implementation is different and based on racism.

The mission of the Arab–Jewish party “All Its Citizens” is to strive to realize full equality of rights for all citizens of the state, because the state belongs to all its citizens—to all of us.

The idea of a “state of all its citizens” fundamentally contradicts the Zionist idea of a Jewish state; therefore, Jewish parties do not promote this concept, which they perceive as contradicting Herzl’s vision. Indeed, the High Court’s decision in the Ka’adan case prompted figures from the far right—such as Michael Kleiner, then head of a marginal one-seat party (Herut) and today the Likud’s attorney—to argue that the High Court’s decision effectively erases the Jewish state and turns it into a state of all its citizens. This was perceived by Jews as a complete abandonment of the ideas upon which the state was built. Consequently, former Interior Minister Eli Yishai of Shas worked to change the decision through bypass legislation. The only clause in the Nation-State Law that allows discrimination not merely at the declarative level but in practice is the clause permitting the establishment of community settlements for a specific community only. Thus, the Nation-State Law constitutes a foundation whose central clause nullifies the legal basis on which the High Court’s ruling in the Ka’adan case relied, and it may be the only clause that allows the claim that the law is racist, since the rest of the wording is vague and not unequivocal. Nevertheless, this very clause also angered Arab Druze, who likewise suffer discrimination in land allocation, and for the first time enabled a joint protest by Arabs and Jews supporting the Arab struggle, alongside Druze who serve in the IDF, against a Basic Law enacted by the government and most of the opposition together. The law is seemingly agreed upon by the Zionist left and the far right alike.

The Nation-State Law was also intended to overcome Jewish fears of the very idea of “all its citizens,” because for Zionist Jews the most important law is the Law of Return, which prefers the absorption of Jews and their automatic conversion into citizens. In the eyes of the right, the idea of a state of all its citizens constitutes a complete destruction of the Zionist enterprise upon which the state was founded. Therefore, it was important for the right, to the right of Netanyahu, to legislate the Nation-State Law, which was intended, among other things, to prevent a state of all its citizens—perceived as a threat by the right in particular and by Zionist parties in general. Hence, even some Arab parties that explicitly call for transforming Israel into a state of all its citizens are perceived as a threat, while other parties failed where we will succeed.

The revocation of Arabic’s status as an official language of the state is another issue. Arabic is an international language and the primary language of the Middle East, and I argue that in order to advance the Abraham Accords, the Israeli government must learn Arabic. The Arabic language is the language of peace, reconciliation, and love.

Therefore, what the party “All Its Citizens” proposes is not merely a slogan, but civil equality, national reconciliation, internal peace within Israel, and peace in the region.

The party “All Its Citizens,” true to its name, includes all citizens of the State of Israel without distinction of religion, gender, or race, and promises full equality among all its members.

In light of what we have written, we appeal to the Arab and Jewish public in the state to support and adopt the ideas and goals of “All Its Citizens,” so that together we may achieve the objectives we have set before us.