Israel: a bill that raises democratic questions

News Mondays - Baptiste Michellod

On July 13, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply criticized the European ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret. At issue was Giaufret's intervention in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), during which he expressed his concerns about the draft Basic Law «Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People» currently under discussion. According to the European ambassador, the legislation would seriously undermine democratic principles. What are the grounds for this concern?

First of all, it should be remembered that the Israeli state is not governed by a Constitution, but by a set of Fundamental Laws. The constitutional project never came to fruition because of the opposition between secular and religious leaders, the former wanting a liberal constitution based on the Western model, while the latter refused to allow a legal text to have any authority higher than that of the Torah. The operating framework of the Israeli state is therefore guaranteed by so-called fundamental laws, which enjoy a status superior to that of other laws.

The draft Basic Law «Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People» ratified by the Knesset in May 2017 is still the subject of fierce controversy between religious and secular figures. Indeed, this legislation explicitly seeks to privilege Israel's Jewish character to the detriment of its democratic character. In particular, the law demands that «the right to national self-determination within the State of Israel shall exclusively concern the Jewish people» (Article 1 paragraph 2), relegating the Arabic language to a «special status» in order to make Hebrew the sole national language, and finally allowing the creation of autonomous communities based on a common religion or ethnicity - in other words, religious or ethnic ghettos.

These three points should be enough to alarm any democratic observer, as they are prejudicial to a significant part of the Israeli population. If this law were to pass, one in four citizens - Muslims, Christians, Druze and others - would lose their right to self-determination and see their language, culture and history relegated to the background. This would be a terrible step backwards for democracy in Israel. Inspired by Hegel, philosopher Francis Fukuyama asserted that the desire for recognition is the driving force of human history. In his view, a society will remain imperfect and unstable until its fundamental contradictions are resolved.

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The enactment of the law «Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People» would seem to be both a step backwards for democracy and a refusal to recognize all the non-Jewish peoples who have inhabited this country for generations. What's more, this law could only aggravate the already disastrous relations between the Israeli state and the Arabs living in Israel and Palestine. Finally, by favoring its religious majority to the detriment of minorities, Israel would be sending a very paradoxical message to states in which its co-religionists live within minorities.

Finally, let's appeal to history one last time. Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence stated: «[The State of Israel] shall ensure the fullest social and political equality to all its inhabitants without distinction of religion, race or sex.» In light of this text, the current draft law is an explicit disavowal of Israel's founding principles and liberal democratic tradition. The process of creating a Basic Law is, however, a long and complex one. Ambassador Giaufret's intervention in the Knesset is no less relevant and justified, given the radicalization of Israeli politics. We can only hope that Israeli civil society and moderate parties will succeed in putting an end to this project, which is in every way liberticidal.