Legislators from Israeli Palestinian parties yesterday blasted as racist and dangerous a plan by the country’s right-wing interior minister to rescind the citizenships of four Palestinians suspected of involvement in anti-Israel activities.

Eli Yishai, the interior minister, announced on Tuesday that he will begin the process of revoking the citizenship of the four men, claiming they left Israel over three decades ago for countries such as Lebanon, considered by Israel to be enemy territory, and alleging they had been involved in acts that undermined Israel’s security.

The ministry said the four Palestinians, whom it refused to identify, have now requested to return to Israel and Mr Yishai has ordered their immediate arrest should they attempt to enter the country.

But critics view the attempt to revoke a citizenship, rarely implemented in the country’s 61-year history, as an intensified effort by the political Right to undermine the status of Israel’s Palestinian minority, which makes up about one-fifth of the population and has long faced discrimination.

Talab El Sana, a 17-year veteran of Israel’s parliament who is part of the Ra’am-Ta‘al party, said: “We won’t accept this attempt to legitimise our citizenship. This is racist and poses a threat to the democracy of Israel.”

Other lawmakers warned that Mr Yishai’s initiative, emerging only a month after a hardline government took power in Israel, is an indication the new administration may advance further such acts against Palestinian citizens.

Dov Khenin, a Jewish parliamentarian in Hadash, a Jewish-Palestinian party, said: “It’s a very worrying process … and a sign of the very big dangers ahead concerning the status of the Arab citizens of Israel.”

Indeed, concerns have risen that the new government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, would adopt a hawkish approach towards Palestinians not only in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, but also towards those living within its borders.

Such worries have been especially spurred by the political rise in February’s national election of Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist known for his anti-Arab diatribes, who is now the second-most powerful figure in the governing coalition and the country’s foreign minister.

Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, which charges that many Israeli Palestinian citizens are seeking Israel’s destruction and are backing Palestinian militant attacks against Jewish Israelis, had campaigned on the “No Loyalty – No Citizenship” slogan. In January, right before the election, Yisrael Beiteinu unsuccessfully tried to push for two Palestinian parties to be disqualified from the ballot.

Hanna Swaid, a Palestinian legislator in the Hadash faction, criticised Mr Yishai’s move as a new bid by the Right to fight a trend it fears would eventually lead Palestinians to outnumber Jews within Israel and in the territories occupied by the country.
He said: “The move is motivated by the demographic threat and the desire to get rid of Arab citizens.”

Revoking a citizenship would be a rare move in Israel. Such an initiative was undertaken only twice before – both times by Mr Yishai, when he previously served as interior minister in 2002-2003, and only against Palestinian citizens.

Critics yesterday charged that no Jews – not even Yigal Amir, an extremist jailed for life after assassinating a former premier, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995 – have ever been formally threatened with having their citizenship annulled.

In 2002, Mr Yishai rescinded the citizenship of a Palestinian suspected of being a member of Hamas and who was sentenced by Israel to life in prison for his role in a suicide bombing, Israeli media reported yesterday.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Yishai acted similarly with another Palestinian who had left for Lebanon in 2000, became active with Hizbollah and was suspected of helping the guerrilla group kidnap a Tel Aviv businessman who was later released in a prisoner swap, the reports said.

However, a legal change last year would make the current effort by Mr Yishai more difficult.

Interior ministers, who were previously able to rescind citizenships at their behest, could now only do so in cases where the citizenship was acquired through false information.

More importantly, the new law shifted the power to confiscate citizenships on the grounds of disloyalty to Israel – including involvement in a terror act or the obtaining of permanent residency in a country considered an enemy state by Israel – to the district courts.

Still, human rights lawyers criticise the new process, which would allow the court to rule to rescind a citizenship without the person in question being present and without him or her being charged with a criminal act beforehand.

Oded Feller, a lawyer with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said the revocation of citizenship on the grounds of disloyalty would be an exceptional step for a state that deems itself as democratic.

He added: “This is something that is unique to totalitarian countries, to show members of a minority that they are being watched and that they are not citizens, but simply hold a permit.”

A lawyer for the four Palestinian citizens this week was quoted in Israeli media as denying the allegations and vowing to fight Mr Yishai’s plans through the country’s legal system.

Mr El Sana, the legislator from Ra’am-Ta’al, said the initiative poses a test for Israel.

He added: “If this government can’t make peace with its Arab citizens, it won’t be able to make peace with its neighbouring Arab countries.”