Haaretz
Shvat 27, 5767
The Adalah
Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel has presented the United
Nations with a highly critical report on Israel's treatment of its Arab
citizens.
The report was presented on February 1 in preparation for
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
discussions in Geneva next week, in which 18 jurists from around the world
are set to participate.
Adalah's appeal is part of a wider effort
by Arab organizations to internationalize the discussion around the
relationship between Israel and its Arab citizens. Adalah expects the
report to serve as a basis for the committee's discussion and thus create
intentional pressure on Israel to change its policies.
The report
outlines several issues that Adalah claims are in violation of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (ICERD), on which Israel is a signatory.
One of the
report's claims is that Israel enacts laws and enters into agreements with
institutions such as the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
that exclusively allocate land to Jews.
The report also claims that
laws conditioning certain social and financial benefits on a military
service discriminate against most of Israel Arab population.
An
additional issue presented by the report is Israeli legislation allowing
severe interrogation methods against detainees suspected of security
offences, most of who are Arabs.
The report also claims the people
responsible for the deaths of 13 Arabs from Israel Police fire during the
events of October 2000 were not put on trial.
Further claims in the
report are that Israel prevents its Arab citizens from marrying
Palestinian partners if they wish to reside in Israel; the state exercises
extreme discrimination in the budgets it allots Arab towns; Arab citizens
have been evacuated from their Negev homes under the claim that the homes
were illegal; standards for accepting Arab students into higher-education
institutions are discriminatory; state laws give official status to Jewish
cultural institutions, but not to Arab ones; and the government has not
issued any amendments to address the protection of Muslim and Christian
holy sites.
The ICERD, drafted in 1966, was one of the first human
rights treaties to be adopted by the UN. There are 173 signed states,
including Israel, which ratified the ICERD in 1979. The convention commits
member states to amend or cancel national laws and policies that create or
perpetuate any form of racial discrimination.