TEL AVIV, July 8: The Israeli cabinet sparked charges of racial discrimination on Monday after it approved a bill enabling state land to be reserved for Jews only “for security reasons”.

The text, sponsored by rabbi Haim Druckman, a deputy for the far-right National Religious Party, to overturn a March 2000 ruling by the Supreme Court, was approved by 17 ministers to two on Sunday, a government official said.

Human rights groups, the main opposition party, the government’s legal advisor and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres all criticized the move, which Druckman for his part called a “victory for Zionism.”

The measure, which still has to be approved by the Israeli parliament, stems from a suit brought to the Supreme Court by Adel Kaadan, an Israeli Arab who wished to buy land in the cooperative village of Katzir in Galilee, but was rejected because he was an Arab.

The village was set up in 1982 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, whose mission is to attract Jews living abroad to come to Israel and establish Jewish communities.

As a result of Kaadan’s petition, the Supreme Court ruled there should be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs in the distribution of state lands, even those managed by the Jewish Agency.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the state holds title to 93 percent of all land in Israel, the vast majority of which is leased by the Jewish Agency.

ACRI’s chief legal adviser Dan Yakir said that since the Supreme Court ruling, the Jewish Agency has not been allowed to discriminate about who lives on the land it administers.

However, if the proposed bill is passed by the Knesset (parliament), it would give the Jewish Agency the legal backing to prevent any non-Jewish Israeli from living on land under its control, Yakir said.—AFP