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Israel’s Arabs alienated,

21 December 2012

ap

Export-import: a Liverpool company, the Christmas Decorators, were re­­sponsible for dressing the 55-feet-high tree in Manger Square, Beth­lehem, this year. The six-strong team said: "We are honoured to be here

Export-import: a Liverpool company, the Christmas Decorators, were re­­sponsible for dressing the 55-feet-high tree in Manger Square, Beth­lehem, th...

THE Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, said last week that the Arab citizens of Israel were facing increasing "inequality and discrimination".

Introducing a debate on "the issues of equality and discrimination affecting Israel's Arab citizens" in the House of Lords, on Thursday of last week, Bishop Langrish said that Israeli citizens who were Arabs included "not only Muslim and Christian Palestinians, and Bedouin Arabs, but Arabic-speaking Druze, and a small number of Circassians as well".

There was "a widening gap in Israeli society between law and practice," he said. "In law, Israeli Arabs enjoy full equality, and are endowed with the full spectrum of democratic rights. . . However, in practice there are many areas of life where Israeli Arabs are systematically disadvantaged." Jewish and Arab Israelis had "different citizenship rights and constraints in relation to marriage and family reunification", Bishop Langrish said.

The Knesset, the Israeli legislature, had "passed a raft of discriminatory legislation" in recent years, he said, which had "helped further to alienate Israel's non-Jewish citizens". There was also "an increasing desire among a majority of the Jewish public to see preference for Jews over Arabs in various areas of public life".

Bishop Langrish said that "addressing Israeli-Arab discrimination needs now to be seen as a justice issue in its own right."

He called on the UK Government and the EU "to press Israeli governments for the realisation of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in which Jews and Arabs live together with full and equal human dignity and civil rights".

Responding to the debate, the Senior Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Baroness Warsi, said: "The promotion and protec-tion of human rights is at the heart of UK foreign policy. How a country treats its minorities is an important test of a country's democracy and respect for human rights and the rule of law. This is equally true for Israel."

 

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