I’lam - Media Center for Palestinians in Israel

After nearly a year of deliberations, Haifa District Court issued a ruling cancelling regulations at Haifa University that gave preferential treatment to Jewish students needing accommodation over Arab students. The university, roughly a fifth of whose students are Arabs, tried to conceal the discrimination by arguing that in allocating housing it was preferring students who had completed their army service. However, the court accepted the argument of the Adalah legal centre that because very few Arab citizens do military service this regulation was being used in effect to discriminate against Arab students.

During the five weeks of fighting between Israel and Hizbullah this summer, the north of Israel took a battering from some 4,000 rockets. According to the Foreign Ministry, the civilian fatalities from the rockets numbered 43, including 18 Arab citizens. Of course, rockets don’t discriminate between Jew and Arab, as public officials were quick to point out. But unfortunately, the Israeli government does. There were many reasons why a high number of Arabs died in the war, a fact that has surprised many observers, including apparently the Israeli government, as it was widely assumed that Hizbullah would not endanger the lives of fellow Arabs.

The Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, has ordered his department to hurriedly draft the country’s first immigration law to protect Israel’s Jewish majority. He said a Basic Law was needed within eight months, the expiry date of the temporary Nationality and Entry into Israel Law. The Knesset has repeatedly renewed the law since the it was first passed in July 2003 to prevent Palestinians from the occupied territories who marry an Israeli from gaining residency or citizenship rights in Israel.

In an attempt to lure the small ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism into his new government, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to pay extra child allowance to religious Jewish families with many children in a way that guarantees the extra payments do not also go to large Arab families. This is the latest in a long line of manoeuvres by successive Israeli governments to ensure that Jewish and Arab citizens receive differential child allowances so that higher birth rates among Jewish families can be encouraged without also encouraging increased fertility among Arab families.

The head of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police, Benzi Sau, has been promoted to a senior position in the Public Security Ministry in defiance of the findings of a state inquiry that implicated him in the chain of events that led to the killing of 12 Arab citizens and a labourer from Gaza by the security forces in October 2000. This is Sau’s third promotion since the deaths, despite a recommendation from the Or Commision of Inquiry that Sau not be considered for promotion again until September 2007.

24th March 2006 - The below is a summary of coverage of the Israeli general elections in the Arab press in Israel, compiled by the I’lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel. Kol il Arab conducted a survey which forecasts that all of the Arab parties will pass the 2% minimum required to get official representation in the Knesset, and 69% of eligible Arab voters will vote in the election next week. The Communist Party will get more than 3 seats, the NDA more than 3 seats, and the United Arab List 4 seats.