The Nation-State Law: The Legalisation of Israeli Apartheid?

foreign currency then actions by the State to regulate them would be deemed as ultra vires. Additionally, this approach would recognise virtual currencies being regulated by the community rather than a centralised body and would see state acceptance of self-regulation, which could potentially create future problems. There is little doubt that virtual currencies are here to stay, and regulation is essential to gain a competitive advantage in this area. It remains to be seen what will happen going forward.

SF LAW AND POLITICS

Few pieces of legislation have grabbed the world’s attention recently more than Israel’s Nation-State Law. Officially titled ‘Basic Law: Israel as the NationState of the Jewish People’, the legislation passed through Israel’s national parliament, the Knesset, in July of this year. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded the bill as “a defining moment in the history of the State”, Palestinian activists across the world identified it as legalising apartheid. The Nation-State Law has three main objectives. Firstly, it declares Hebrew as the only official language of Israel, demoting the Arabic language to merely having ‘special status’. Secondly, it declares that only Jewish people have the right to self-determination in Israel, denying this right to the twenty percent of Israeli citizens who are Arabs. However, the final and most controversial aspect of this legislation is that it proposes that Jewish-only communities should be set up across Israel with the aim of strengthening Jewish culture. The significance of this law cannot be comprehended without first analysing the key social, political and legal aspects of the Israeli State’s modern history. It was founded on 15th May 1948, following the expiration of Britain’s formal control of the area. Shortly after this came the Nakba, literally translated as the ‘catastrophe’, when over 700,000 Palestinians were either forced to leave their homes by the Israeli military or fled from fear of persecution. An estimated 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed during the Nakba. Palestinians who became refugees during the Nakba fled to the Palestinian-controlled West Bank or Gaza; others fled to neighbouring countries while some remained in Israel. In the years following these events, the Israeli government implemented numerous laws giving different legal status and rights to people depending on their race. The most widely known example is the Law of Return, which offered Israeli citizenship to any Jew who immigrated to Israel. Meanwhile, the Absentees’ Property Law of 1952 legalized State confiscation of previously refugee-owned land during the Nakba. At the same time, the Israeli Nationality Law of 1952 took citizenship away from these very same refugees. The Israeli government’s aim of creating a Jewish State for the Jewish people was certainly underway. The mass exodus of Palestinian refugees from Israel has created significant humanitarian problems for the areas to which they fled. The case of Gaza is one such example. Consisting of an area just half the size of County Louth, Gaza is home to almost two million people, half of whom are children. With the Israeli military controlling the borders around Gaza, it is almost impossible for ordinary people to move in and out of the area. For these reasons, Gaza is regularly referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison. A study released this October carried out by the apolitical non-profit body, RAND Corporation, revealed that a shocking 97% of water in Gaza is not safe for drinking. Accounting for this issue and similar problems in the area, the United Nations (UN) has estimated that Gaza will be uninhabitable by the year 2020. Returning to the Nation-State Law, it is important to address the claims by pro-Palestinian activists that Israel is an apartheid state. The word ‘apartheid’ was originally used to describe the institutionalised