Israel: Government fails in family reunification vote

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Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Knesset in Jerusalem

Photo: MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP

It became clear that governing Israel's new eight-party coalition with forces from both the left and the right could at times be challenging.

Now Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's alliance has failed with a vote just three weeks after the swearing-in.

In the vote to renew an ordinance first passed in 2003, which prohibits the family reunification of Arabs living in Israel with their spouses from the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip, the coalition failed to get the necessary majority.

According to media reports, the deviator comes from the Prime Minister's party

After a nightly marathon meeting, 59 out of 120 MPs voted for and 59 against the regulation.

Two abstained.

A vote of no confidence in the new government also failed.

Explosive: As the newspaper "Times of Israel" reports, a member of the right-wing Jamina party of the new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is said to have voted against an extension of the regulation.

He therefore joined the vote of the opposition to ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli parliament passed the law in 2003, according to which Palestinians and residents of "hostile countries" cannot acquire Israeli citizenship or residence permits even through marriage.

The addition to the Israeli Citizenship Act must be renewed annually by a parliamentary vote.

The dispute about family reunification polarized

The dispute over family reunification is extremely emotionally charged.

According to Israeli sources, the reason for the regulation was a suicide attack in Haifa in March 2002, in which the assassin killed 17 people.

He was said to be a Palestinian who had received an Israeli identity card through marriage.

As a result of the regulation, married couples, where one partner is Israeli and the other is Palestinian, could no longer legally live together in Israel.

This regulation, which is based on Israeli security interests, mainly affects Arab couples and has been extended every year since then.

Its validity ends on Tuesday.

In 2012, Israel's highest court dismissed lawsuits against the regulation.

According to an amendment to the law in 2005, women over 25 and men over 35 years of age can apply for temporary residence permits.

Since 2007, the legal restrictions also apply to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The new coalition under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was sworn in in mid-June.

With its establishment, the permanent political crisis in Israel came to a temporary end with four elections within two years.

fek / dpa