The Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee has decided to establish July 19 – the date on which the Knesset passed the nation-state law - as a "Day of Struggle against Israeli Apartheid," it was announced Sunday.
The committee adopted the proposal at a conference in Ramallah last week. The idea had been proposed by the head of the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee and former Hadash MK Mohammad Barakeh, together with Joint Arab List MK Ahmad Tibi.
The nation-state law, which legally defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, has angered non-Jewish minorities in the country. Israeli Arabs, who form the largest minority at 20% of the population, say the law is discriminatory and downgrades their status.
"The nation-state law creates a ranking of citizens by ethnic affiliation – Jews with rights of Jewish superiority, and Arabs without equality, second-class citizens," Tibi said.
At the Ramallah conference, Tibi and Barakeh claimed the law would have serious repercussions for both the Arab public in Israel and on the efforts to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They said it is important to establish an anti-Israel apartheid day because their struggle is both public and global.
"The nation-state law and those behind it, [including] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, seek to prevent the realization of the two-state vision," Tibi and Barakeh said in a statement.
According to Barakeh, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to help arrange a meeting between Arab public officials and Israeli Arab lawmakers with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. He said Abbas would also help Arab public officials explain their positions to U.N. ambassadors.
Largely symbolic, the nation-state law stipulates that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it."
It cements the status of state symbols and Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel, and strips Arabic of its designation as an official language alongside Hebrew, instead awarding it a "special status" that enables its continued use in Israeli institutions.
The law also sets "the development of Jewish settlements nationwide as a national priority."
