There is no such thing as "opposition at all cost" and the ends don't always justify the means. The way the Likud and the Religious Zionist Party voted on the citizenship bill is a classic case of shooting themselves in the foot The damage done is double: A future blow to national security as well as a challenge to the assumption that maintaining a Jewish majority is a condition for Israel's legitimacy to define itself as a Jewish state. In both matters, the Likud and the Religious Zionist Party fumbled.
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National security takes a direct hit when the second generation of naturalized Palestinians are involved in terrorism at a rate three times as high as their population numbers. Tuesday's defeat of an extension to a temporary order regulating the citizenship and residency of Palestinians married to Arab Israelis opens the door to potential terrorists as well as other applicants for naturalization of the same type that has already perpetrated attacks that left hundreds killed and wounded.
In the last decade alone, over 130 second-generation members of Palestinian "family reunification" have been involved in terrorist attacks. The decade that preceded it also saw plenty of similar cases, mainly during the Second Intifada. Former Supreme Court President Asher Grunis rightly observed that "human rights are not a prescription for national suicide."
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Since 1967, a quarter million Palestinians have been granted Israeli citizenship. They have had a dramatic influence on the Jewish-Arab demographic, and that's even before we take into account the hundreds of thousands more who made their way into Israel illegally, effectively implementing a kind of "right of return." Voting down an extension to the order that regulates this situation opens the gates to these infiltrators.
The Bennett-Lapid government, which depends on supporters of terrorism, might be easy prey, but the Likud voting down the order it promoted every other year is vicious. It's a disgrace that the party of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ra'am), whose members identified until recently with terrorists, is a coalition partner, but it's an even greater disgrace to vote down a law designed to reduce these terrorists' ability to attack us. Someone who sets up a sewage purification facility needs to make sure it doesn't pollute the environment, but this is exactly what the Opposition did on Tuesday: sought to purify, but wound up polluting.
There is almost no doubt that if Benjamin Netanyahu were prime minister, he would have promoted the extension of the order in the same language that previous governments have approved each year. There is nearly no doubt that the same Netanyahu would also be negotiating with Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas to soften him up and survive politically, just like Ayelet Shaked did, and would obviously lash out at the Opposition for preferring petty politics over national security. The man who during his long term in office racked up considerable great moments gave us little, embarrassing ones on Tuesday. Mostly, he embarrassed himself more than he did the government.
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