PM vows to pass nationality bill in coming hours or days
Speaking at Likud party meeting, Netanyahu says bill ‘ensures the core of our existence’, defines Israel as a Jewish state; warns Hamas will face a 'wall of steel' if it keeps up aggression.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Monday to pass the nationality bill in the coming week, "if not in the coming hours, then in the coming days."
"We will pass this bill, which is a bill of the highest importance that ensures the core of our existence—Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people," he said at a Likud party meeting.
Netanyahu also addressed the current state of affairs in the Gaza vicinity. "I met with the heads of the communities in the Gaza vicinity, and I met the wonderful children there. We are in the midst of a process and it involves an exchange of blows, willpower and force," he said.
"The other side needs to recognize that there is a steel wall of a government that is determined, that supports Zionist settlements, has strong local leadership, and a strong army—the IDF—of which we are very proud. We all salute the army," the prime minister concluded in his remarks.
On Sunday, after an intensive round of talks, Netanyahu and Minister of Education Naftali Bennett reached a compromise agreement regarding the contentious aricle 7 of the nationality bill which authorizes the establishment of "separate communities" that critics deem as racist. Instead, the new version of the bill states that Israel "views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment."
According to Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, "this is the only phrasing that will remain in article 7, which was the most controversial ... I am struck by the antagonism that the bill raised on two different fronts, the judicial system and the opposition."
With the Knesset's summer session approaching its recess at the end of the week, coalition leaders are determined to ram the bill to a vote in its second and third readings.
The current version of the bill has been agreed upon by various legal bodies and by the Bayit Yehudi and the Likud parties. Some sections were approved Monday by the Joint Committee of the Nationality Bill, prior to the vote in the Knesset plenum.
On Tuesday the committee is set to finalize the voting process.
