Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition said Saturday it would advance legislation to enshrine the status of Israel’s Druze community, amid a rising death toll among Druze soldiers in Israel’s war with Hamas and months after a peak in Druze backlash against discriminatory treatment by the state.
Netanyahu and senior figures in his ruling Likud party on Sunday threw their weight behind addressing the concerns of the Druze community, but stopped short of saying they would amend or repeal the controversial 2018 Basic Law: Nation-State of the Jewish People, which the community has said marginalises it.
Basic laws have a quasi-constitutional status in Israel, and are meant to address constitution-like issues that underpin the state in lieu of an actual founding document.
This summer, long-simmering frustrations boiled over into a series of mass demonstrations in the Golan Heights, sparked by a dispute over a government plan to erect huge wind turbines on Druze-owned land, but ultimately fuelled by the Druze community’s frustration at perceived unequal treatment by the state.
The Druze, who are unique among Israel’s Arab communities in that the majority of their men serve in the Israeli military, have been particularly angered by the Nation-State Law and the so-called Kaminitz Law, which makes it easier for the state to demolish illegal structures despite the difficulty of obtaining building permits in Arab towns.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and coalition chairman Ofir Katz, both of the Likud, issued a statement on Saturday night saying: “In the coming days, we will promote a draft Basic Law for the Druze community, which will anchor the important status of the Druze community in the State of Israel.”
In response to reporters’ questions about whether he would accede to the Druze community’s demands to amend the Nation-State Law, Netanyahu said: “The Druze are a precious community, they fight, they fall, we will give them everything they deserve. We will find the ways to do it, it’s essential”.
Two Druze soldiers were killed in Gaza on Saturday, bringing the death toll from the community to six since war broke out between Israel and Hamas on 7 October, following the terror group’s shocking onslaught that killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 240, the vast majority of whom are still being held hostage in Gaza.
Lieutenant Colonel (Res) Iyad Abbas, uncle of paratrooper Major Jamal Abbas, who was killed on Saturday, told Army Radio on Sunday that passing a separate law would not be enough, arguing that the Nation-State Law needs to be amended to address the concerns of the community.
“The nation-state law must be fixed once and for all,” said Abbas, who is currently mobilised for reserve duty in Jerusalem. The Israeli leadership, he added, “needs to learn a lesson about who its partner in destiny is in this country”.
The Druze community leadership has alternatively pushed for a softening of the impact of the Nation-State Law and the cancellation of home demolition orders. The spiritual leader of the community in Israel petitioned the government in a letter on 6 November.
“Establish constitutionally the status of the [Druze] community and the rights of its members,” Mowafaq Tarif demanded.
Tarif called for the cancellation of demolition orders against unauthorised structures in Druze villages if they are built on private land, as well as the cancellation of fines for illegal construction against the Druze in Israel’s northern Galilee and Carmel regions.
“Some would say that this is not the time to make such a plea, but I believe it is necessary in the name of partnership, even more so today,” Tarif wrote.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid quickly threw his weight behind Tarif’s letter, saying at the time that Israel should legally enshrine equality for non-Jewish citizens.
“I’m not asking you to cancel [the Nation-State Law], I’m not asking you to violate the promise you gave yourselves to make Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, but fix the law at this terrible moment when we bury our dead alongside your dead,” Lapid quoted Tarif as writing while speaking from the Knesset podium.