Jordan slams Israel for racist nation-state law

AMMAN — Jordan on Thursday condemned the Israeli Knesset’s endorsement of the “nation-state law” that consolidates the concept of the “Jewish state”.

Minister of State for Media Affairs and Government Spokesperson Jumana Ghunaimat explained that the new law consolidates apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories and blatantly contradicts international law as well as international norms and conventions, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Ghunaimat added that this law will hinder the option of a just and comprehensive peace in the region and will lead to more violence and extremism, as it targets the presence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.

She called on the international community to shoulder its legal, political and moral responsibilities and to take urgent action to address this law and its consequences.

The minister stressed that the right of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees is a permanent and inalienable right in accordance with international law and the resolutions of international legitimacy, the most important of which is Resolution 194, and that the only way to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the two-state solution, which guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, within the June 4, 1967 lines, based on the relevant international legitimacy resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.

Turkey took a similar position on the new law.

Agence France-Presse reported that Ankara accused Israel of racism and becoming a state based on apartheid after the new law was adopted by the Israeli parliament defining the country as the nation state of the Jewish people.

The legislation, adopted after a tumultuous Knesset session, makes Hebrew the country’s national language and defines the establishment of Jewish communities as being in the national interest.

Arabic, previously considered an official language, was granted only special status.

“We reject the Israeli government’s efforts to establish an apartheid state,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter, referring to the segregation of blacks and whites in white-ruled South Africa.

He condemned the law as a “racist step”, describing it as an effort to “legally erase” the Palestinian people “from their homelands”.