Originally posted by E.J.Armstrong
Good point. I agree entirely. I know you will also be very unhappy with this ethnically based discrimination.
For the past 18 months…
Wow, did you even notice that the article you quoted was seven years old? Did you bother to find out the other side of the story? Did you make any effort to find out what’s happened since? Or do you just take everything that’s critical of Israel at face value while making no effort to verify facts?
When Israel took over Jerusalem, they offered the Arab residence of the city Israeli citizenship. Most declined, so instead of expelling them, they were offered “permanent residency”. A temporary solution.
The problem with temporary solutions is when they’re left in effect long term, they create additional problems. In this case, there developed a population of people who had this residency status who were not residents. People who had moved away and settled elsewhere, and the children of the same.
So ask a basic question; how long should a person be gone before they are no longer considered a resident?
Well, for a very long time the policy was seven years. A person with permanent residency status maintained this status for seven years, and could renew the clock just by visiting the city. The controversy came from a change in this policy back in 1995, where merely visiting the city was no longer sufficient to reset the clock, the person had to take up residency again.
Fair? Arguably not, it was very controversial, which is why the policy was reversed in 1999.
So what we have here is an attempt to portray Israel’s policy on permanent residents in Jerusalem with Saudi Arabia’s policy of not even allowing Jews to visit as being equivalent, even though Israel’s policy is based on the distinction between the difference between a citizen and a permanent resident and Saudi Arabia’s policy is flat out discrimination against a religious/ethnic group. Further, we have an old policy no longer in effect being presented as though it were still in effect today, contrast that to Saudi Arabia’s policy which was only recently announced.
