The Israeli cabinet has approved a bill proposing that state land be sold only to Jews "for security reasons", a government official said today.
The text was approved by 17 ministers to two late last night after being presented by Rabbi Haim Druckman, a deputy for the far-right National Religious Party, to overturn a March 2000 ruling by the Supreme Court.
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The court, by a majority of four judges to one, said there should be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs and authorised the Israeli Arab family of Mr Adel Kaadan to buy land in the cooperative village of Katzir in Galilee in the north and set up home there.
The village was set up in 1982 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, tasked with encouraging Jews living abroad to settle in Israel.
"This regrettable decision by the Israeli cabinet amounts to apartheid," Mr Kaadan told the Israeli daily Maariv.
The head of the left-wing opposition party Meretz, Mr Yossi Sarid, called it "a racist stain on Israel".
"No other government in the democratic world would have adopted such a law," he said.
But Rabbi Druckman welcomed the adoption of his proposal, which still has to be passed by parliament, calling it a "victory for Zionism."
AFP