Ministers from the left partners in Israel's governing coalition were seething with anger.

"This is a racist law," said Nitzan Horowitz, the health secretary and leader of the secular Meretz party.

“One that discriminates against Arab citizens of Israel.

It is a law that has no place in a democratic country.” His party will therefore not allow it, “not even by turning a blind eye”.

His party friend, Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg, spoke of a "racist and superfluous" law.

It is about reintroducing a rule that prevents Palestinian spouses of Israelis from obtaining citizenship or residency.

Christian Meier

Political correspondent for the Middle East and Northeast Africa.

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However, the law's main supporter, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked of the right-wing Jamina party, appears to have prevailed against opposition, which came primarily from Meretz, the United Arab List (Raam) and Yesh Atid, the party of Foreign Minister Jair Lapid.

The cabinet overruled objections to the controversial project on Sunday evening.

It was then immediately forwarded to Parliament, and a first vote in the Knesset should possibly take place on Monday.

A side effect of the tense struggle within the governing coalition over the law is that several drafts are up for vote, some of which were tabled by opposition MPs.

Even if there was uncertainty until the end as to whether the MPs from Meretz and Raam would vote for the government draft or reject all - quite similar - versions of the law, the right-wing camp was confident of victory.

Home Secretary Shaked wrote on Twitter that more than 100 of the 120 Knesset MPs would support the law, "which at its core is an important law for the security of the state and for the preservation of its Jewish identity."

The coalition has a narrow absolute majority of 61 votes in the Knesset.

So Shaked assumed

The hard-right interior minister, seen as the terror of many Israeli leftists, had taken a hard line on the matter.

This began last summer with a defeat in a vote - the first of the new government, which came into office in June 2021.

At the beginning of July, the motion in the Knesset to extend the 2003 law on "Citizenship and Entry into Israel" failed.

Two MPs from the Arab-Islamist Raam abstained – and a dissident from Jamina, the party of Shaked and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, even voted against.

The right-wing opposition had also voted against the law, although they supported it in terms of content – ​​simply to inflict defeat and a loss of face on the new government.

Bennett then accused opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of playing "childish games" instead of showing a sense of responsibility.

After all, Netanyahu's Likud had extended the law year after year while he was in power.

Netanyahu, who had recently lost office to Bennett and his motley eight-party coalition, in turn accused the new prime minister of having formed a government "for the first time in Israel's history" that was dependent on "anti-Zionist forces." may be.