Racist Israeli laws divide Palestinian families claims Arab League

In a statement issued on 16th August, the Arab League claimed that Israel’s “racist” laws divide Palestinian families. The League’s General Secretariat has renewed its rejection of Israel’s policy which dispossesses Palestinians and violates their basic civil and human rights. It is the law which allows such things which has pushed Ahmed Al-Maghraby, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, to be on hunger strike in front of the Israeli Embassy in Berlin for more than 20 days in protest at the embassy’s refusal to add his daughter Zeinab to his Jerusalem identity card. According to the Arab League, the Israeli Embassy’s refusal reflects the racism of the occupation authority’s laws and military decrees, which serve to divide Palestinian families.

Ambassador Mohamed Sobeih, the Arab League’s Assistant Secretary General and Head of the Department for Palestine, said that the organisation supports Mr. Al-Maghraby’s right to register his daughter just like all other fathers in the world. He called upon human and children’s rights organizations, especially those in EU countries, to support the distraught hunger striker.

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The statement added: “The Arab League has time and again warned of the dangers of these racist laws and their serious affects on the lives of unarmed civilians.” It noted that such laws are applied to many Palestinian families, including, said Ambassador Sobeih, a law which prohibits anyone from Jerusalem getting married to someone from the West Bank or Gaza.