Joint list votes against militarisation and discrimination budget

The Joint List has rejected Israel’s  draft general budget for the year 2019. Members of the list argued that the draft budget is designed to reenforce the occupation, intensify settlement construction, deepen discrimination and prejudice against the Arab citizens, widen the gaps  in the distribution of public resources. The General Assembly of the Knesset will approve on Thursday,

During their discussions on the budget of the Knesset General Assembly, the Joint List’s deputies stressed that the both the General Budget Law and Settlements Law, both reveal the government’s extremist and racist policies. This because the budge allocates most funding to the army, settlements and war preparations as well as serving  the wealthy and crush the vulnerable groups. It does not, then  seek to achieve equality and social justice.

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The Joint List pointed out that the budget blatantly and unfairly ignores the Arab citizens’ needs and rights, excludes them from the fair weatlh distribution, as their share in the general budget is not commensurate at all with their percentage of the total population in the country. In addition, it does not seek to bridge the wide gaps between the Arab and Jewish communities resulting from the policy of marginalisation, exclusion, impoverishment and racial discrimination.

The Joint List added that approving the budget in such a way that ignores the Arab community confirms that the road towards achieving rights and full equality is still long, and that it is necessary to intensify cooperative political activism and struggle to transform the political value of the Palestinians in the interior into an influential factor in various fields.