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Now, after Abbas’s Fatah and the Islamist Hamas have established a unity government that aims to pave the way for Palestinian elections, several Israeli initiatives that had been put on hold are now being pushed forward, including this new proposed basic law.

“Just as the ‘basic law on human dignity and liberty’ anchors the democratic nature of the state of Israel, we need a law that will enshrine its Jewish nature,” Ayelet Shaked, one of the law’s backers and a member of the Jewish National Home party said in a statement. “This should have been done a long time ago.”

In the draft of the legislation, Israel is described as both a “Jewish” and a “democratic” state. But some worry that the new law would describe Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people” in a way that some would make the Jewish character of the state more important than its democratic character.

“Twenty percent of Israel’s population is made up of non-Jews and it like saying to those citizens who are loyal to the state that they are somehow less than the Jews,” Wadie Abunassar, of the International Center for Consultations, and an Arab citizen of Israel, told The Media Line. “It sends negative signals to the Arab and international community.”

Abunassar said it is as if France passed a law saying that only Catholics were full citizens and that highlighted the Catholic nature of France.

Defenders of the proposed law argue that it includes the “personal rights” of all citizens of the state of Israel. Critics, though, say this does not go far enough.