The passage by the Israeli Knesset July 19 of the Jewish nationality law has produced different and even contradictory reactions by Palestinians and Israelis.

The law — passed by a small majority of 62-55, with two abstaining — follows the demand by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During his 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Netanyahu set two conditions for accepting the two-state solution: that Palestine be a demilitarized state and that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The second condition was totally rejected by Palestinian leaders who argued that it is not the place of Palestinians to decide Israel’s nationality, and that such a recognition by Palestinians is tantamount to giving up the Palestinians’ right of return and that it badly infringes on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are not Jewish.

The request by Israel to become a permanent member of the UN was conditional on Israel accepting the partition plan of 1947 and the right of return of Palestinian refugees as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

It is true that UN Resolution 181 — or what is known as the 1947 partition plan — divided historic Palestine into a “Jewish” and an “Arab” state. But while at the time Israelis celebrated the passage of that plan on the ground, Israeli troops in 1948 occupied much more than the lands allotted in the partition plan, specifically in Jerusalem. The partition plan called for Jerusalem to be outside these two states in what is referred to as corpus separatum. The new Israeli nationality law violates that by declaring Jerusalem a unified Israeli city.