OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, July 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Israeli cabinet sparked charges of racial discrimination Monday, July 8, after it approved a bill enabling state land to be reserved for Jews only "for security reasons".

The text, sponsored by rabbi Haim Druckman, a deputy for the far-right National Religious Party, to overturn a March 2000 ruling by the Supreme Court, was approved by 17 to two ministers late Sunday, July 7, a government official said.

Human rights groups, the main opposition party, the government's legal advisor and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres all criticized the move, which Druckman for his part called a "victory for Zionism."

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP),the measure, which still has to be approved by the Israeli parliament, stems from a suit brought to the Supreme Court by Adel Kaadan, an Israeli Arab who wished to buy land in the cooperative village of Katzir in Galilee, but was rejected because he was an Arab.

The village was set up in 1982 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, whose mission is to attract Jews living abroad to come to Israel and establish Jewish communities.

As a result of Kaadan's petition, the Supreme Court ruled there should be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs in the distribution of state lands, even those managed by the Jewish Agency.

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the state holds title to 93 percent of all land in Israel, the vast majority of which is leased by the Jewish Agency.

ACRI's chief legal adviser Dan Yakir said that since the Supreme Court ruling, the Jewish Agency has not been allowed to discriminate about who lives on the land it administers.

However, if the proposed bill is passed by the Knesset (parliament), it would give the Jewish Agency the legal backing to prevent any non-Jewish Israeli from living on land under its control, Yakir told AFP.

"With the support of the government, the chances are that this bill will be passed, unfortunately," Yakir said.

"This regrettable decision by the Israeli cabinet amounts to apartheid," Kaadan told the Israeli daily Maariv.

"Peace-loving people, both Arabs and Jews, are struggling to bring people closer together and strengthen coexistence, and in one moment a government rises and in one unfortunate decision kills these budding flowers of peace," he said.

"I don't know where the common sense and conscience of all those who supported the acceptance of such a racist decision are."

ACRI, which has been representing the Kaadan family's case, slammed the decision, saying the state was prohibited from discriminating against its citizens in the allotment of public lands.

"The Kaadan family's battle ... is a legal struggle over the nature of democracy in Israel, as defined in the Israeli Declaration of Independence," the organization said in a statement.

"The treatment of Arab citizens by the state as enemies until proven otherwise has no place in a democracy. This prejudicial attitude must not be given expression in the discrimination against citizens based on their national origin."

Attorney General and government legal advisor Elyakim Rubinstein urged ministers not to support the bill when it came before the Knesset, saying it would widen the rift between Jews and Arabs, the daily Haaretz reported.

Rubenstein said the bill was unnecessary, adding that the pursuit of equality between Jews and Arabs does not run counter to the realization of Zionism, AFP reported.

The Supreme Court ruling in the Katzir case was not the end of Zionism, he added.

The decision was rejected out of hand as "racist" by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the Labour party, the second largest party in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-leaning government.

Peres, Sharon and Labor Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer all missed Sunday's vote because of a meeting with the Egyptian intelligence chief General Omar Soleiman.

Peres said in a statement that "the Labor party would fight with all its strength against this racist decision."

The decision went against the agreement which set up Sharon's coalition and the government's basic line, which speaks explicitly about full equal rights for all citizens of Israel, he said.

The head of the left-wing opposition party Meretz, Yossi Sarid, called it "a racist stain on Israel."

"No other government in the democratic world would have adopted such a law," he said.

Israel had fought for years against a United Nations general assembly resolution, passed in 1975 and only rescinded in 1991, which equated Zionism with racism. Such law will prove that Zionism is very much equated with racism.