Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a draft bill aimed at rendering reformist conversions invalid for immigration to Israel and granting citizenship – according to Ynet. The Chief Rabbinate said the bill is “a move aimed at preventing a situation where there are two peoples in the State of Israel.”

As a first step, Rabbi Amar wants the clause “or we’ll convert” to be omitted from the Law of Return. Amar wants the law to stop being applied on all conversions: Reformist, Conservative or Orthodox. Under the current law rabbinical courts are unauthorized to deal with conversion.

“There is a need to fix in a principle law the Chief Rabbinate’s authority with regards to conversions,” read the draft.

The Chief Rabbinate is pressing for the law as the High Court has been asked by the reform movement to make reform conversions in Israel valid under law, as much as reform conversions abroad are.
“Over the last 10 years the concept of ‘conversion’ lost its religious meaning and became an ‘immigration’ term, through which non-Jews automatically seek Israeli nationality under the Law of Return, with intentions to join the Jewish people,” Rabbi Amar wrote.

Rabbi Amar also complained about foreign workers whose work permits expired and who fail to find an Israeli partner, therefore seeking to convert as a means to stay in Israel.