Occupied Palestine (QNN)- The Israeli Knesset on Tuesday failed to extend a racist anti-Palestinian citizenship law. The law bars granting citizenship or residency to Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or Gaza who are married to Israeli citizens, causing endless complications for Palestinians living across the 1948-occupied and 1967-occupied territories. A vote in the Knesset tied at 59-59, short of a simple majority needed to extend the 2003 law, which expires at midnight. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the vote "a premeditated, direct blow to national security". Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his right-wing Likud party, who had supported the bill in the past, voted against it. The law discriminates against native Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship by barring them from extending citizenship and permanent residency rights to Palestinian spouses. Exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis. Urging legislators to support the law on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said: "It is one of the tools designed to ensure a Jewish majority in the State of Israel. "Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, and our goal is to have a Jewish majority," he said on Twitter, adding that without the law "there would be an increase in Palestinian terrorism".