Hybridity and Israel's Democratic Order – The end of imperfect balance?

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE

Hybridity and Israel’s Democratic Order: The End of an Imperfect Balance?

Ayelet Harel-ShalevIlan Peleg

AbstractThis article deals with the quality of Israel’s democracy from the perspective of what it views as the fundamentally hybrid nature of the Israeli regime. From its inception, Israel has been committed to two seemingly conflicting sets of values, one universal (reflected in democratic institutions, practices and ideals) and the other particularistic (reflected in national institutions benefitting a segment of the Israeli population). This article examines the most recent trends in Israel’s constitutional order, including its political culture and especially its legal develop-ments, and their potential impact on the quality of the democratic order in the country. It points out the threats for the existing, imperfect balance between the traditional albeit contradicting commitments of the Israeli society, state and regime, which might push the country toward a hegemonic order.

Keywordshybrid regime, Israel, Arab–Palestinians, democracy, deeply divided societies, right wing

Scholarly writings about the Israeli case differ about the nature of the state. Disagreements prevail on the right terminology to describe the Israeli regime, the direction of political relations between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority, the likely future of the country’s regime and more. Analysts have described Israel in such greatly different terms as ‘liberal democracy’ (Yakobson & Rubinstein 2003), ‘ethnic democracy’ (Smooha 1996, 2002), ‘ethnocracy’ (Yiftachel 2001) and ‘hegemonic regime/ethnic constitutional order’ (Peleg 2004, 2007). As to the

Article

Contemporary Review of the Middle East

1(1) 75–94 2014 SAGE Publications India

Private Limited SAGE Publications

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore,

Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/2347798913518462

http://cme.sagepub.com

Ayelet Harel-Shalev is a Lecturer at the Confl ict Management and Resolution Program and Politics and Government Department, Ben-Gurion University Israel. Email: [email protected] Peleg is a Charles A. Dana Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, US. Email: [email protected] authors would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive remarks. The article was fi nalised in May 2013.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE

Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 1, 1 (2014): 75–94

76 Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Ilan Peleg

major political processes in society, Smooha suggests that Israel is, in fact, more multicultural in practice than any of the EU countries, since it specifically acknowledges the Arab–Palestinian minority as a cultural and linguistic minority and provides them with a separate, state financed, compulsory educational system in Arabic (2008, p. 12). Other scholars, with whom we disagree, present Israel as an apartheid state that is involved with ethnic cleansing (Pappe 2006, 2011).

In addition, there are conflicting views regarding Israel’s legislation on immi-gration and citizenship. While Yakobson and Rubinstein (2003) think that Israel is doing well and basically does not differ much from other democratic nation states, other scholars, such as Medina and Saban (2009), Smooha (2008), Jamal (2011), and Peled and Navot (2005) take a significantly more critical view of the country. Looking at the Arab–Palestinian minority, while Rekhess presents a pro-cess of its radicalization (2002, 2007), Smooha identifies a process of politiciza-tion (1998, 2004). Normatively speaking, while there are scholars who claim that Israel should stick to its self-definition as ‘Jewish and Democratic’ (Gavison 1998), other suggests that it should become a bi-national state (Ghanem 2009) or alternatively strengthen its civic character, while maintaining its Jewish definition (Peleg and Waxman 2011).

Despite those differences of opinion, most analysts agree that the Israeli regime within the borders of the ‘green line’ (termed also as ‘Israel proper’) has been, in essence, a hybrid, mixture or combination of different ideas and principles. Smooha (1996) for instance, has suggested that the ‘ethnic democracy’ in Israel involves civic rights and group rights that enable the state to practice what he views as an ethnic democracy. Peled (1992) suggests that parallel citizenship ‘packages’ have been given to the majority and minority in Israel and Peled and Shafir (1996) identify different citizenship discourses—liberal, ethnic and repub-lican—in Israeli politics.1

While in general we accept most of these long-term characterizations of the Israeli regime, in this article we focus primarily on the highly dynamic nature of the country’s constitutional order at the present time. As the condition of the Palestinian population in West Bank and in Gaza is beyond the scope of the cur-rent research, we will focus on the nature of the Israeli regime within ‘Israel proper’ (pre-1967 borders). Our aim is to analyze the inherent tension between the conflicting logics of democracy and citizenship, on the one hand and ethnicity and nationhood, on the other hand. We examine the way in which the deeply divided Israeli society attempts to reconcile these contradictory notions by defining itself at once as both national (exclusive) and democratic (inclusive). In doing so, Israel presents a quintessential hybrid regime, as it has done since independence. The critical question to ask is whether Israel is capable of squaring the circle; create a genuine democracy despite its ethno-national commitments. In assessing the qual-ity of Israel’s Democracy, we argue that the imperfect balance between universal liberalism and nationalist hegemony has now been seriously disturbed, brought closer to the breaking point than ever before. In moving toward greater ethniciza-tion, the country might have put in danger its long-term democratic character.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE


Hybridity and Israel’s Democratic Order 77

Governments of deeply divided societies with control over ethnically mixed territories that opt to follow a democratic path can choose from at least three poli-cies to sustain their regimes when faced with severe internal ethnic conflicts (Harel-Shalev 2013):

1. Preserve the state’s territorial unity, but sacrifice their ethnic character by inserting civic/liberal or federal elements in order to include within the state significant minorities. In the case of Israel, such policy would allow the country, in effect, to ‘drift’ toward the so-called one-state solution, thus creating a version of binationalism, either de facto or de jure.

2. Uphold and enhance the state’s national character and give up control of some state territories inhabited by the minority. In the Israeli case, this was the solution adopted by the second Rabin government, aiming at the two-state solution for Israel and a neighboring Palestinian state. It was also suggested by ‘Yisrael Beiteinu’ Party headed by Lieberman, that Israel should carry-out territorial and population transfers.2

3. Sustain both the national character and the territorial unity, with the possi-bility of being a less democratic state that actively curtails civil and/or group rights to maintain its territorialist vision.

Each strategy can be found in Israel’s recent political history. Over the last several years, however, rightwing-ruled Israel has moved toward

the third option, trying to further enhance Israel’s national character as an exclu-sively Jewish state and its maximalist territorial integrity. The price of selecting this ‘mixed option’—the fusion of ethno-nationalism and territorialist policies—has caused, on the one hand, the infliction of serious harm on the rights of the Arab Palestinian minority in Israel (not merely in the West Bank and Gaza); and on the other hand, of low-level democracy in the country as a whole.3

In choosing the most appropriate solution for their societies, states and their leaders are naturally affected by the demographic balance that they face (Dowty 1998). States in which the majority community consists of more than 84 per cent of the population usually do not tend to establish power-sharing mechanisms, reflecting the predominance of their majorities. In contrast, when the majority constitutes less than 64 per cent, it often relies on power-sharing mechanisms. In the case of Israel proper, the ‘demographic ratio’ between the state’s communities might be characterized by ‘demographic prominence’, that is, the majority consti-tutes between 65 per cent and 84 per cet of the population. According to our previ-ous observations (Peleg 1997, pp. 197–99), this is the ‘danger zone’ where most severe ethnic conflicts occur.

The above classification, focusing narrowly on demographics, ought to be broadened, expanded and applied to the general characteristic of the constitu-tional order adopted by deeply divided societies. In a different paper (Peleg and Harel-Shalev 2012), we offer the following four possible options on a continuum

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



that spreads between complete equality between the constituent socio-political groups and complete inequality between them:

1. Binationalism or multinationalism is a constitutional order that establishes complete equality between the major groups in a deeply divided society. Belgium (binationalism) and Switzerland (multinationalism) might serve as examples in today’s world. While this form of regime might maximize equality, it might not be politically achievable, might nor enhance ‘govern-ability’ (Belgium as an example), or might not be particular stable.

2. Power-Sharing or Power-Division is a constitutional order that, while rejecting the principle of full ethno-national equality (accepted by binationalism or multinationalism), promotes the idea that the state belongs to all major groups in society. There are numerous institutional mechanism to share power or divide it—consociationalism in its different formulas (Lijphart 1985) as applied in Northern Ireland, federalism (Canada), terri-torial (Spain) or a-territorial autonomy and even cantonization (as in the Swiss case). Whatever the precise order, in each of these cases and formats, the majority agrees to divide or share power with the minority, and arrives at the solution via dialogical politics rather than ethno-national ‘diktat’.

3. Ethnic Democracy is a regime type in which there are equal rights for all individual citizens in a society, regardless of their ethnic descent or mem-bership, but different group rights for the majority and the minority as ethno-national groups. In such an order, the state itself is identified, openly and publicly, with the dominant ethno-national group. This model was ini-tially suggested by Sammy Smooha as an analytical way of understanding the Israeli democracy, but was also applied to other cases in central and east Europe.

4. Majoritarianism is a constitutional order in which the dominant ethno-national group decides on all public issues, with no regard or minimal regard to the interests, demands or positions of the minority. Majoritarian attitude is likely to lead to at least what has been characterized as ‘ethnic democracy’ (Smooha 2002), an inherently flawed democracy (Peleg 2004) and so forth.

5. Hegemony is a constitutional order in which the dominant ethno-national group pushes ‘Majoritarianism’ to its outer limits by negating numerous of the minority rights in practically all spheres of public life. This situation has been described by us (Peleg 2007) and others (Yiftachel 2006) in the past. It has been applied in countries such as Iraq, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Spain and Sri Lanka with devastating effects for the targeted ethno-national groups, but also to individuals and groups opposed to the hegemonic order on moral, legal or other grounds.

This general theoretical perspective is applicable to Israel of 2013. First, it is clear that Israel since 1948 has established, in fact if not in theory, a hybrid regime, mixing individual civic rights—most (although not all) of the traditional Western

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



freedoms—and some group rights, although not on an equal basis.4 Second, for the most part Israel had adopted the Majoritarian Model in regard to all crucial issues—citizenship and immigration, land control, culture and symbols etc. Thirdly, in Israel during the last decade or so there has been a serious push to move beyond Majoritarianism and toward Hegemony and that this process is likely to continue in years to come.

The rest of this article will be dedicated to several tasks: (i) an examination, both theoretically and empirically, of the hybrid nature of the Israeli regime, (ii) demonstrating the Majoritarian character of the Israeli constitutional order, and (iii) analysis of the direction in which the regime has turned to during the past decade.

The State of Israel was established in mid-1948 following the termination of the British Mandate, in the midst of an Arab-Jewish violent struggle for control of the land and eventually a war between Israel and the neighboring Arab states. The vast majority of Arab-Palestinians left Israel, some of them expelled by Jewish forces (Morris 2004). Roughly 150,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in what became post-1949 Israel. For many of them, the establishment of Israel considered as their own ‘disaster’ (al-Nakba in Arabic). From the very beginning, the Jewish majority and the Arab minority—the remnants of the Arab community in mandatory Palestine—were on two sides of a huge political divide. Many Jews have identified the Arabs as a disloyal minority, a ‘fifth column’, and a ‘security problem’. The Arabs, on their side, identified the new Jewish state as their dispossessor, the ille-gitimate ruler of their land.5

Despite those inauspicious, unpromising beginning, the State of Israel began by establishing a seemingly hybrid constitutional order. Lacking a written consti-tution, Israel’s Proclamation of Independence stated that the new state ‘will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace’. It promised ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex’, and appealed to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to ‘preserve the peace and participate in the up-building of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions’. Side by side with these commitments to what might be called ‘universal principles’ of democracy and equality, the Declaration was also a particularistic document com-mitting the State to the national ideas of Zionism and the Jewish nation. No sig-nificant disagreements have arisen over the text of the Declaration among the People’s Council (Moetzet Ha’am). Nonetheless, the People’s Council and then the Israeli government treated the State of Israel as an irrevocably Jewish state.

Table 1. Constitutional Orders Adopted by Deeply Divided Societies

Binationalism Power-Sharing

Ethnic Democracy

Majoritarianism Hegemony Multinationalism

Source: Peleg & Harel-Shalev 2013.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



The distinction between the two communities in Israel has been reflected at the most basic level of citizenship. The Law of Return (1950) determined that an affiliation with the Jewish collective was sufficient grounds for immediately receiving Israeli citizenship. This law defined the state of the state as ‘the state of the Jews’, both of citizens of the state and emphasized the link of the state with the Jews in the Diaspora.6 Many essential laws of the State of Israel, in addition to the Law of Return and the Law of Citizenship, have ensured the ‘Jewishness’ of the state and have helped in maintaining and enhancing both the demographic Jewish majority and the political Jewish control in the land.

At a relatively late stage, the 1990s, two ‘basic laws’ were passed; emphasizing that Israel is a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state. This formula, incorporating hybrid-ity into the very definition of the state, has now been enshrined in the country’s constitutional order (Peleg 2003). Countervailing pressures to liberalize Israel, reflected in the rulings of the Supreme Court and the declaration of a ‘constitu-tional revolution’ were held at bay by the insistence of many to describe the state as ‘Jewish’. Above all, Israel’s land policy demonstrates that it sees itself as a Jewish state. In the state’s first few decades, there was only a ‘taking away’ of lands as those lands owned or held by Arabs were confiscated. Over the last few decades, the more passive practice of ‘non-allocation’ of lands to Arabs has become the common practice and only in recent years have limits been set on a non-allocation policy. Additionally, Israeli symbols have always been exclusively Jewish, rooted in either Judaism as a religion or in the political history of Zionism and Israeli-Jewish majority.

Despite these ethno-national characteristics of Israel’s political culture, along-with social and political civic rights, the Arab minority was granted several important collective rights (Saban 2004). Those included a formal, though unim-plemented, status for Arabic as an official language; a separate, although not inde-pendent Arabic education system; a separate system of matrimony laws for the different religious sectors and the legal right to separate courts, limited by Jewish government control over funding and the appointment of Kadis; and practical, dis-cretionary exemption from military service for Arabs (excluding Druze and Circassian men). The Israeli Supreme Court issued through the years several rul-ings on equality in the purchasing of lands, governmental allocation of funds, appointment to the civil service and so forth. At this stage we should not yet regard these civil rights as de facto, as these principles have not yet been fully imple-mented. Numerous authors (Barzilai 2003; Ghanem 1998; Ghanem, Rouhana and Yiftachel 2008; Harel-Shalev 2010; Lustick 1990; Peled 2007; Peleg 2007; Saban 2004), have established through the years the existence of pervasive discrimination of members of the Arab minority as individuals and as a group. Many official Israeli organizations have agreed (for example, the Or Commission), as have many NGOs (ACRI, Adalah, Mossawa, Sikkuy).

The Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel shares the Palestinian nationality with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and beyond. This minority also carries Israeli citizenship. It has special features that distinguish it from both the rest of

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



the Palestinian people and from the majority Jewish community in Israel. Most Palestinians in Israel admit they feel connected to the state of Israel (Sikkuy report 2011); yet, they are a unique, distinct and, above all, a homeland minority (Jamal 2008).

A review of Israeli history reveals that the country has been committed to two sets of values that exist in constant tension with each other, particularly within the context of the long-time Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the one hand there is a commitment to democratic order, including such values as equality before the law and even the recognition of minority rights. On the other hand, there is a strong commitment on the part of most Israeli Jews to the ethno-national ‘mission’ of the state, Zionism, a commitment that views the State as belonging, above all, not merely to Israeli Jews but to all Jews. This hybridity has been evident in Israel from the very early history of the State; it has been enhanced through the years.

The troubled, conflictual majority–minority relations among the citizens of Israel, has been affected dramatically by the hybrid nature of the State. Peled and Navot (2005), and more recently Peleg and Waxman (2011), have described in great details the changing patterns of relations between the two groups, especially over the last dozen years or so.

Recent developments suggest that the careful balance that evolved between Israel as a ‘democracy’ and Israel as a ‘Jewish Republic’ through the earlier years of the state has been allowed to seriously deteriorate. Several important processes have contributed to this significant deterioration: (a) the failure of the Oslo pro-cess (2000–2001) and the decline of progress toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; (b) the break of second intifada and the large-scale 2000 demonstrations by Israeli Arabs; (c) a right-wing dominated nationalist govern-ments in Israel since 2001; and accordingly (d) the decline of both the traditional Left and the liberal center in Israel; and (e) the rise and politicization of religious circles; (f) the rise in the number of non-Jewish temporary migrant workers, that heightens the Jewish/non-Jewish cleavage, deepening the Arab–Jewish divide (Harel-Shalev and Kook 2011).

An examination of the constitutional and legal context reveals that there has been a marked increase in anti-pluralistic acts proposed, and sometimes adopted by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Much of this legislation has been promoted by right wing political parties; although parliamentarians from the centrist parties joined them on some occasions (Harel-Shalev and Kook 2011). While the designa-tion of right–left in the Israeli political map since 1967 has traditionally been applied almost exclusively to positions regarding settlement activity and territorial expansion (that is, positions taken on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), recent devel-opments in the Israeli political map have given rise to new parties that are compa-rable to the right wing, nationalist parties in Europe (for example HaBayit HaYehudi, Tkuma, Yisrael Beiteinu). The rise of the New Right in Israel is central to our thesis in regard to possibility of fundamental change in the character of the Israeli regime.

Several examples of major legislative and constitutional developments demon-strate our theoretical argument in an empirical fashion. In their totality, these

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



legislations, if realized, might cause (serious) decline in the quality of Israel’s frag-ile democracy. The new, illiberal laws that were passed or initiated recently in Israel fall into five categories: (i) Anti-minority; (ii) Anti-supreme-court; (iii) Anti-left wing; and (iv) Anti-non-Jewish immigrants and (v) anti-liberal in general.7 It is important to note that those are not neat categories; sometimes they overlap. In the current article, we have chosen to focus primarily on anti-minority legislation, though we wish to emphasize the new anti-pluralist spirit reflected in all or most of these legislative initiatives. We will start with laws that affect the nature of the Israeli citizenship directly, and then move to address other spheres of rights restrictions.8

2003 Amendment to the Citizenship Law

As discussed above, the central constitutional expression of Israel’s Jewish iden-tity is based in the Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952). These foundational laws link Jewish identity and Israeli citizenship, introducing a dis-tinction between the rights of the country’s Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants. It incorporates a discriminatory and differentiating dimension to citizenship. By vir-tue of its recognizing that any Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel, the Law of Return bestows a superior legal status, relative to Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, upon Jews who are not citizens of the State.

Despite the constitutional and legal contradiction that emerges, judicial insti-tutions in Israel have determined that the principle of equality has not been materially compromised by these laws since it is commonly accepted that the State constitutionally entitled to regulate the composition and character of its own population. Indeed, the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled on several occa-sions that there is no contradiction between the Law of Return and the principle of equality in Israeli democracy. As presented by Aharon Barak in the Ka’adan verdict:

Since the State’s establishment, it has treated its citizens equally. The State of Israel is a Jewish state in which minorities live, among them the Arab minority. Each of the minorities living in Israel enjoys absolute equality. It is true that a special key to enter the house was given to the Jewish people (see the Law of Return), although should a person be a citizen according to law, he enjoys equal rights just like all the other members of the household…therefore there is no contradiction between the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and absolute equality among all its citizens. On the contrary: the equality of rights existing among all people in Israel, regardless of their religion and regardless of their nationality—derives from the val-ues of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

H.C. (1995) 6689/95 Ka’adan vs. The Israel Lands Administration, 54(1) P.D. 282.

This delicate understanding received a serious challenge with the proposed amendment to the Citizenship Law (1952), which was placed on the agenda

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



in 2003 and generated debate about limiting the granting of citizenship to a man/woman from the occupied territories who marries an Israeli citizen. The debate began after a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, whose mother was an Israeli citizen, committed suicide bombing in 2002. Exploiting the privi-leges granted to him by citizenship, the perpetrator used Israeli license plates and an Israeli identity card in his mission to blow up the Matza restaurant in Haifa, which had been a symbol of co-existence between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

As a result, the Knesset responded by adopting an amendment to Israel’s citi-zenship law, banning Palestinians residing in the occupied territories from enter-ing the country for the purpose of residence and naturalization, even in the context of family unification with (usually Arab) Israeli citizen.9 Further amend-ments to the law made in 2007 also prohibit spouses from a number of ‘enemy states’, (defined and listed in the law as Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, as well as from the Palestinian Authority) to receive citizenship in order to live together in Israel with their spouses, but added some provisions liberalizing the guidelines regarding age and other qualifying aspects in 2005.10 It is important to emphasize that the law discriminates against Israeli citizens who marry Arabs and Palestinians, in contrast to other Israelis who marry non-citizens of any other nationality. Since nearly all the Israelis who marry Palestinians are Arab-Palestinians, the law discriminates against this sector on the basis of nationality (Peled 2007).

The Israeli Supreme Court decided (in a 6:5 vote) to uphold the constitutional-ity of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (as amended in 2007) after lengthy deliberation and disagreement.10 The majority justices recognize that there is a constitutional right to family life, which derives from the right to human dignity, but ruled that this right does not extend to necessarily being exercised within Israel. This argument was based in part on the European Court of Human Rights precedent that determined that states are not required to grant the right to family life within their borders. It was also ruled that if there is a violation of constitu-tional rights, including the right to equality, then this is a violation that meets the requirements of the limitation clause.

Oath of Allegiance (Proposed)

The demand for an oath of allegiance has come up numerous times over the past few years. Specific legislation was finally proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu party leader and the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Lieberman. The proposal sug-gested an amendment to the Citizenship Law (1952), according to which a person who does not pledge allegiance to the Jewish state ‘shall lose his right to vote and be elected’. Earlier, in its election campaign, Yisrael Beiteinu promised ‘to act to define a closer link between military service or national service and the rights granted by the National Insurance Institute, in the spirit of the clear principle that

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



whoever is more loyal receives more’ (Israel Beiteinu Party platform 2009; Saban 2008). While the government refrained from demanding the curtailing of the rights of current citizens who fail to take the oath, it did adopt the suggestion of demanding an oath of allegiance from new citizens. In October 2010, an amend-ment to the citizenship law was passed that states that every non-Jew who applies for Israeli citizenship must declare that he/she is loyal to the Jewish and Democratic Israeli State.

While the legislating of an oath of allegiance was aimed explicitly at the Palestinian Arab minority, it nonetheless reflects the general worldview that sees the identity of Israel as a Jewish state being threatened by the growing presence of foreigners and non-Jews. As with the amendment to the citizenship law men-tioned above, this legislation reflects the growing perception of dual threat—both to security and to identity.

Revoking Citizenship for Persons Convicted of Terrorism or Espionage

Initiated by MK David Rotem, the law authorizes the Minister of Interior and the courts to revoke citizenship of persons convicted of terrorism, espionage, or dis-loyalty. When citizenship is denied, a series of basic rights that follow from it are denied too. The bill was approved by the Knesset Interior Committee with two amendments: First, that it will not be permissible to leave a person state-less. Second, that the decision to revoke citizenship will require the approval of the Attorney-General. Israel’s General Security Services have expressed opposition to this bill. Regardless the fact that Israel’s criminal law already includes legal tools for dealing with persons convicted of terrorism or espionage, the law has passed final reading on 28 March 2011.

‘Selection Committees’—Acceptance to Communities Law

Despite the existence of freedom of mobility and residence, Israeli geographic space is mostly partitioned between Arabs and Jews. Arab citizens live largely in Arab cities and villages, with a minority in three mixed cities. The major urban centers in Israel have less than five per cent of Arab residents. The strict separa-tion between Arabs and Jews in this sense reflects both the historical policy of anti-integration, as well as the fact that the control of land lies at the heart of the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel. From a historical perspective, Jewish settlement was the main factor that impacted the social ‘partitioning of space’ in the country. Furthermore, settlement and ‘integration of the exiles’ are among the State’s cornerstones (Kedar 2003). The implementation of these principles was

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



articulated in the takeover of most of the land in the State, ‘making room’ for the masses of immigrants who arrived.

If in the past state land was by and large transferred to Jews, as of the year 2000, governmental and legal principles in this area changed significantly. Although in numerous cases the State categorically refused to accept land-related claims made by Arab-Palestinian citizens, the exceptional case of the Ka’adan family (in Katzir) is particularly relevant to this discussion and constitutes a material change. Acute housing problems in the Arab sector drove a small pro-portion of this population to reside in Jewish towns. Seeking a better quality of life, the Ka’adan family, were among a group of Arab couples interested in mov-ing to the Jewish town of Katzir and building a home there. Following the opposi-tion voiced by Katzir residents, the Israel Lands Administration and the Jewish Agency, the Ka’adans petitioned in the Supreme Court. The March 2000 judg-ment stipulated that the State’s definition as Jewish is not justification for dis-criminating against Arabs and the State of Israel cannot deny its obligations by discriminating against non-Jews through a third party (the Jewish Agency) (Jabareen 2002).

In order to bypass this somewhat revolutionary verdict, many Jewish com-munities have opted for a more ‘diplomatic’ barrier by establishing ‘selection committees’. Nine years after the Ka’adan verdict, in March 2011, the Knesset voted in favor of a law amendment stating that every new small village is entitled to compel all candidates who wish to buy land/property in the village to go through a selection process. According to this law, acceptance committees to vil-lages and communities may turn down a candidate if the committee decides he or she ‘fails to meet the fundamental views of the community’, its social fabric and so on. The bill might be used to deny ethnic minorities’ access to Jewish communities set up on predominantly public lands.12 The amended version of the law limits the application of the law to the Negev and Galilee regions alone; and to communities of up to 400 family units (instead of 500 units in the original version). A petition was filed at the Supreme Court to cancel the law and is pending.13

The Boycott Law

This law, officially titled ‘Preventing Harm to the State of Israel by Means of Boycott’, enables the filing of civil lawsuits against individuals who call for boy-cott of settlement (in the West Bank and Gaza) products. The law also includes several sanctions that would primarily hurt NGOs or companies participating in a boycott: the loss of the NGOs’ ‘public institution’ status and with it the tax-exempt status of donations made to these organizations, as well as the cancellation of benefits to companies or ventures participating in a boycott.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



Anyone initiating, promoting, or publishing material that could serve as an informational basis for a boycott against Israeli products or interests would be guilty of a criminal and a civil offense. The offender would be liable for damages and would have to recompense parties injured by the boycott, as well as being subject to punitive damages of NIS30,000 without proof of damage. In the explanatory notes to the bill, the sponsors declared that they would seek to expand the scope of the legislation and reintroduce the criminal offense provision into the text of the law. On 27 June 2011, the bill was debated in the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee in preparation for its second-third reading. Bill sponsors and supporters added a new section containing a series of sanctions that would primarily hurt NGOs or companies participating in a boycott: the loss of the NGOs’ ‘public institution’ status and with it the tax-exempt status of donations made to these organizations, as well as the cancellation of benefits to companies or ventures participating in a boycott—benefits established by law encouraging capital investment in companies, support for R&D and state- sponsored loan guarantees. For example, a business publicly declaring that it would not buy supplies manufactured in the territories would be subject to lose its state-sponsored benefits. The law has passed final reading on 11 July 2011. A petition was filed at the Israeli Supreme Court in March 2012 on behalf of lead-ing human rights organizations and Israeli and Palestinian groups affected by the law seeking its cancellation. In December 2012 the Supreme Court issued an order italicize against the law and ordered the state to explain why the law should not be cancelled.14

The Nakba Law

According to the original version of this bill, persons publicly commemorating the Nakba Day as a day of mourning shall be sentenced and sent to prison (Peleg & Waxman 2011: 127–28). The government endorsed the bill, but in the wake of public protest an amended version was presented. The amended version does not target individuals, but rather municipalities, organizations and public institutions. Officially titled ‘Budget Foundations Law (Amendment 40)—Reducing Budget or Support for Activity Contrary to the Principles of the State’, this law authorizes the Minister of Finance to relinquish monetary support if the body or institution has made any payment toward an event or action that undermines the ‘existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state’, violates the symbols of the State, or marks the date of Israel’s establishment ‘as a day of mourning’. The law has passed final reading on 22 March 2011. On 4 May 2011, a petition against the law was filed at the Supreme Court, requesting that it find the Nakba Law unconstitu-tional. The Supreme Court rejected the petition in January 2012, ruling that the case was premature as the law had not been used against any specific institution.15

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



Foreign Entity Funding Law

Officially titled ‘Law on Disclosure Requirements for Recipients of Support from a Foreign State Entity’; was proposed by MK Ze’ev Elkin et al. According to the final version of this law, NGOs supported by foreign state entities will be required to submit financial reports every quarter (that is, four times a year instead of an annual report) and if an advertising campaign is funded by a foreign state entity it must be stated within the framework of this campaign. Despite claims made by the promoters of this law, as though it is intended to increase transparency—in practice its purpose is to delegitimize and curtail the activities of organizations that receive funds from foreign entities.

Though the Israeli law already makes reporting such donations obligatory, this law expands the existing requirements and limits the possibility of receiving funds from non-Israeli organization. Its purpose is to harm human rights NGOs, as these restrictions may discourage foreign government funding. The law specifically exempts the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the United Israel Appeal, the Jewish National Fund and their subsidiary corporations from its provisions. Thus the bill is inherently discriminatory. The law passed final reading on 21 February 2011.

Basic Law: Israel the Nation-State of the Jewish People Proposed

Tabled on 3 August 2011, a bill that seeks to define Israel as ‘the national home of the Jewish people’—legally subordinating the state’s democratic character to its Jewish one as defined in this proposed bill. The bill further stipulates that Arabic will no longer be an official language of the state (rather a ‘special status’ language), and that Hebrew Law shall serve as a source of inspiration for the legislator. The proposal is aimed at strengthening Israel’s national and cultural identity as a Jewish state, and emphasizing Israel’s identity as a nation-state rather than a bi-national or multicultural state. The status of the non-Jewish citizens is therefore even more marginal-ized than before. The proposal, however, has not yet been forwarded to final reading.

The anti-pluralist atmosphere does not remain merely in the Knesset. During July 2010, dozens of municipal rabbis signed a manifest ordering a halachic ban on selling or renting land and apartments in Israel to non-Jews.16 The government was not determent enough to condemn this move. Many more law proposals were initiated during the recent period, some of which were rejected by international reaction, and some of which in the initial process of legislation. These processes and many similar ones have changed the complexion of contemporary Israeli politics. The discourse aimed at strengthening an exclusive Jewish ethno-national identity which has diminished the liberal democratic factor, curtailing minority rights. The political implications have been far-reaching. This process has given

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



the right wing more power. Furthermore, ideas that were acceptable by the extreme right wing in the past, have become an acceptable component of both left and right wing political ideology. And among the supporters in the new law we can trace many politicians, belong to the center (Harel-Shalev and Kook 2011). Israel has therefore moved toward even stronger majoritarianism that characterized it in the past and the increasing hegemonic nature of its politics threatens to push it even further to the right.

Among the factors that drive Israeli politics to the ‘right’, we can trace not merely security challenges and ethnic conflicts, but also political streams that their political culture encourages a firm policy against all foreigners and non-nationalist factors. Some of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, tend to prefer right wing agenda; ‘religious’ actor, also, prefer non-liberal approaches; among them we might find circles who don’t have any sensitivity to the modern discourse of human and civil rights. In addition, we can trace ‘secular national-ists’, for whom the Nation is superior to all, and is much more important to them than the freedom of speech or civic rights.

On a positive note, rather new survey findings indicate that there is room for some optimism. If we move from the Knesset and the elite to the public, Israeli NGO of both Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel named Sikkuy (A Chance), has published recently a report based on a recent national survey among Jews and Arabs—citizens of Israel (Sikkuy 2011). In a nut shell, the findings indicate that a clear majority of the Jews acknowledge the fact that Arab citizens suffer some degree of discrimination, and many of them expressed empathy for their situation. Moreover, 60 per cent of the Jews believe that promoting the equality of Arab citi-zens is in the interest of the country. The inequality of Arab citizens disturbs over half of the Jewish population in Israel and almost 40 per cent of the Jews declare a willingness to pay a personal price in order to reduce the gaps. A broad support was found for integrating Arab citizens. Among Arab citizens there is sweeping support for economic, political and social integration. Among Jews the numbers are lower, mainly in the political sphere, and still, the majority supports integra-tion of the minority. Nevertheless, both communities prefer to continue to live separately.

When we move from practical policies and inequality recognition, to symbols, it seems that the gap is indeed wider. The Jewish citizens expect the Arab citizens to accept their situation as a minority within a nation state and refrain from attempting to achieve full equality on the national and symbolic level. As far as the minority is concerned—a large majority of Arab citizens of Israel believe that without a change in this basic principle, or the basic definition of the state as Jewish and democratic, true equality will not be possible. The recent trend of the anti-pluralist legislation does not open dialogue, nor promote equality—the other way around.

Our study has presented a sample of anti-pluralist legislative proposals in contemporary Israel. It is important to mention that virtually all these laws and proposed laws have been vociferously opposed in the press and other public

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



forums, especially human rights NGOs. In some cases, the discussion of these initiatives has led to dropping them from consideration or adoption. In other cases, the legislation was changed by the courts. It is an ongoing political battle between particulars and universalists in Israel.

Conclusions

After the elections of 2013, two important commentators offer the following opinion:

The recent Israeli elections indicate a change in direction. Against the backdrop of a pervasive sense that the confl ict is currently unresolvable—a tragedy in its own right—a new coalition has been formed whose members disagree on foreign policy and defense but come together around a common civic agenda that includes matters of identity. Unlike fundamentalist groups which would have Israel choose between its Jewish essence and democratic character, the new Knesset shows signs of favoring a complex integration of the universal-democratic aspects of Israel’s national identity with its particularistic-Jewish facets. (Stern and Ruderman 2013)

In assessing the consequences of the January 2013 elections, we tend to take a more cautious approach. While the elections open up the possibility for liberaliza-tion in Israel, this possibility is by no means guaranteed. Several analysts (Ghanem 1998; Peled 2007; Peleg and Waxman 2011; Yiftachel 2006) have warned in the past that Israel could move toward increasing ethnicization or greater majority hegemony, despite its credentials as fundamentally a democratic society. The decline in the prospects of fundamental resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian con-flict, the demographic trends in favor of the religious and secular/Nationalist Right, the ability of politicians to use the ethno-national split, and so forth, have pushed the Israeli public to the right. This trend might eventually change the nature of the Israeli regime. Nevertheless, the recent election outcome might sug-gest that Israel is moving in a different direction.

A close look at the theoretical continuum offered above indicates that Israel’s hybrid regime, an imperfect as might have been, may evolve to complete hegem-ony, pushing majoritarianism to its extreme. If the recent movement to the right continues unabated, it will result in the complete erosion of the traditional hybrid-ity adopted by Israel’s founding fathers. The liberal forces in Israel might be too weak to stop this movement. History has shown that the erosion of hybridity is extremely dangerous for the quality of a country’s democracy. In the case of deeply divided Sri Lanka and formerly united Cyprus, hybrid regimes have taken the wrong turn, leading to severe and violent conflict (Harel-Shalev 2010).

It seems that Israel is facing three great challenges: (i) solving the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ending the occupation; this conflict affects dramatically the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis inside Israel itself; (ii) developing a

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



more inclusive democracy that can better balance the interests of the Jewish majority and the Arab-Palestinian minority and broaden the rights of the minority in the country; (iii) Creating a system in which group right for minorities, such as of the orthodox community for instance, would not harm the sensitive balance between the principles of minority culture, women rights and equality.

Interestingly enough, even the former head of the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) admitted that inclusion of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel’s civic life, is much more important and pressing than security concerns (Quoted in Cohen 2012). During the last decade Israel has been moving toward greater hegemony. Time will tell whether the new coalition, emerging after the 2013 elec-tions, will bring about change toward greater equality and greater attention to human rights of and equality among all Israeli citizens, along with an agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

Notes 1. The 1967 War, the most significant since that in 1948, witnessed the conquering by

Israel of the remaining parts of the Land of Israel/Mandatory Palestine (the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) as well as of the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. The 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt resulted in Israel’s retreat from the Sinai, and in 1994 Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. Although Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, evacuating 8,000 Israeli settlers in the process, approximately 400,000 Jewish Israeli citizens—almost 7 per cent of Israel’s general population—continue to reside beyond the Green Line in settlements throughout the West Bank. The ‘disengagement’ from Gaza, accompanied by great internal tension, did not mitigate the conflict with the Palestinians. And in elections to the Palestinian Authority that followed in 2006, the militant Hamas movement won a majority. A state of war punctuated with fragile cease-fires characterizes current relations between Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. All of these occurrences obviously affect inter-communal relationships—between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel—within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

2. To read more about the significance of this proposal, see Saban 2008. 3. The ‘Territorial Imperative’ is a societal and often ideological drive for maximal

geographical expansion of the State. The ‘Ethnic Imperative’ is a drive for maximal ethnic separation from other ethnic or national groups or for the purification of the nation from those elements considered ethnically foreign to it. To read more about the territorialist vs. the ethnic vision, see Barzilai and Peleg (2004, pp. 61–62). The rather new trend in Israeli politics is moving toward promoting both ‘imperatives’—it strives to more ‘ethnicization’ and more ‘territory’. This is, we argue, a recipe for less democracy. In the current article, we focus on the attitude of the state toward the Palestinian minority, citizens of Israel, rather than on the relation of State of Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

4. Collective rights or group rights, unlike civil rights, are conferred on certain citizens because they belong to a particular cultural or ethnic group—namely, these are rights that stem from the group’s distinctiveness. For more details, see Harel-Shalev (2010, pp. 5–6).

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



5. From 1948–1966, most Palestinians in Israel lived under a military administration, applied only to them, despite the fact that they were declared citizens of the state in 1948. Military rule severely restricted their fundamental civil liberties, including freedom of movement, speech and association.

6. In addition to the Law of Return 1950, there are three other means of acquiring citizenship: birth, residence and naturalization. An individual born to an Israeli citizen has Israeli citizenship regardless of whether or not he or she was born in the state of Israel. Citizenship may also be granted by right of residence to Palestinian citizens of the former British Mandatory Palestine, who chose to remain in Israel between 1948 when the state of Israel was established and the enactment of the Citizenship Law–1952, provided that they were registered inhabitants on 1 March 1952 and were living in or present in Israel or future Israeli territory upon entry into force of the law. An amendment in 1980 facilitated further means of acquiring citizenship by right of residence, extending citizenship to Arab descendants of former Palestinian citizens who did not remain in Israel during this four-year period but who returned subsequently to Israel and who had previously been entitled only to permanent resident status. Citizenship by naturalization is subject to the discretion of the Minister of the Interior and applicants must meet specific residency requirements and renounce their former nationality.

7. Two main governmental initiatives against ‘foreigners’ are (a) Law to Prevent Infiltration, and (b) Entry into Israel Law—(Amendment 21). The first, is an amendment to the existing Law to Prevent Infiltration, stipulates that asylum seekers and refugees, as well as their children, who enter Israel through the border with Egypt, could be imprisoned, without trial, for a minimum of three years and in some cases—indefinitely. Its purpose is to deter refugees from entering Israel. The law disregards Israel’s basic commitments as a member of the community of nations and as a signatory to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The law passed final reading on 10 January 2012. The latter, the 21st Amendment to the Entry into Israel Law—sets limitations on work permits given to migrant workers residing in Israel. It restores the measure by which migrant workers are bound to a single employer, an arrangement deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. The law passed final reading on 16 May 2011.

8. A full list can be found at the website of the Association for civil rights in Israel, http://www.acri.org.il/en/2012/02/05/update-anti-democratic-legislation-initiatives, accessed 13 February 2013.

9. Citizenship and Entry into Israel (Temporary Order) Law, 2003, S.H. 544. For more details read Barak-Erez (2008) and Carmi (2007).

10. Although the law was originally enacted as a temporary order, its validity has been repeatedly extended by the Knesset making it in effect a permanent law. Exception to the ban were introduced in 2005, allowing the Interior Ministry to grant citizenship to males over 35, females over 25, special medical or work-related cases, and children under14 for the purpose of living with their Israel parents.

11. HCJ 466/07, MK Zahava Galon v. The Attorney General, et al. [2012]; following HCJ 7052/03 Adalah et al. v. Minister of Interior [2006].

12. But it can also exclude other communities or individuals as well, as single parents, individuals with disabilities and so on. See for example, http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/1.1639354.

13. HCJ 2504/11, Adalah, et al v. The Knesset, et al. (case pending).14. HCJ 2072/12, The Coalition of Women for Peace, et al v. The Minister of Finance, et al.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



15. For more information about the law and the petition filed, see http://www.adalah.org/eng/?mod=db&dld_page=law&slg=nakba-law-amendment-no-40-to-the-budgets-foundations-law. HCJ 3429 /11 The Alumni Association of the Arab Orthodox School in Haifa and others vs. The Minister of Finance.

16. See for example—‘50 municipal rabbis: Don’t rent flats to Arabs’, Ynet News, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3995724,00.html.

ReferencesBarak, Erez Daphne (2008). Israel: Citizenship and immigration law in the vise of security,

nationality, and human rights. I•CON, 6(1), 184–92.Barzilai, Gad (2003). Fantasies of liberalism and liberal jurisprudence: State law, and the

Israeli-Arab-Palestinian community. Israel Law Review, 34(3), 425–51.Barzilai, Gad & Peleg, Ilan (1994). Israel and future borders: A multidimensional approach

to the assessment of a dynamic process. Journal of Peace Research, 31(1), 59–73.Carmi, Na’ama (2007). The nationality and entry into Israel case. Israel Studies Forum

22(1), 26–53.Cohen, Gili (2012, February 28). Diskin: Inclusion of the Arab population is more

important than an Iranian nuclear bomb. Ha’aretz, http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1652521, accessed 29 February 2012.

Dowty, Alan (1998). The Jewish state—A century later. California: University of California Press.

Gavison, Ruth (1999). Jewish and democratic? A rejoinder to the ‘ethnic democracy’. Israel Studies, 4(1), 44–72.

Ghanem, As’ad (1998a). State and minority in Israel: The case of ethnic democracy and the predicament of its minority. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(3), 428–48.

——— (1998b). The bi-national state solution. Israel Studies, 14(2), 120–33.Ghanem, As’ad, Rouhana, Nadim & Yiftachel, Oren (1998c). Questioning ethnic

democracy. Israel Studies, 3(2), 253–67.Harel-Shalev, Ayelet & Kook, Rebecca (2011). Borders and rights: The case of Israel.

Paper presented at the APSA Annual Conference, Seattle, August–September. 2011.Harel-Shalev, Ayelet (2013). The challenge of sustaining democracy. New Delhi:

Cambridge University Press.——— (2010). The challenge of sustaining democracy in deeply divided societies.

Lanham: Lexington Press. H.C. (1995) 6689/95, Ka’adan vs. The Israel Lands Administration, 54(1) P.D. 282.Israel Beiteinu Party (2009). Party platform, http://www.beytenu.org.il Jabareen, Hassan (2002). The future of Arab citizenship in Israel: Jewish-Zionist time in a

place with no Palestinian memory. In Daniel Levy & Yifaat Weiss (eds), Challenging ethnic citizenship. (pp. 196–220). New York: Berghahn Books.

Jamal, Amal (2011). Arab minority nationalism in Israel. NY: Routledge: Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics.

——— (2005). Collective rights to indigenous minorities—theoretical and normative aspects. In Elie Rekhess & Sara Ozacky-Lazar (eds), The status of the Arab minority in the Jewish nation state. (pp. 27–44). Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University.

Kedar, Sandy (2003, December 11). Power and land, the distribution of space to Jews and Arabs in Israel. Sikkuy Meeting Protocol, www.sikkuy.org.il, accessed

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



Kymlicka, Will (2008). The internationalization of minority rights. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 6(1), 1–32.

Lustick, Ian (1990). The changing political role of Israeli Arabs. In Asher Arian & Michal Shamir (eds), The elections in Israel—1988. (pp. 115–31). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Medina, Barak & Saban, Ilan (2009). On human rights and risk-taking democracy, ethnic profiling, and the requirements of the limitation clause (Following the SC Decision re the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Act). Mishpatim, 39, 47–113.

Morris, Benny (2004). The birth of Palestinian refugee problem, 1947–1949. New-York: Cambridge University Press.

Pappe, Ilan (2001). The forgotten Palestinians. New-Haven: Yale University Press.——— (2006). The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: One World Publication.Peled, Yoav (1992). Ethnic democracy and the legal construction of citizenship: Arab

citizens of the Jewish state. American Political Science Review, 86(2), 432–43.——— (2007). Citizenship betrayed: Israel’s emerging immigration and citizenship

regime. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8(2), 603–28.Peled, Yoav & Gershon, Shafir (1996). The roots of peacemaking: The dynamics of

citizenship in Israel. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28(3), 391–412. Peled, Yoav & Navot, Doron (2005). Ethnic democracy revisited. Israel Studies Forum,

20(1), 3–27.Peleg, Ilan (2003). Israel between democratic universalism and particularistic Judaism:

Challenging a sacred formula. The Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 5–20, http://63.115.67.94/israel/ochjs.html

——— (2007). Democratizing the hegemonic state: Political transformation in the age of identity. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Peleg, Ilan & Ayelet Harel Shalev (2013). Analyzing the Hybrid Politics of Israel in a comparative framework, conference paper, AIS annual meeting June 2013, UCLA, Los-Angeles.

Peleg, Ilan & Waxman, Dov (2011). Israel’s Palestinians: The conflict within. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rekhess, Elie (2002). The Arabs in Israel after the Oslo agreement: Localization of the national struggle. Israel Studies, 7(3), 1–44.

——— (2007). Israel and its Arab citizens—taking stock, Tel-Aviv Notes, Moshe Dayan Center, Tel-Aviv University, 2007.

Saban, Ilan (2004). Minority rights in deeply divided societies: A framework for analysis and the case of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel. NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, 36, 885–1003.

——— (2008). Citizenship and its erosion: Transfer of populated territory and oath of allegi-ance in the prism of Israeli constitutional law. Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 2(2), 2–32.

Stern, Yedidia Z. & Ruderman, Jay (2013, April 14). Israel at 65: The tale of a sleeping beauty. IDI op-ed, http://en.idi.org.il/analysis/articles/israel-at-65-the-tale-of-a-sleeping-beauty/, accessed

Sikkuy (2010). Who’s in favor of equality? Equality between Arabs and Jews in Israel, http://www.sikkuy.org.il/english/reports.html, accessed 27 January 2010.

Smooha, Sammy (1990). Minorities status in an ethnic democracy: The status of the Arab minority in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13(3), 389–413.

——— (1998). 20 years of public opinion polls: The Arab sector in Israel. In Fuchs, Camil & Bar-Lev, Shaul (eds), Truth and Survey. (pp. 173–98). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad.

NOT FOR COMMERCIA

L USE



Smooha, Sammy (2002). Types of democracy and modes of conflict management in ethnically divided societies. Nations and Nationalism, 8(4), 423–31.

——— (2004). Arab-Jewish relations in Israel: A deeply divided Society. In Anita Shapira (Ed.), Israeli identity in transition. (pp. 54–70). Westpoint, Connecticut: Preager.

——— (2008). Comparative citizenship: A restrictive turn in Europe and a restrictive regime in Israel: Response to Joppke. Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 2(1), 1–12.

Yakobson, Alexander & Rubinstein, Amnon (2003). Israel and the family of nations. Tel Aviv: Schocken.

Yiftachel, Oren (2006). Ethnocracy, land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. Pennsylvania: PenPress.

Date post:	21-Jan-2023
Category:	Documents
Upload:	bgu
View:	1 times
Download:	0 times

Hybridity and Israel's Democratic Order – The end of imperfect balance?

Documents