Ethnic Democracy Revisited

Ethnic Democracy Revisited On the State of Democracy in the Jewish State Yoav Peled and Doron Navot Abstract: he current state of the debate over Israeli democracy and the state of Israeli democracy itself are analyzed through the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. he two main theoretical models featured in this debate—Smooha’s “ethnic democracy” and Yitachel’s “ethnocracy”—are discussed, focusing on the ‘framework decisions’ that inform their arguments. Ater demonstrating that the question of Israeli democracy should be viewed dynamically and historically, it will be clear that the Israeli state has been evolving from non-democratic ethnocracy, though ethnic democracy, toward non-democratic majoritarianism. For each one of these phases, prior to October 2000, we analyze a seminal decision of the Supreme Court that highlighted the citizenship status of the Palestinian citizens during that phase. For the period since October 2000, we analyze the Or Commission report and its reception by the government to argue that Israel may be on its way to becoming a non-democratic majoritarian state. Key words: ethnic democracy, ethnocracy, Israel, liberal democracy, majoritarianism, Palestinian citizens, Supreme Court (Israel) Jewish-Arab relations within Israel are the acid test of Israeli democracy. — Alan Dowty (1999: 8) In his influential essay, “he Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Fareed Zakaria made the point that in the post–Cold War world, “democracy is flourishing; liberalism is not” (Zakaria 1997: 23). Following Samuel Huntington, Zakaria used a minimalist definition of democracy, “a country [that] holds competitive, multiparty elections” (ibid.: 25), to make this point. On the basis of this definition, Zakaria concluded that there was no reason to consider democracy Israel Studies Forum, Volume 20, Issue 1, Summer 2005: 3–27 4 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot as such a desirable regime or form of state, since some of the most morally repugnant governments have been based on majority rule. Liberal autocracy, Zakaria suggested, may be superior to illiberal democracy as a form of government (ibid.: 29).1 To the credit of Israeli social scientists, some of them had noted, long before Zakaria’s essay, that Israeli democracy fell short of the ideal of liberal democracy and was therefore a problematic form of state. he first Israeli social scientist to make the distinction between what he called “substantive” (i.e., liberal) and “formal” (i.e., procedural) democracy was Yonathan Shapiro (1977: 191–194). In the tradition of Max Weber and C. Wright Mills, his argument was based on an analysis of the Zionist Labor Movement as an organization of power operating in the service of a political elite. Shapiro did not pay particular attention to the status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens in his analysis, but that question has occupied the center stage of the debate over Israeli democracy since the publication of Sammy Smooha’s (1990) seminal article, “Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: he Status of the Arab Minority in Israel.” Smooha relied on a somewhat less minimalist definition of democracy than Zakaria’s in order to argue that what he called “ethnic democracy” still qualified as a democracy, albeit of an inferior kind. he model of ethnic democracy (to be elaborated below) was adopted, with some modifications, by Peled (1992) and Gavison (1998), while Sa’di (2002) and Peleg (2004a) preferred “illiberal democracy.” he model was criticized, among others, by Yitachel (2000, forthcoming), who claimed that Israel should be called an “ethnocracy” because it is ruled by a Jewish ‘ethnos’ rather than by an Israeli ‘demos’, and by Navot (2002), who argued that Israel is not a democratic state but merely a “majoritarian” one because of the structural tyranny practiced by the Jewish majority.2 In this essay we wish to consider both the current state of the debate over Israeli democracy and the state of Israeli democracy itself through the lens of the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. For that purpose, we will analyze the two main positions in this debate—Smooha’s and Yitachel’s— focusing on the “framework decisions” (Kimmerling 1992) that inform their arguments, including their definitions of democracy. Ater assessing the merits of each position, we will argue, on the basis of our own set of framework decisions, that the question of Israel’s democracy should be viewed dynamically and historically, and that the Israeli state has been evolving from a state resembling non-democratic ethnocracy, through ethnic democracy, toward non-democratic majoritarianism. Framework Decisions A number of theoretical and methodological decisions have to be made before one can approach the question of Israeli democracy (or any other issue of social inquiry, for that matter): Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 5 1. Unit of analysis. Is the proper territorial-political unit to be analyzed the sovereign State of Israel, that is, Israel within its pre-1967 borders (with the possible addition of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights), or is it Israel’s ‘control system’, which includes the occupied territories, in addition to the State of Israel (Kimmerling 1989)?3 2. Level of analysis. Should the analysis focus only on the formal-legal aspect of Israel’s political life, or should actual practices be considered as well, and if so, which ones? 3. Definition of democracy. How substantive, or ‘thick’, as opposed to formal, or ‘thin’, should our definition of democracy be? Should the normative aspect of that definition be seen as resting on fundamental values, or should it derive from the practices of countries conventionally considered to be democratic? Should the distinction between democracy and non-democracy be treated as a dichotomy or as a continuum?4 Whatever the answers to these questions, is the proper subject of analysis the society, the state, the regime, or the political order, however each one of these concepts is defined? 4. Periodization. Should Israeli history from 1948 to the present be broken down into different periods? If so, what are those periods? he answers given to these questions, we argue, determine, by and large, the position taken by each scholar on the issue of Israeli democracy. Ethnic Democracy According to Smooha, ethnic democracy is a distinct type of democracy, to be distinguished from liberal, multi-cultural, consociational, and Herrenvolk democracies. he criterion Smooha uses for distinguishing between these different types of democracy is the constitutional relationship between the dominant, or core, ethnic group, the state, and the minority group. In ethnic democracy, “the ethnic nation, not the citizenry, shapes the symbols, laws and policies of the state for the benefit of the majority. his ideology makes a crucial distinction between members and non-members of the ethnic nation” (2002: 477). Smooha’s unit of analysis is the state,5 both in the sense of the State of Israel within its pre-1967 borders and in the sense of the institutional complex charged with maintaining and reproducing the social order. In liberal democracy, Smooha argues, the state should be officially neutral with respect to the ethnic (and other ascriptive) identity of its citizens, so that members of all ethnic groups enjoy the same citizenship rights. he nationalism officially espoused by the state in liberal democracy is civic nationalism, unencumbered by association with any specific ethnic identity.6 In consociational democracy, ethnic or, conceivably, other kinds of groups are constitutionally recognized and accorded official status in the areas of 6 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot political representation, culture and education, budgetary allocations, public service appointments, and so on (Lijphart 1968). he state, while not oblivious to the ethnic identity of its citizens, is neutral with regard to the various ethnic groups and treats all of them equally. While individual rights are respected in consociational democracies, individuals are incorporated in the society through the ethnic groups they belong to; thus, all persons must be officially inscribed in one ethnic group or another. heir collective identity is presumably a dual one, made up of both the ethnic identity of their group and the civic national identity of the state (cf. Bishara 1995; Peleg 2004a: 427–428). Smooha concludes that Israel, while broadly considered a democracy, cannot be fitted into any of these types of democracy. As the constitutionally defined “state of the Jewish people,” which nonetheless has a substantial (about 15 percent) non-Jewish citizen-Palestinian minority, Israel is not neutral with respect to the ethnic/religious identity of its citizens. Rather, it is what Rogers Brubaker (1996) has called a “nationalizing state,” and what Ilan Peleg (2004b) has described as an “ethnic constitutional order,” in that it actively and openly fosters the interests of those it defines as Jews. he nationalism of the Israeli state is not ‘Israeli nationalism’ (an inconceivable idea for most Israelis) but Zionism, that is, Jewish nationalism. Israel is clearly not a liberal democracy, then, and therefore cannot, by definition, be a multi-cultural democracy either. While Israel’s Palestinian citizens have separate institutions in the spheres of education, culture, mass media, and religion, most of these institutions are not autonomous but are under the control of the state. Nor are Jews and Palestinians treated equally as collectivities. hus, Smooha reasons, Israel cannot qualify as a consociational democracy, either. At the same time, within its pre-1967 borders Israel is not a Herrenvolk democracy, for “in herrenvolk democracies, democracy is limited to the master ‘race’ and forcibly denied to other groups” (1990: 390). he Israeli case requires, then, that a new class of democracy be defined. his new category, “ethnic democracy,” of which Israel is the archetypal example, is a democracy, Smooha argues, because it meets the minimal, procedural definition of democracy and respects the liberal, individual rights of its citizens. Ethnic democracy is, however, “diminished by the lack of equality of rights. Non-members of the ethnic nation enjoy rights that are in some way inferior to the rights of the members and endure discrimination by the state. Rule of law and quality of democracy are reduced by state measures intended to avert the perceived threat attributed to non-members” (2002: 478). At the same time, ethnic democracy may accord some collective rights to subordinate ethnic groups, and, in this way, may come closer to meeting the demands of multi-culturalism than does liberal democracy. It is for this reason, Smooha states, that at least at one time Israel’s Palestinian citizens preferred an “improved ethnic democracy” over liberal democracy by a ratio of 70 to 30 (1998: 35). Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 7 According to Smooha, Israel’s ethnic democracy has been sustained by the confluence of two constitutional principles: liberal democracy and Jewish ethno-nationalism. Peled contends, however, that these two principles could not co-exist without the mediation of a third principle, or citizenship discourse—the republican one. While the liberal discourse mandates the equal treatment of all citizens and the ethno-national one a privileged status for Jews, the republican discourse dictates that rights and privileges be accorded in relation to contribution to the common good of society. In the Israeli case, that common good, as defined by the state, is the fulfillment of Zionism. In this way, the Palestinian citizens’ less than equal status is justified not by their different identity but by their non-contribution (or even negative contribution) to the common good (Peled 1992). As a result, Palestinian citizens enjoy diminished and inferior individual rights, are excluded from membership in the core republican community, and are denied collective rights. Moreover, their exclusion from the core political community redounds to their individual rights as well, since these rights, especially their property rights in land, are trumped by the collective interests of the dominant Jewish majority. Still, as we argue below, for a certain period in Israel’s history, when Palestinian citizens had a wide enough political space in which to work for the enhancement of their citizenship, ethnic democracy was an apt characterization of the Israeli political order. Ethnocracy Oren Yitachel uses a ‘thicker’ definition of democracy than Smooha’s in order to argue that Israel should not be characterized as a democracy at all. His definition of democracy has several elements: equal and inclusive citizenship, civil rights, protection of minorities, and periodic, universal, and free elections (Yitachel forthcoming: 107; see also Ghanem, Rouhana, and Yitachel 1998: 255). He persuasively asserts that “despite the complex understanding of democracy, we must acknowledge that below a certain level, and with structural and repeated deviations from basic democratic principles … ‘democracy’ is no longer a credible classification” (Yitachel forthcoming: 108). Yitachel’s territorial unit of analysis is the Israeli ‘control system’. He argues that “‘Israel proper’ … simply does not exit, since it is impossible to define ‘Israel’ as a spatial unit, and it is difficult to define the boundaries of its bodypolitic … Israel operates as a polity without borders. his undermines a basic requirement of democracy—the existence of a ‘demos’” (Yitachel forthcoming: 111–113; Ghanem, Rouhana, and Yitachel 1998: 260–264). Yitachel also emphasizes “the dynamics of Israel’s political geography, which have caused the state to radically change its demography, alter patterns of ethnic territorial control, rupture state borders, incorporate Jewish and block Palestinian diasporas and form strong links between religion, territory and ethnicity” (forthcoming: 8 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot 114). He concludes that it is the Jewish ethnos, not the Israeli demos, that rules the Jewish state, which therefore should be defined as an ethnocracy, rather than a democracy. While we concur with Yitachel’s thicker definition of democracy, we believe that his rejection of the distinction between the sovereign State of Israel and the Israeli ‘control system’ renders the debate about Israel’s democratic character superfluous. he ‘control system’, with 40 percent of its residents not enjoying any citizenship rights at all, is clearly not a democracy, and rarely has any serious scholar argued differently. While Jews still maintain a slight majority within the ‘control system’, the fact that all Jews enjoy full citizenship rights while the vast majority of Palestinians do not qualifies this as a Herrenvolk democracy (which, of course, is no democracy at all). he debate over democracy is meaningful only in regard to Israel within its pre-1967 borders. Contrary to Yitachel’s thesis, Israel within its pre-1967 borders is a welldefined entity in Israeli law (even if that definition has faded considerably in actual government practice and in the political consciousness of many Israeli Jews). he Israeli state holds the West Bank and Gaza under belligerent occupation, with no claim of legitimacy from their Palestinian residents, but that does not necessarily impinge the democratic character of the state itself. As Robert Dahl has noted, states can be “democratic with respect to [their] own demos, but not necessarily with respect to all persons subject to the collective decisions of the demos” (1989: 32–33; cited in Maletz 2002: 743). Is pre-1967 Israel a democracy or an ethnocracy, then? Since there is little dispute about the facts, we will not elaborate the different kinds of rights that Israel’s Palestinian citizens enjoy or don’t enjoy, in theory and in practice, as we attempt to answer this question. We will focus, rather, on two issues beyond the basic procedural requirements, which we deem crucial for the existence of democracy: the actual exercise of citizenship rights by the minority and the ability of the minority to effect positive change in its citizenship status within the framework of the law (cf. Smooha 2002: 481). From Ethnocracy to Majoritarianism? For the reasons mentioned above, we take the State of Israel within its pre-1967 borders as our geographic-demographic-political unit of analysis. Within that unit, we focus on the political order, by which we mean all social interactions that involve the institutional application of social power, actually or potentially. We understand the term ‘political order’ to be more inclusive than the term ‘state’, which would help us avoid definitional arguments about whether the Histadrut or the Jewish Agency, for example, should be considered state organs or not. In our definition, they are definitely included within the political order. We focus our analysis on the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens in the most comprehensive sense of the term. In this view, ‘citizenship’ involves Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 9 both formal, legal arrangements and the actual way in which a particular social group is incorporated into the society by the political order. For a political order to be called democratic, it must include several features: majority rule, political equality, respect for human and civil rights, and the absence of legal constraints on agenda setting, except as necessary to prevent serious harm to democracy itself. Although the presence of these features is a matter of degree, the distinction between democracy and other types of political order, such as states or regimes, should be treated as dichotomous. To paraphrase Sartori’s argument, what makes a state, or a political order, democratic at all should not be mixed up with what makes it more or less democratic.7 In terms of its democratic character, as reflected in the citizenship of its Palestinian citizens, we see the history of the State of Israel as divided into four periods: 1. 1948–1966: he period of the Military Administration, when the political order could indeed be characterized as ethnocratic rather than democratic 2. 1966–1992: Ethnic democracy 3. 1992–2000: Liberalization efforts 4. 2000–present: Setback and possible transition to a majoritarian political order In analyzing each period, we will focus on a seminal judicial decision (and, in one case, on a report of a state commission of inquiry, a semi-judicial body) that, we argue, clearly reveals the essential character of that period. Although we do not wish to evaluate the Israeli political order in terms of its formal-legal aspects alone, we will focus on these seminal decisions because they highlight the citizenship status of the Palestinian citizens in each period: the Yardor decision of 1965, the Neiman decision of 1984, the Qaadan decision of 2000, and the Or Commission report of 2003. 1948–1966: Ethnocracy In the period of the Military Administration, Israel’s Palestinian citizens were formally granted equal individual rights, but in practice most of these rights were suspended. he exercise of the one right that was not suspended, the right to vote, was tightly controlled by the military, so that election returns among the Palestinian citizens were overwhelmingly favorable to the ruling party, Mapai.8 he most revealing example of the denial of the Palestinians’ political rights by Israel’s highest legal authority was the case of the al-Ard group and the Arab Socialist List, the list of candidates al-Ard sponsored for the 1965 general elections. Al-Ard was a small group of citizen-Palestinian intellectuals who sought to promote a Nasserist political agenda and reconstitute Israel as a secular democratic state of its citizens, through lawful political means (Haris 2001: 10 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot 134; Jiryis 1976: 187–196). In 1960, six members of the group were convicted in court for publishing a newspaper without a license.9 In the same year, the registrar of firms refused to register al-Ard as a firm, for national security considerations. he High Court of Justice overruled his decision, emphasizing that the absolute discretion that the law granted the registrar did not include the authority to consider matters of national security.10 But two years later, the High Court approved the decision by the district supervisor of the Haifa district (an Interior Ministry official) to refuse to register al-Ard as a not-forprofit corporation for fear that the corporation would seek to undermine the regime.11 In 1964, al-Ard was declared an illegal association by the minister of defense. In 1965, the Central Elections Commission (CEC), headed by Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, disqualified al-Ard’s Arab Socialist List from participating in the elections for the Sixth Knesset on the grounds that it was “an unlawful association, because its promoters deny the [territorial] integrity of the state of Israel and its very existence” (Kretzmer 1990: 24). his ruling had no basis in law. Until 1985, the CEC did not have the authority to disqualify candidate lists on the basis of their platform or the ideology of their members or “promoters.” Nevertheless, in its Yardor decision, the Supreme Court upheld, by a 2 to 1 majority, the CEC’s ruling. Invoking the doctrine of “defensive democracy,” the Court majority argued that al-Ard’s objection to the Jewish character of the State of Israel, which was tantamount in the Court’s eyes to objecting to its very existence, justified the departure from the strict letter of the law—this despite the fact that al-Ard sought to bring about the change in the character of the state through lawful means only. In the words of the one dissenting justice, Haim Cohn, which were not disputed by his colleagues, “[I]n the material which was in front of the CEC, and which was presented to us too, there was nothing to justify, let alone mandate, the finding that there is a real or clear or present danger” posed to the state or to any of its institutions by the Arab Socialist List (Yardor 1965: 365; see also Cohn 1989: 185–186). 1966–1992: Ethnic Democracy Under the mantle of the Military Administration, a major drive to ‘Judaize’ the space—a hallmark of ethnocracy—was undertaken, involving massive expropriation of Palestinian-owned land. his Judaization effort belied the claim that the Palestinian citizens enjoyed, in practice, the most fundamental, individual liberal right—the right to own property. According to Ian Lustick, “[T]he mass expropriation of Arab land has been the heaviest single blow which government policy has dealt to the economic integrity of the Arab sector” (1980: 182; for details, see Shafir and Peled 2002: 112–114). No wonder, then, that as soon as the Military Administration was lited and freedom of association became, to a degree, operative for Palestinian citizens, one of the first political endeavors they launched was the struggle against land expropriation. Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 11 In 1975, the Israeli Communist Party established the National Committee for the Defense of Arab Lands, which declared 30 March 1976 to be Land Day, marked by a general strike and demonstrations against the expropriation of land. he government, then headed by Yitzhak Rabin, responded with force and imposed a curfew on a number of villages in central Galilee, where land was about to be expropriated. In skirmishes that ensued between security forces and demonstrators who defied the curfew, six Palestinians were killed in three villages, many more were wounded, and hundreds were arrested (Lustick 1980: 246; Sa’di 1996: 404). Since Land Day, however, large-scale expropriations of Palestinian-owned land have subsided, except in the Negev, although the ‘Judaization’ of the space has continued in more subtle forms. A number of representative national Palestinian organizations were formed at the beginning of this period, but, following the experience of al-Ard, no independent Palestinian political party had attempted to field a list of candidates in Knesset elections until 1984. (In 1980, a public meeting called by Palestinian organizations to discuss the possibility of forming a unified Palestinian political party had been banned by the government [Smooha 1997: 217].) Instead, Palestinian voters had been shiting their votes from Mapai and the Labor Party, and their Palestinian affiliates, to the Communist Party, whose following has become overwhelmingly Palestinian. he party gained about 50 percent of the Palestinian vote in 1977 and 1981, but its share of the vote has been declining since 1984, as new Palestinian parties, avowedly nationalist and/or Muslim, have been sprouting up. he first of these new parties, the Progressive List for Peace (PLP; formally, a joint Palestinian-Jewish party), headed by a former member of al-Ard, was established in 1984. he party platform called, inter alia, for turning the State of Israel into a liberal democracy, in which all citizens would be treated equally before the law. he CEC disqualified the PLP’s list of Knesset candidates on the grounds that the party “believes in principles that endanger the [territorial] integrity and existence of the State of Israel, and [the] preservation of its distinctiveness as a Jewish state” (Neiman 1984: 225; Kretzmer 1990: 27; Peled 1992: 437). he Supreme Court, however, in a clear reversal of Yardor disguised as its affirmation, reinstated the PLP on the grounds that no sufficient evidence was found to support the claim that it was negating the existence of the state. David Kretzmer concluded, correctly in our view: “What of a list that explicitly wishes to repeal the Law of Return, but is sincerely committed to achieving this by the legislative process alone? … Neiman I … would seem to imply that such a list … may not be disqualified under the Yardor precedent” (Kretzmer 1990: 27; Peled 1992: 437–438). To rectify this situation, a number of the justices in the 1984 Neiman case recommended that the Knesset enact legislation that would give the CEC the authority to disqualify candidate lists for purely ideological reasons. he Knesset complied in 1985 in the form of an amendment to Basic Law: he Knesset, which reads: 12 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot A list of candidates shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its goals, explicitly or implicitly, or its actions include one of the following: (1) Negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; (2) Negation of the democratic character of the State; (3) Incitement of racism. (Knesset 1985: 3951) he immediate target of articles 2 and 3 was Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach Party, an extreme right-wing Jewish party that called for the ‘transfer’ of all Palestinians, citizens and non-citizens alike, out of the Land of Israel. Kach, which, like the PLP, had been disqualified by the CEC in 1984, was also reinstated by the Court on the grounds that the CEC did not have the authority to act on the basis of ideology. Ater a series of administrative and legal maneuvers, Kach was indeed disqualified in the next general elections, in 1988, but the PLP was not (Peled 1992). So far, only right-wing Jewish parties have been effectively disqualified on the basis of this amendment. However, in the deliberations leading to the Court’s decision not to disqualify the PLP in 1988 (Neiman 1988, not discussed in this essay), it became clear, according to Kretzmer, that participation in Knesset elections could now be legally denied to a list of candidates “that rejects the particularistic definition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, even if the list is committed to achieving a change in this constitutional fundamental through the parliamentary process alone.” Moreover, in Kretzmer’s view, the decision also implied that “on the decidedly fundamental level of identification and belonging there cannot be total equality between Arab and Jew in Israel. he state is the state of the Jews, both those presently resident in the country as well as those resident abroad. Even if the Arabs have equal rights on all other levels the implication is abundantly clear: Israel is not their state” (1990: 31; original emphasis). his view was shared by Smooha: “From the Israeli-Arabs’ viewpoint, the provision that Israel is the land of Jews all over the world, but not necessarily of its citizens, degrades them to a status of invisible outsiders, as if Israel were not their own state” (1990: 402). 1992–2000: Liberalization Rabin’s return to the helm of the government in 1992 marked the beginning of the most consistently liberal era of Israeli history. Economic liberalization, which had begun in earnest in 1985, was greatly accelerated with the coup de grâce dealt the Histadrut in 1994, in the form of the nationalization of its health care system through the State Health Insurance Law. he Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, inaugurated a period of peacemaking, liberal social and political reform, and great economic prosperity. Rabin’s coalition government, which had to rely on the support of six Members of Knesset (MKs) belonging to Palestinian political parties for its survival, pursued the least discriminatory policy toward the citizen Palestinians that Israel has ever known. Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 13 While counter-tendencies to Rabin’s liberal policies were operating as well, in 2000 the Supreme Court took the most significant step ever toward making Israel a liberal democracy: the Qaadan decision (HCJ 6698/95, Qaadan vs. ILA, Katzir, and Others, reprinted in Mautner 2000: 427–448; for the history of the case, see Ziv and Shamir 2000). he Qaadans, a citizen-Palestinian couple, petitioned the Court in 1995 to intercede on their behalf with the Israel Land Authority (which manages 93 percent of the land in Israel) and five other governmental and quasi-governmental bodies that had refused to lease them land in Katzir, a ‘community settlement’ being established by the Jewish Agency in the ‘Triangle’ area, not far from the Green Line. In a path-breaking decision, President of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak determined that it was illegal for the state to discriminate between its Jewish and Arab citizens in the allocation of land, even when that discrimination was effected indirectly, through non-governmental “national institutions” (the Jewish Agency in this case). he ethno-national Zionist interest in “Judaizing” various regions of the country, Barak ruled, could not overcome the liberal principle of equality (Shafir and Peled 2002: 132). Furthermore, to counter the argument that the equality principle was compatible with a ‘separate but equal’ allocation of land, Barak asserted that “a policy of ‘separate but equal’ is by its very nature unequal … [because] separation denigrates the excluded minority group, sharpens the difference between it and the others, and embeds feelings of social inferiority” (HCJ 6698/95, par. 30). Significantly, Barak based this assertion on the US Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, and determined that “any differential treatment on the basis of religion or nationality is suspect and prima facie discriminatory” (Kedar 2000: 6). Predictably, the Court wished to protect itself against the allegation that its decision undermined Israel’s character as the state of the Jewish people. For, as many commentators were quick to point out, if the state cannot give preference to Jews in the allocation of land, what was the practical import of its being a Jewish state? (Steinberg 2000). In anticipation of this argument, Barak repeated his long-held position that the Jewish values of the state were not in contradiction with its liberal-democratic values, and that the equality principle was rooted equally in both sets of values. He also stressed that the decision applied in the particular case before the Court only, and that its implications were future-oriented and should not be seen as raising any question about past practices. Moreover, in certain cases, he conceded, discrimination on the basis of national affiliation could be warranted, so the Court did not decree that the state lease the Qaadans the property in question, only that it reconsider its previous decision not to lease it to them.12 Yet with all of these qualifications, Barak was cognizant of the fact that the Qaadan decision was “a first step in a difficult and sensitive road” (HCJ 6698/95, par. 37; Shafir and Peled 2002: 133). 14 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot 2000–Present: Toward a Majoritarian State? For Israel’s Palestinian citizens, the outbreak of al-Aqsa Intifada in October 2000 came ater a period of increasing frustration with Israeli governmental policies. he assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 was a serious blow to their hopes for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and for more equal citizenship within Israel itself. Despite that, they were largely excluded from the rituals of national mourning and remembrance that followed the assassination (Al-Haj 2000). On the eve of the 1996 elections, Rabin’s successor from within the Labor Party, Shimon Peres, decided to launch a military operation in Lebanon. During that operation, named by Israel “Grapes of Wrath,” one hundred Lebanese civilians were killed in one village by Israeli artillery bombardment. Nevertheless, in the elections for prime minister held in the following month, 95 percent of those Palestinian voters who cast valid ballots voted for Peres, compared to 44 percent of Jewish voters (Ozacky-Lazar and Ghanem 1996). Peres’s loss to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 inaugurated a period of alienation between the government and its Palestinian citizens. Not only was the peace process stalled, but friction was renewed around the issues of budgetary allocations, land expropriation, and demolition of houses (Smooha 2002: 493). his alienation broke out in violent clashes with police in the Palestinian town of Um-al-Fahem, in September 1998, during which police for the first time fired rubber-coated steel bullets at Israeli demonstrators, resulting in a number of serious injuries (Or Commission 2003: 83–85; Yitachel 2000: 78). In the next election for prime minister, in 1999, again 95 percent of the Palestinian voters voted for the Labor Party candidate, Ehud Barak, although he had practically ignored them during the election campaign (Ghanem and Ozacky-Lazar 1999). Barak’s snubbing of the citizen Palestinians continued ater his election victory, and was expressed both in his unwillingness to consider including their representatives in the government coalition, in any form, and in the policies pursued by his government ater it was formed. When the al-Aqsa Intifada erupted, demonstrations of solidarity by citizen Palestinians assumed a more violent character than before, resulting in a number of major highways being temporarily blocked (for an analysis of the broader context of this reaction, see Navot 2002; Or Commission 2003: 25–169; Rabinowitz, Ghanem, and Yitachel 2000). Although the police and the demonstrators recall different versions of the events that ensued, it is clear that the demonstrators were unarmed, and it is unlikely that any lives were endangered prior to the intervention of the police. Still, throughout the northern police district, where the majority of citizen Palestinians live (and only in that district), the police fired rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition at the protestors, killing thirteen of them (twelve Palestinian citizens and one non-citizen Palestinian; one Jewish citizen was killed by Palestinian protestors) and wounding many more.13 In some areas, Jewish demonstrators also Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 15 attacked Palestinians, resulting in major property losses, injuries, and perhaps even deaths. Furthermore, the Jewish majority reacted to these events by instituting an unofficial economic boycott of the citizen Palestinians, a boycott that continues to this day and that has resulted in a 50 percent decline in the volume of Palestinian business within Israel. he death toll in this series of confrontations, which lasted almost two weeks, was the heaviest since the Kafr Kassem massacre of 1956, when fortynine villagers were murdered by police for breaking a curfew of which they were unaware (Benziman and Mansour 1992: 106; Rosental 2000). Still, it took six weeks of strong pressure from the Palestinian political leadership and from some Jewish public figures for the government to appoint a state commission of inquiry, headed by Supreme Court Justice heodore Or, to investigate the clashes. As noted, the ‘October Events’ were the culmination of a long period during which a political confrontation was brewing between the state and the Palestinian minority, especially those political leaders of the minority who were most vocal in demanding fundamental changes in the nature of the state. In response to these demands, the looming danger of a Palestinian demographic preponderance was increasingly played up by Jewish politicians and academics, coupled with demands for limiting the citizen Palestinians’ political rights, prosecuting Palestinian MKs for challenging the Jewish character of the state, and even ‘transferring’ citizen Palestinians out of the territory of the State of Israel altogether. A ‘soter’ version of the transfer idea called for territorial exchange between Israel and the future Palestinian state, in which, in return for keeping the ‘settlement blocks’, Israel would cede to the Palestinian state the Wadi Ara region, a major concentration of citizen-Palestinian communities adjacent to the Green Line. his idea is promoted by several mainstream politicians and academics and is supported by about a third of the Jewish Israeli public (Navot 2002).14 he outbreak of al-Aqsa Intifada greatly accelerated this confrontation. In June 2000, following Israel’s unilateral and hasty retreat from southern Lebanon, and then again in June 2001, Azmi Bishara, the most prominent secular citizen-Palestinian intellectual and politician, praised the ability of Hezbollah to successfully exploit “the enlarged sphere that Syria has continuously fostered between accepting Israeli dictates regarding a so-called comprehensive and enduring peace, and the military option [of an all-out war].” he latter occasion for this statement was a memorial service for the late Syrian president, Hafiz al-Asad, held in Syria; as a consequence, Bishara was indicted for violating the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance—1948 (Sultany 2003: 36). his also hastened the passage of legislation that might seriously hinder the freedom of speech of citizen Palestinians and the ability of their political parties to participate in future Knesset elections. In May 2002, the Knesset amended Basic Law: he Knesset and the penal code, as well as two more minor statutes. he amendment to Basic Law: he 16 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot Knesset added “support for the struggle of an enemy state or the armed struggle of a terrorist organization against the state of Israel” to the grounds on which the CEC could disqualify a political party or an individual candidate from participating in Knesset elections. Previously, only denial of Israel’s character as a Jewish or as a democratic state and incitement of racism could serve as grounds for disqualification, and the CEC could disqualify only electoral lists, not individual candidates. he amendment to the penal code made incitement of racism, violence, or terror a criminal offense (Sultany 2003: 25–26, 31). Since practically all citizen Palestinians support the Palestinians’ struggle against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and since in the current political climate that struggle is defined by the state as a terrorist struggle (Benvenisti 2004), this opened the way for the wholesale disqualification of citizen-Palestinian political parties and the indictment of citizen-Palestinian leaders for violation of these two laws. Indeed, in 2003 the CEC disqualified two citizen-Palestinian candidates and one citizen-Palestinian political party from participating in the general elections. All three were reinstated, however, by the Supreme Court and were elected to the Knesset. he attempt to restrict the scope of Palestinian citizenship was not limited to civil and political rights: Palestinians’ social rights came under attack, as well. An amendment to the National Insurance Law, passed in June 2002, applied a 4 percent cut to all child allowance payments and an additional 20 percent cut in the amounts paid to parents of children without a relative who served in the Israeli military. he vast majority of citizen Palestinians do not serve in the military, and the amendment restored the discrimination that had existed until 1993 in the amount of child allowances paid to Jewish and to Palestinian citizens (Rouhana and Ghanem 1998: 330). (While the discrimination was officially based on service in the military, ways were always found to pay Jews who do not serve—primarily, the ultra-Orthodox—the full amount.) An appeal to the Supreme Court by several MKs and public advocacy organizations has so far halted the implementation of this amendment. he most significant blow to the citizenship status of the citizen Palestinians came in July 2003, when the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), which prohibits the granting of residency or citizenship to Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who are married to Israeli citizens. his law continued the main elements of an executive order that had already been in effect since May 2002 and created, for the first time, an explicit distinction in the citizenship rights of Jewish and Palestinian citizens. (In the past, distinctions of this kind have been based primarily on military service; the Law of Return, it has been argued, discriminates between Jewish and non-Jewish would-be immigrants, not between citizens.) he duration of the law was to be for one year, but in July 2004 it was extended for another six months. A soter version is reportedly in preparation at the time of writing. Against this background, the Or Commission published its report in September 2003. he report, we argue, constituted a call for the restoration of ethnic Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 17 democracy, which had been seriously undermined since October 2000, rather than an effort to encourage the state to return to the liberalizing course it had pursued between 1992 and 2000. he Commission’s call for the restoration of ethnic democracy was expressed through a dual move. On the one hand, its report catalogued in great detail and with surprising forthrightness the history of discrimination against the citizen Palestinians, particularly in the area where most of their grievances have been concentrated: land ownership and use. he report also severely criticized the behavior of the police and of the government as a whole during the ‘October Events’. On the other hand, however, the Commission also accused the Palestinian citizens, and especially their political and religious leaders, of behaving improperly in airing their grievances, although this accusation fell short of pointing to any unlawful activity by these leaders. In other words, while relating the continuous and incessant violation of the Palestinians’ citizenship rights by the state, the report demanded that they adhere to their obligation to protest this violation within the narrow confines of the law. he Commission determined that although discrimination on the basis of national, religious, or ethnic identity is strictly forbidden under Israeli law, Israel’s “Arab citizens live in a reality in which they are discriminated against as Arabs” (Or Commission 2003: 33).15 he party guilty of discrimination was not some private entity but the state itself. he Commission cited several official government documents admitting to this, including a National Security Council report, dated only two weeks before the ‘October Events’, which proposed that Prime Minister Barak apologize for this “continuing discrimination” and undertake concrete measures to correct it (38). Naturally, most (though by no means all) of the government documents cited by the Commission referred to the Palestinian citizens’ subjective feelings, rather than to a reality of discrimination. But the Commission stated very clearly: “[W]e believe these feelings had solid grounding in reality” (41). It then proceeded to present how gross discrimination had been practiced in the areas of land possession and use, treatment of the “present absentees,”16 budgetary allocations, employment, socio-economic conditions, education, religion, language rights, political participation, police protection, social status and social relations, and racist incitement. Summing up its review of the “profound” causes for the ‘October Events’, the Commission stated that “the Arab community feels deprived in a number of areas. In several areas, the deprivation is a consequence, among other things, of discrimination practiced against the Arab community by government authorities” (60). he Commission alluded to the fact that because the state is defined as Jewish and democratic, the citizen Palestinians feel that “Israeli democracy is not democratic towards the Arabs to the same extent that it is democratic towards the Jews” (28). It chose neither to confirm nor to challenge this perception, however, but to adhere to the view that, legally speaking, Israel’s Palestinian citizens enjoy full and equal individual citizenship rights, just like its Jewish 18 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot citizens (29). he commission took this equality—that is, Israel’s presumed character as a liberal democracy—as a basic assumption and did not feel the need to argue that this was indeed the case. In this way, it could avoid a critical examination of the true nature of the Israeli state, describing the real-life situation of the Palestinian citizens as an aberration rather than a manifestation of Israeli democracy. State institutions, primarily the police, and individual government officials, from Prime Minister Barak down to low-ranking police officers on the line, were harshly criticized by the Commission for their roles in the ‘October Events’. he kind of criticism that is most relevant to our argument, however, is that in which the Commission is seen to be making an effort to maintain, or re-establish, the distinction between citizen and non-citizen Palestinians, a distinction that is crucial to the existence of ethnic democracy (Peled 1992). his effort is most obvious when the report discusses the primary means of crowd control used by the police in confrontations with protestors: rubbercoated bullets. hese bullets are widely used by the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories as a supposedly non-lethal substitute for live ammunition. Ater painstakingly studying the matter however, the Commission concluded that rubber bullets are both deadly and highly inaccurate. In other words, they are not only extremely dangerous to the targeted individuals but also to innocent bystanders in their vicinity. But the Commission did not find it necessary to criticize, let alone prohibit, the use of rubber bullets in general. Rather, it stressed that measures that may be allowed in dealing with non-citizen protestors in territories under belligerent occupation are not allowed in dealing with citizens inside the sovereign territory of the state (458–459). Similarly, the Commission invested a great deal of effort in investigating whether snipers, commonly deployed in the Occupied Territories, had ever before been utilized against unarmed demonstrators inside the State of Israel. It concluded that their utilization during the ‘October Events’ was unprecedented and constituted a dangerous threshold in the relations between the state and its Palestinian citizens (475, 495, 497). Two cabinet ministers, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, as well as higher-echelon police officers, were criticized by the Commission for (among other things) failing to act decisively in order to end the killing of demonstrators, especially ater the first day of protest had resulted in three fatalities. It was quite clear to the Commission, as it is to any reader familiar with Israeli society, that the cavalier attitude with which these higher officials treated the news of the fatalities stemmed solely from the fact that the deceased were Palestinians. Moreover, for some of the decision makers in the cabinet and in the top ranks of the police, the events of the first day of protest meant that the Green Line, separating citizen from non-citizen Palestinians, had been erased (219, 582). he Commission also noted that even before the ‘October Events’, the combination of aggressive behavior toward Palestinian protestors and the lack of Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 19 adequate police protection in Palestinian communities created an impression among the Palestinian citizens that the police viewed them as enemies of the state, rather than its citizens. he Commission agreed that such an attitude indeed prevailed among some members of the police force, and that this attitude influenced their behavior during the ‘October Events’ (90, 768). With this evidence of continuous structural discrimination in hand, the Commission turned to analyze the ‘radicalization’ of the citizen-Palestinian community in the 1990s. For the Commission, “radical” meant seeking to confront social-political problems at their roots (60). his “radicalization” was manifested in a number of ways. Firstly, there was the demand, with increasing urgency, to end discrimination and to ameliorate the conditions that the Commission itself had characterized as incompatible with the equal citizenship that the Palestinian citizens are supposed to enjoy under Israeli law. Beyond that, the Commission mentioned the demand for making Israel a state of its citizens (i.e., a liberal democracy), a “demand that, apparently more than any other, invoked suspicion and displeasure in the Jewish public” (including, it seems, the two Jewish members of the Commission itself) (63). he other major indications of “radicalization” mentioned by the Commission were intensified political activism and rhetorical militancy of Arab politicians, increasing identification with the (liberation) struggle of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and the rise of the Islamic Movement (60–80). he citizen Palestinians were not alone, however, in identifying with the noncitizen Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. At that time, at least, Jewish Israelis in ever greater numbers came to empathize with their plight as well.17 As for the Islamic Movement, many of its demands were meant to correct government policies that the Commission itself regarded as blatantly unjust, if not illegal. hus, at least some of the concerns voiced by the Israeli Islamists were found by the Commission to be “not completely unfounded” (75). Most significantly, the Commission stressed that the process of “radicalization” did not include “calls for civil rebellion [in the form] of boycotts and terror, nor demands to [secede and] join the Palestinian state when one is established” (64). In spite of this, in moving from a narrative of structural discrimination and deprivation to the chapter that discusses “radicalization,” the Commission used a simple rhetorical device in order to sever the connection between the two. It stated that the events of October 2000 must be seen “also” in the context of the processes of political escalation that had taken place among citizen Palestinians in the years leading up to 2000 (60). his “also” creates the impression that these processes of “radicalization” were not a consequence of the history of discrimination and deprivation, but rather a separate, additional factor that combined with that history to produce the ‘October Events’. he disassociation of what it termed the “profound causes” of the ‘October Events’ from the events themselves is evident as well in the Or Commission’s recommendations, which mainly address fate of individuals and the reform of institutions, rather than the restructuring of the discriminatory system itself. 20 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot he main reason for this choice, we contend, was the Commission’s commitment to ethnic democracy and its realization that a radical transformation of the citizen Palestinians’ situation could be achieved only if they were truly integrated into the society. his would have required that the state itself be transformed into a liberal democracy, a transformation that would defy the most basic goal of Zionism—the establishment of a Jewish state. Given its commitment to ethnic democracy, the Commission’s recommendations for improving the conditions of the Palestinian citizens occupy one page only, and do not go beyond the solemn articulation of principles that should guide government policy toward the citizen Palestinians, chief among them the principle of equality (766–768). his creates the impression that in the Commission’s view, the main problem of Israel’s Palestinian citizens is that the government has so far been ignorant of these principles. Moreover, the Commission balances its recommendations with an exhortation directed at the citizen Palestinians themselves, calling upon them to internalize the rules of legitimate civil protest (769–770). Since the Commission does not offer the citizen Palestinians any advice on how to make their civil protest more effective than it has been in the past, this part of its recommendations sounds like pious preaching, devoid of any substance. Two weeks ater the Or Commission had submitted its report in September 2003, the cabinet decided to accept its personal recommendations (most of which had been rendered irrelevant in the three years it took the Commission to write the report), and to establish an inter-ministerial committee, headed by then Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, to study its policy recommendations. In addition to Lapid, the committee included three of the most extreme right-wing ministers in the cabinet and one moderately liberal minister. he composition of the Lapid Committee caused the organizations representing Palestinian citizens to refuse to co-operate with it. he Lapid Committee submitted its report in June 2004. his report made clear that, as could be expected, the Or Commission’s heroic effort to restore ethnic democracy had been in vain.18 he report begins with the misleading assertion that the Or Commission had assigned equal responsibility for the ‘October Events’ to the state and to the Palestinian citizens and their leadership. he report also ignores the very clear statement of the Or Commission that the feelings of deprivation and discrimination among Palestinian citizens are well rooted in reality, stating instead that “the [Or] Commission held the view that it is not possible to ignore the fact that, ever since the establishment of the state, Arab citizens are gnawed by a feeling of deprivation and discrimination.” he Lapid Committee’s primary recommendation was that a new government authority be established with the goal of promoting the “non-Jewish sectors” and of ensuring that government decisions regarding these sectors are implemented. his is tantamount to a revival of the old office of the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs, a hallmark of discriminatory policy that was done away with in the period of liberalization. he committee also Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 21 recommended that the idea of national service “for citizens who are not called up for military service” be promoted, and made the implementation of the Or Commission’s cardinal (and unconditional) recommendation—equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens—conditional on the establishment of such service. he committee also recommended drawing up a master plan for urban renewal in all of Israel’s Arab villages and towns, but it refrained from relating to the recommendation of the Or Commission (not to mention the High Court’s Qaadan decision) regarding the principle of just allocation of land resources to the Palestinian citizens. A master plan that fails to address the issue of land allocation would result in the perpetuation of the present discriminatory land policy of the state. he committee called upon the citizen-Palestinian leadership to refrain from incitement against the state and its institutions; to denounce violence; to beware of blurring the distinction between sympathy for the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and disloyalty to the state; to develop “civil consciousness” among Arab citizens, emphasizing the enforcement of local ordinances, especially those that relate to planning and construction; to encourage Arab youth to volunteer for national service; and to contribute to the improvement of the atmosphere between Arabs and Jews by social, educational, and cultural cooperation. “Jews and Arabs, as one, must take part in rehabilitating the relations between the sectors,” the report stated. Regarding the police, the committee concluded that they have internalized the findings of the Or Commission report and have implemented its various recommendations. It also found that the police are better prepared today for events similar to those of October 2000, ignoring the fact that the police still suffer from the main problem they had in October 2000: racist attitudes and violent behavior toward non-Jews. In sum, while the Or Commission attempted to restore the ethnic-democratic character of the state, the Lapid Committee was a reactionary response to it, seeking to re-inforce the antidemocratization process that had begun in October 2000.19 Conclusion Using a different set of ‘framework decisions’ from other participants in the debate over Israeli democracy, we have developed in this article a dynamic and historical analysis of its evolution: from a system resembling ethnocracy during the period of the Military Administration (1948–1966), through a period of ethnic democracy (1966–1992) and a brief spring of liberalization (1992– 2000), to the current process of movement toward a majoritarian state. he key difference between the two models we have examined in this essay— ethnic democracy and ethnocracy—can be found in their different normative motivations, which have led them to focus on different units of analysis. While 22 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot Smooha developed his model in order to explain why Israel proper should be regarded as a diminished sort of democratic state, Yitachel’s model was an attempt to show that there is no such thing as Israel proper or Israeli democracy. he main problem with Smooha’s model, in our view, was the decision to rely on a conventionalist definition of democracy. his deprived him of the ability to make meaningful normative evaluations and created the impression, wrongly in our estimation, that he not only analyzed Israel as an ethnic democracy but supported its being so as well. Still, we believe, Smooha’s model of ethnic democracy did capture the true character of the Israeli state between 1966 and 2000. Yitachel’s problem, on the other hand, was that the need to justify his unit of analysis led him to ignore the particular legal status of the Occupied Territories in Israeli law. He was also unable to explain the democratization and liberalization processes that took place in 1966–2000, and he would face a theoretical dead end should there be any withdrawal from the Occupied Territories in the future. Still, as we have argued, at the time of the Military Administration, Israel could indeed be characterized as an ethnocracy. he difference between these two models can be schematically summarized as having to do with their different views of the relations between three groups of people who live under the authority of the Israeli ‘control system’: Jewish citizens, Palestinian citizens, and Palestinian non-citizens. he concept of ethnic democracy is based on the claim that there are two clear lines of demarcation between these three groups: a line separating citizens from non-citizens, and another line separating Jewish citizens from Palestinian citizens. According to the ethnocratic model, there is only one line, which separates all Jews from all Palestinians. As we have shown, during the time of the Military Administration, when only two of these groups were present in the State of Israel, the two groups were indeed separated by a clear line of demarcation. Since the abolition of the Military Administration and the conquests of 1967, which came at almost the same time, the three groups separated by two lines posited by the ethnic democracy model have been in existence. As the Or Commission pointed out, the ‘October Events’ tarnished significantly the line separating the citizen Palestinians from the non-citizen Palestinians, and thus undermined the democratic element in Israel’s ethnic democracy. he Commission sought to restore ethnic democracy by re-inforcing that line of division, while keeping intact the line separating Jewish citizens from Palestinian citizens. his effort, we have shown, has been futile. Further developments that followed the ‘October Events’ and the publication of the Or Commission report, including the conclusions of the Lapid Committee report, which was meant to translate the Or Commission recommendations into policy, have further tarnished the line separating citizen Palestinians from non-citizen Palestinians. At the present time, four years ater the ‘October Events’, we believe that Israel’s political order is in a state of fluidity. But it seems that the direction Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 23 of this fluidity is away from (ethnic) democracy and toward a majoritarian political order. Israel’s Palestinian citizens still possess meaningful citizenship that distinguishes their status from that of their co-nationals in the Occupied Territories. But following the ‘October Events’, the various laws that have been enacted in their wake, and the reception of the Or Commission report by the executive branch, the political space available to Palestinian citizens for working to enhance their citizenship has been considerably narrowed. he narrowing of this political space has been achieved by majoritarian procedures, and in this sense Israel’s procedural democracy has been maintained. But the tyranny of the majority is a well-known concern in democratic theory. When a majority group acts consistently to deprive the minority of the full and equal enjoyment of its citizenship rights, and when the majority is not only a permanent one but also makes the maintenance of its own majority status the highest ideal of the state, democracy has been emptied of its real content. he primary difference between the Israel of today and the one of a decade ago is that the Rabin government acted to enhance the citizenship of Israel’s Palestinian citizens and weaken the tyranny of the Jewish majority, while the present Israeli political mainstream acts to re-inforce this tyranny and diminish the citizenship rights of the Palestinian citizens. To put it another way, in the period 1992–2000, Israel’s ethnic democracy was evolving toward liberal democracy; since 2000 it has been evolving toward a non-democratic, majoritarian political order. We do not wish to claim that Israel is already a majoritarian state, only that it has launched itself on the dangerous road toward becoming one. here is very little room now in the public discourse and in the political process for the concerns of the citizen-Palestinian minority. In part, this is a result of the violence inflicted on Israel during the al-Aqsa Intifada, which has re-inforced the already existing tendency to treat the citizen Palestinians as Palestinians, rather than as citizens. Responding to this climate of opinion, Palestinian citizens, at both the elite and the grass-roots level, have markedly lowered the volume of their political activity. Even the months-long imprisonment of the entire leadership of one faction of the Islamic Movement, prior to their conviction for minor technical violations of primarily financial regulations, did not stir that Movement’s numerous followers in any serious way. We cannot end this essay on Israeli democracy without pointing out that as this is being written, the Israeli state may be confronting the most serious domestic challenge it has ever had to face. his challenge comes from the Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories—an extremely privileged group within the Israeli ‘control system’—a significant number of whom have apparently decided to oppose by any means necessary Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. While the processes we have analyzed in this essay have all been evolutionary in nature, this challenge to the authority of the state could lead to a revolutionary transformation of the political order in ways that cannot yet be envisioned. 24 | Yoav Peled and Doron Navot Notes he authors would like to thank the editor, Ilan Peleg, and two anonymous referees for their very thoughtful comments and suggestions. 1. he classic statement of the fact that democracy and liberalism are not necessarily compatible is Carl Schmitt’s; see Schmitt 1976 [1932]. 2. Peleg sees Israel as the archetype of a majority hegemonic system. According to him, majority hegemonic regimes frequently give birth to illiberal democracy. Peleg maintains that even though Israel’s democratic character is seriously and inherently flawed, the overall structure of the polity is still democratic (Peleg 2004a: 433, 430; see also Peleg 2004b). For examples of writers who insist that Israel is a Western liberal democracy, see Smooha (2002: 494). 3. Ian Lustick (1980) referred to Israel’s relations with its Palestinian citizens as a control system. Later, on the eve of the liberalizing era of the 1990s, he argued that Israel was moving toward becoming a binational, i.e., consociational, state (Lustick 1989, 1990). 4. See Collier and Adcock (1999). 5. Sometimes Smooha uses other terms, such as “regime” or “political system” (see Smooha 2002: 478), but the terminological differences have no conceptual meaning in his analysis. 6. his universalistic state, with the strong integrationist pressures associated with it, has come under a great deal of criticism in recent decades for denigrating minority cultures and serving as a subtle vehicle for promoting assimilation into the majority (Kymlicka 1995). As a result, several liberal democracies, of which Canada is probably the most prominent example (Kymlicka 1998), have recently launched themselves on a course of development leading from liberal to multi-cultural democracy. In the latter type of democracy, group rights, in addition to individual rights, are recognized and respected in the spheres of political representation, language policy, education, land ownership and use, hunting rights, and so on. he relationship that should prevail between individual and group rights in multi-cultural democracies is still a thorny issue, however, both theoretically and practically (Peled and Brunner 2000). 7. Sratori’s original claim is that “what makes democracy possible should not be mixed up with what makes democracy more democratic” (cited in Collier and Adcock 1999: 548). 8. his did not prevent major democratic theorists, who used a conventionalist definition of democracy, from considering Israel a democracy in that period. hus, Arendt Lijphart, in 1984 and 1994, counted Israel among twenty-three countries “that had been continuously democratic since the post–World War II period,” according to Robert Dahl’s definition of polyarchy. (Dahl himself had also characterized Israel in this way.) hat definition included “freedom to form and join organizations” and “the right of political leaders to compete for support and votes” (Dowty 1999: 3–4). hese two rights are indeed essential for a group’s ability to bring about change through lawful means. Both of them, however, were clearly denied to Israel’s Palestinian citizens (that is, to about 13 percent of the population) at that time. 9. Cr.a. 228/60 Kahuji v. Israel Attorney General, P.D. 14: 1929. 10. HCJ 241/60 Cardosh v. Registrar of Firms, P.D. 15: 1151. 11. HCJ 253/64 Jyris v. Supervisor of Haifa District, P.D. 18, no. 4: 673. 12. In 2004, the Qaadans were finally allowed to lease a plot in Katzir (www.haaretz.co.il, 10 May 2004). 13. It may be significant that the commanding officer of the northern police district, Alik Ron, was previously chief of police in the West Bank. 14. To put the demographic issue in perspective, in 1948 citizen Palestinians comprised 12.5 percent of the population of Israel, while today they comprise 15 percent. hey currently comprise 10 percent of eligible voters in national elections, and 9 percent of those actually casting ballots (not including the 2001 elections for prime minister, which most of them boycotted). Ethnic Democracy Revisited | 25 15. Henceforward, references to the Or Commission report will be by page number only. 16. he term “present absentees” refers to internal Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced from their villages but continue to live in Israel as citizens. 17. In March 1998, Ehud Barak, who in July 1999 would be elected prime minister, declared that if he had been a young Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization (Mann 1998: 11). 18. Justice Or, who had retired in the meantime, stated in September 2004 that the recommendations of his commission had not been implemented (Ynet, 1 September 2004, http://www. ynet.co.il/articles/1,7340,L-2971697,00.html). 19. he Lapid Committee report has not been published. It is on file with the authors. For Justice Or’s views on these issues, see note 18 above. References Al-Haj, Majid. 2000. “An Illusion of Belonging: Reactions of the Arab Population to Rabin’s Assassination.” In he Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, ed. Yoram Peri, 163–174. 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