Israel as an Ethnic State: Descriptions, Paradigms, and Prescriptions

Israel as an ethnic state: descriptions, paradigms and prescriptions In Pretending Democracy: Israel, An Ethnocratic State, edited by Na'eem Jeenah, AMEC, Johannesburg, 2012: 71-94 Ran Greenstein When we look at the question of Israel as an ethnic state, we must first consider which Israel is our topic of concern: Israel as it exists today, with boundaries extending from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan, or Israel as it existed before 1967, along the Green Line? Israel as a state that encompasses all its citizens, within the Green Line and beyond? Israel as it defines itself, or as it is defined by others? And which definition is legitimate according to international law? Is the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967 part of the definition or not? Which boundaries (geographical, political, ideological and moral) are most relevant for our discussion? What are their implications for our understanding of ethnicity, nationalism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Posing the questions correctly will take us a long way towards valid answers. Each definition of the situation carries with it different consequences for description and analysis, and different prescriptions for action. Perhaps the central question in this respect is the relationship between Israel ‘proper’, (within its pre-1967 boundaries) and Greater Israel, which came into being as a result of the June 1967 war and has effectively retained the same boundaries ever since. A series of recent publications – books, reports, articles – have focused on the meaning of the 1967 historical divide, the extent to which is it linked to other social and political cleavages, and the consequences for our understanding of the nature of the Israeli regime today. The aim of this chapter is to analyse some of these writings, and highlight key issues for debate. On that basis, we can proceed to discuss their implications for the notion of Israel as an ethnic state. This notion applies differently to various definitions of Israel, and affects the ways in which we understand the state and its practices, the forces stacked for and against its selfdefinition, and the political prospects of different proposals for a solution of the conflict. The Green Line paradigm Among the crop of studies examined here, the one by sociologist Yehouda Shenhav frames the debate over the relationship between Israel and Greater Israel most clearly, as a clash between two competing paradigms.1 These are the dominant 1967 paradigm, also known as the Green Line paradigm, of which he is critical, and the marginalised 1948 paradigm, which he seeks to resurrect. In comparing the two, Shenhav addresses the distinction between Israel, in its Green Line boundaries (which reflect the outcome of the 1948 war), and the Palestinian territory occupied since the June 1967 war, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Although both the pre- and post-67 territories fall within its overall system of military and political control, Israel has maintained the legal distinction between them. This, despite the fact that it has been in control of the entire territory of Palestine for the last 45 years, while Israel 'proper' lasted only 19 years. 1 Shenhav argues that the distinction made by the Green Line paradigm artificially separates Israel, which it regards as a democratic nation-state of the Jewish people, from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It regards the occupation as an aberration, in that it introduced a large number of Palestinian non-citizens into the system. However, as long as no final decision is made on the future of the territory it will remain under occupation and the democratic rights of its Arab residents will remain suspended. This temporary suspension of democracy is a result of the unresolved conflict and it does not affect the democratic nature of Israel itself.2 The solution to the conflict, according to this paradigm, would be the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, living in peace alongside Israel. Known as the two-state solution, its proponents argue that it will remove the temporary aberration of the occupation, restore Israel’s status as a Jewish democratic state, and give Palestinians their own nation-state. What is the problem with this paradigm? Shenhav identifies four ‘political anomalies’, corresponding to specific interest groups, that make the Green Line paradigm difficult to sustain, namely: • Palestinian refugees, who were dispossessed by the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. For those of them who were living in the Occupied Territory during the 1967 War, the occupation may arguably have represented a degree of liberation in the sense that their mobility within their homeland was enhanced as a result. • Palestinians, who remained in Israel after 1948 and became Israeli citizens – for them 1967 represented an opportunity to reunite with their people and the Arab world from which they were forcibly separated when Israel was established. • Religious-nationalist Jewish settlers – for whom the Green Line is not morally or politically meaningful, and for whom Israel as a Jewish state extends to the Jordan River or beyond. • Settlers driven by socio-economic rather than religious-nationalist motivations, primarily Mizrahim,3 orthodox Jews, and Russian immigrants; in other words, the people of the ‘third Israel’, who tend to feel marginalised by the dominant political system – for them, the occupation has provided access to land and other substantial benefits. For all these groups, argues Shenhav, pre-1967 Israel (nostalgically regarded as a democratic haven by adherents of the Green Line paradigm) was an oppressive social and political space. A return to it would not improve their situation and might even make it worse. Although they come from different religious, political and social backgrounds, they are united in rejecting the notion that the two-state solution would lead to a sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian refugees would not benefit from the reconstitution of a Jewish Israel from which they would remain excluded; Palestinians inside the Green Line would again be separated from the Arab world, and be subjected to the same exclusion and oppression from which they suffered before 1967; Religious-nationalist settlers would oppose their removal from what they see as their God-given homeland; and the people of the ‘third Israel’ would resent being relegated back into a position of marginality from which the occupation extricated them. So, asks Shenhav, who would benefit from the two-state solution? Essentially it is secular Ashkenazi-Jewish elites, who had political, social, economic and cultural control before the 1967 war, and who have since lost their dominant position. The rise of the Mizrahi, and of religious, immigrant and Arab voices and movements after 1967, has undermined the dominance of those elites. And a return to small ‘enlightened’ pre-1967 Israel, in which their power was 2 unchallenged, would allow them to re-assert their position at the expense of these groups. This, argues Shenhav, is the reason they are the main proponents of the Green Line paradigm. They have managed to make this a dominant perspective in public discourse, although underlying social and cultural currents have led to its continued decline in policy and practice. Diplomatic support for the two-state solution has increased, but so has the blurring of the (physical, legal and symbolic) boundaries between Israel and the Occupied Territory. Most of those living in the region have never experienced any reality other than that of Greater Israel. Thus, paradoxically, the rhetorical victory of the Green Line paradigm, as expressed in almost unanimous international support for it, and its invocation in all UN resolutions, has disguised its demise in practice. Through massive allocation of state resources, and a consistent policy of expansion, Israel has created a patchwork of disconnected areas in which Palestinians live, crisscrossed by Jewish settlement infrastructure. Removing hundreds of thousands of settlers, and restoring the integrity of the pre-1967 boundaries is virtually impossible, says Shenhav, and the prospect of a viable independent Palestinian state is more remote than ever. Separation between Jewish settlers and local residents within the Occupied Territory is maintained through an elaborate system of laws and military regulations, with settlers legally and politically incorporated into Israel, while Palestinians live as stateless subjects. The crucial distinction now is between citizens and non-citizens within Greater Israel, rather than between the pre- and post1967 territories. What is Shenhav’s alternative, then? It is the 1948 paradigm, which is based on treating the historical territory of Palestine as a unified geographical unit, in which many groups with diverse needs coexist. From a Palestinian perspective it is essential to address the root problem of the 1948 Nakba – the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and homeland, the destruction of hundreds of villages and urban neighbourhoods, and their replacement by Jewish immigrants and settlements. Palestinians who remained within Israeli boundaries were made subject to military rule, dispossessed of much of their land and turned into second-class citizens. Their historical and cultural legacy was largely erased to reinforce an exclusive Jewish claim to the land. All this has affected Jews too, who grow up in wilful ignorance of the history of their country, and live in denial of their active role in shaping the nature of the conflict. Only by addressing its ongoing impact, and providing redress for it, will the trauma experienced by Palestinians be overcome. This means that Israeli Jews must acknowledge their responsibility for the part they have played in it, something that they have consistently refused to do. The 1948 paradigm, Shenhav argues, would allow Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to reshape their relations in a common space by working within the same framework. This means opening up a process of resolving problems by recognising that both national groups have legitimate claims that cannot be used to deny the other’s rights and needs. This process would address the traumas of both sides, acknowledge the changes wrought by the settlement project, seek to reconcile competing and even contradictory theological claims, redistribute resources equitably between the national collectives, and create a new democratic regime that would address the concerns of all groups. 3 Shenhav does not prescribe a method for resolving the conflict, but offers three possible models. The first is a one-state solution, an unlikely option as it is premised on a homogeneous population, and ignores the large degree of differentiation – cultural, religious, and ethnic – between and within Jewish and Arab populations. The second is a two-state solution, but one which ensures a more equitable distribution of land and resources between the two sides. The third is a consociational democracy. This assumes that civil equality at state level could be supplemented by expressions of specific rights and preferences in smaller localised units. Instead of removing ethnicity and religion from the realm of the state, as the one-state model aims to do, this arrangement would reinforce them at the local level, to allow communities to express their identities. In Shenhav’s view, some variation on the third model is the likely eventual outcome. In the interim, he argues, a binational model could begin to apply within the Green Line boundaries, to create a bilingual society that would ensure equality of rights between individuals and ethnic-religious collectives. Shenhav’s consociational model recognises the right of return of Palestinian refugees, although not necessarily to their original homes, and reconciles this with the Law of Return for Jews.4 This would enable civil equality to co-exist with multiple identities, rights and claims (of an ethnic, communal and religious nature), and thus open the way for legitimate Palestinian and Jewish self-expression in the shared space of historical Palestine. For him, it is important to assert that Jews have a right to express their collective identity, hence the subtitle of his book, A Jewish political essay. But he argues that Jews must do so in non-oppressive ways. Only if Israel changes from an exclusionary ethnic state to an inclusive democracy, and accommodates internal ethnic and religious diversity, can such expression be possible. Shenhav argues that this change is as essential for future Jewish prospects in the Middle East as is the restoration of Palestinian rights. Shenhav’s sociological perspective links the notion of ‘Israel proper’ – a democratic state that supposedly exists independently of the occupation – to Ashkenazi Jewish elites and their wish to retain socio-economic and cultural control. This allows him to shift attention to marginalised groups – the ‘political anomalies’ listed earlier – who, he argues, are united by their opposition to the exclusionary 1967 paradigm. These groups challenge the paradigm from radically different directions, however. Some of them seek to deepen the oppression of Palestinians by imposing further restrictions on their movements and ability to live, work and survive on their land, with a view to driving them out altogether. Others seek to liberate Palestinians from foreign rule and get oppressive Israeli settlers, soldiers and officials off their backs. How can any sense of common purpose be formed out of these violently opposed sentiments? In his eagerness to force settlers into the 1948 camp, Shenhav ignores glaring contradictions. He maintains that it would be immoral to evict settlers from the homes they acquired as a result of official Israeli policy, arguing that an injustice cannot be fixed by another injustice. But, he fails to consider that if the process by which settlers came to occupy their positions is not reversed, it would be impossible to restore Palestinian rights. Where settlers control resources – land, water, trees, roads, buildings – taken by force or built at the expense of Palestinians, the original injustice is being continuously re-enacted. The problem, of course, is not the mere presence of Jews, but the existence of settlements as exclusionary enclaves that serve to dispossess the local population, and entrench Israeli rule on an ongoing basis. The professed willingness of some settlers to ‘live together’ with Arabs as ‘neighbours’ in the same ‘space’ does not extend to a willingness to relinquish their spoils and live as equals in open communities. And, the fact that 4 many Jewish communities within pre-1967 Israel are also exclusionary, as he correctly points out, does nothing to address the issues posed by the post-1967 settlements. Blatant practices of dispossession, backed up by massive military force, political and legal support, and economic investment, make them qualitatively different from Jewish settlement within the Green Line. For this reason, very few Palestinians regard settlers in the Occupied Territory as legitimate, or recognise their right to remain there, while most do accept the right of Jews to live in pre-1967 Israel (without necessarily accepting Israel as a Jewish state). In the eyes of Palestinians, the post-1967 settlements are a reality that must be opposed and not embraced as Shenhav proposes. Palestinians may adhere to the 1948 paradigm in regarding the territory of Palestine as one unit, but they do not agree that settlers are – or can become – their partners in finding a solution to the conflict. At most, they would be willing to tolerate their presence if removing them proves too difficult, but that is a far cry from celebrating their presence. In this respect, Shenhav’s overriding concern with exposing the inconsistencies of the Zionist left leads him into a tacit alliance with the Zionist right: The diagnosis of the right-wingers is accurate…there is a minority that reads reality in a far less denying and less repressive way than all the people on the left who support the two-state solution…The 1967 paradigm is intended to make it possible for the left to live in Tel Aviv and feel good about itself… [and] the settlements will be sacrificed in order to atone for what they did to the Palestinians in 1948. The settlers will pay the price of the sins of the left…Don’t get me wrong: I am not in favor of the vision of the right wing. All I am doing is recommending that the left listen to what the right is saying. To take the right wing’s diagnosis and develop it into normative and moral left-wing viewpoints to create a horizon that reflects the left – not nationalism, not a Jewish empire.’5 On the positive side, Shenhav’s focus on internal Israeli debates highlights the links between liberal views (as expressed in the 1967 paradigm) and socio-economic privilege, as well as those between religious and ethnic identities and the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shenhav provides a sociologically grounded analysis, which replaces the misleading notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ as they are commonly used in Israel. At the same time, his approach obscures the role that occupation and resistance play in Palestinian-Arab debates and interpretations, for which he shows scant regard. Despite advocating a paradigm that aims to move beyond the limited concerns of Israeli Jews, Shenhav ends up trapped by the assumption that what really matters is how Jews define the situation and propose to change it.6 A tendency to direct most attention to Israeli actions and debates is common in Israeli scholarly literature, which focuses on what Jews do and say, implicitly accepting that Palestinians are victims, who may deserve sympathy but are of little interest otherwise. This has to do with the informal but deeply entrenched academic division of labour in Israel, in which sociologists and political scientists study Jews, anthropologists study Mizrahim and Arabs inside Israel, and ‘orientalists’ study other Arabs.7 A somewhat different approach – difficult to classify neatly – is taken by Meron Benvenisti, who was the first person to advance the notion that the Israeli occupation reached a point of no return in the 1980s, and cannot be reversed.8 Therefore, for Benvenisti, any talk of Israel that excludes the Occupied Territory is meaningless. 5 The inevitable bi-national regime By the late 1980s, argues Benvenisti, Israel's hold over the territory beyond the Green Line had become permanent, even though Palestinian residents remained excluded from citizenship and rights. Defining the territory as occupied is misleading in his view, as it has become incorporated into the Israeli system of control. Disguising reality by pretending that the situation is temporary, and that there is a meaningful peace process that could result in change, helps maintain the status quo. Benvenisti proposes that the paradigm of temporary occupation be replaced by that of a ‘de facto bi-national regime’, which describes the ‘mutual dependence of both societies, as well as the physical, economic, symbolic and cultural ties that cannot be severed without an intolerable cost’. The bi-national situation does not mean parity of power, however, due to ‘the total dominance of the Jewish-Israeli nation, which controls a Palestinian nation that is fragmented both territorially and socially…only a strategy of permanent rule can explain the vast settlement enterprise and the enormous investment in housing and infrastructure, estimated at US 100 billion.’ According to Benvenisti, the Israeli system is geared to undermine every agent or process that puts the Jewish community’s total domination in jeopardy, or threatens its ability to accumulate political and material advantages. This system has evolved as an unplanned response embedded within the ‘genetic code’ of a settler society, and is no longer dependent on settlements and military occupation to entrench itself. Instead, it is sustained by Israel’s success in fragmenting Palestinians and ensuring that each of the fragments is concerned only with its own affairs with no interest in or capacity to work with the others. Benvenisti does not mince words in describing what he regards as the total disarray in Palestinian ranks today as compared to the nationalist unity that was apparent in the 1970s and 1980s, but he fails to offer reflections on the situation as seen from Palestinian perspectives or based on their own voices.9 While dismissing the prospects for Palestinian national identity and unity, he highlights the success of the ‘mobilization of the Jewish community into support for the occupation regime, which is perceived as safeguarding its very existence’, and which allows it to continue its domination and disguise its true nature. As a result, a bi-national reality has emerged and partition is no longer viable. Benvenisti concludes that the two national groups are destined to live together, and that the only remaining question is what kind of relations can and will be established between them. One option, considered but dismissed by Benvenisti, is that of the South African ‘one person, one vote’ paradigm, which is based on ‘a centralized, unitary state where the civil rights of the individual citizen are respected, but the collective rights of ethnic groups are not grounded in constitutional law’. He argues that this paradigm is inadequate in the Israel-Palestine context, because it would ‘result in perpetuating the supremacy of the Jewish ethnic group, securing its rule by Palestinian fragmentation’. A wealthy, armed, well-organised and unified Jewish society would face poor, weak, divided and powerless Palestinian groups. To quote Benvenisti, ‘A liberal democracy cannot function where ethnic polarization – political, economic and cultural – runs deep. Here the problem is not one of individual rights, but is focused on mutually incompatible collective rights’. For Benvenisti, all viable paradigms involve recognition of the need to address the bi-national reality to allow a common future. The precise nature of the constitutional framework is secondary: 6 It is a choice between horizontal (power sharing) and vertical (territorial) partition… coexistence must be based upon communal equality and ethical principles, human dignity and freedom; otherwise it will not endure and will perpetuate violence. It is clear that without parity of esteem, mutual respect for the identity and equality of the two communities, there will be no reconciliation and neither of the two alternatives – partition and power sharing – could be implemented. How this approach would allow us to address the question of occupation and settlements is not made explicit, however. Once we adopt a bi-national paradigm, the post-1967 territories seem to disappear from view as an issue of concern. Shenhav does attempt to address the issue of what is to become of the settlements (even if he does it in a way that is inadequate from the perspective of Palestinians), but Benvenisti does not regard it as important enough to merit discussion. He may be subsuming the issue into the general question of the allocation of resources in the future. But, the military presence, the institutional and physical infrastructure that has been built, together with the massive investment in the settlements, are unlikely to somehow lose their distinct role in the conflict regardless of which paradigm we choose. The fact that these issues are not the subject of explicit discussion is evidence of a large gap in Benvenisti’s analysis. Perhaps it is not surprising that in a study that aims to analyse the situation, a solution to various questions is not the focus of concern: the point is to describe not prescribe. And yet, Benvenisti concludes his analysis by contradicting his earlier dismissal of Palestinian political capacity. After portraying a gloomy picture of the futility of resistance, he identifies the Palestinian citizens of Israel as possible agents of change. Initially occupying a marginal position after 1948, since 1976 and the Day of the Land uprising they have become a consolidated minority group with high self-esteem and the ability to challenge the majority community by demanding individual and collective equality and national rights. Benvenisti suggests further that decades of interaction with the Jewish masses and elites have helped Palestinian citizens develop intimate familiarity with Jewish-Zionist society, and with its strengths and weaknesses. Their ‘vision documents’ (discussed below), and their political demands for consensual democracy and power sharing, may serve as the basic manifesto of all Palestinians seeking to address the bi-national reality. Unfortunately, he does not explain how the ‘fragmented Palestinians’, concerned only with their sectional interests, will unite around a platform of demands proposed by one interest group. Having said that, the potential role of Palestinian citizens seems to be marginal to Benvenisti’s approach, and more of an afterthought than an integral part of his analysis. In this, Benvenisti is similar to Shenhav, who also suggests that the transition to an overall solution could start with the application of a bi-national model to Jewish-Arab relations within Israel proper (again, more as an afterthought and in partial contradiction to the thrust of his analysis which does not recognise the pre-1967 boundaries as meaningful). The issue occupies a more central place in a landmark work by Ariella Azoulai and Adi Ophir, which focuses on the 1967 occupation, and the nature of the Israeli regime.10 7 The regime which is (not) one In contrast to Shenhav and his 1948 paradigm, Azoulai and Ophir regard the occupation and its legal and political consequences as meaningful developments, rather than merely an expansion of the boundaries of Israeli control. They make a distinction between the two sides of the Green Line, not with a nostalgic view towards pre-1967 Israel, but in an attempt to understand how both Israel proper and the Occupied Territory are governed by a single, internally differentiated, regime. They acknowledge that the Israeli regime is a product of a settlement process, which historically was part of the overall European colonial project, and that its practices are similar in many respects to separation regimes such as the one that ruled apartheid South Africa. However, labels such as settler colonialism, apartheid, and so on, tell us little about the regime’s specific nature and trajectory, or about suitable strategies of resistance and change. For these, they say, we need to undertake a concrete analysis of the specific conditions under which the regime emerged, its mechanisms of domination and ideological strategies, and the forces acting to entrench or challenge it. Azoulai and Ophir argue that we cannot understand the Israeli regime by regarding it as the product of an inherently Zionist or Jewish-nationalist logic that has led inevitably to the present. Just as post-1948 Israel was not a direct continuation of the pre-1948 Zionist movement and its institutions, the post-1967 regime is not simply an extension of the pre-1967 practices of domination. There is a break (but also continuity) after 1967, and another break (and continuity) after 1987 (reinforced after the Oslo agreements of 1993). The regime that emerged at each point was not simply a stage in the unfolding of some grand design, but an outcome of contingent historical developments. Thus, what Azoulai and Ophir describe as the ‘regime which is not one’ has a dual character: brutal oppression, denial of human and political rights, total disregard for the welfare of subjects in the Occupied Territory, combined with (a qualified) democracy within the pre-1967 boundaries. This duality exists within the framework of the same regime. For them, talking about Israel in its pre-1967 boundaries as a distinct social and political entity is meaningless – the regime encompasses both sides of the Green Line and they are interdependent. The Occupied Territory is included in a way that retains its exclusion from the realm of legitimate politics (falling rather under notions of ‘security’ or ‘demography’). The regime incorporates the Occupied Territory as a permanent ‘outside’, an ‘inclusive exclusion’: a space that is always subject to Israeli domination (in the Gaza Strip today just as much as in the West Bank since 1967) but is never absorbed into Israel. For Azoulai and Ophir, neither withdrawal from the Occupied Territory nor its annexation is likely. And they argue that this is not the result of a failure to agree on policy, as it is usually portrayed, but rather a firm policy decision to retain this ambiguity (forever if possible). In theoretical terms, there is a well-established distinction between sovereign and disciplinary power (Foucault) or between repressive and ideological state apparatuses (Althusser) or between domination and hegemony (Gramsci). On one side is the repressive aspect of power, and on the other are attempts to win legitimacy and the consent of the governed by making concessions – taking care of people’s needs, and assuming responsibility for their welfare. In Europe and 8 elsewhere, liberal and social-democratic reforms saw countries making a gradual and consistent transition from domination to the more hegemonic mode of rule over the last two hundred years. What we are observing in the Israeli case, argue Azoulai and Ophir, is a shift in the opposite direction, beginning with responses to the first intifada in 1987, accelerating with the Oslo Accords in 1993,11 and culminating in responses to the second intifada from 2000 to the present. While Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territory were never incorporated politically, or even recognised as having legitimate claims, the regime did see itself as responsible for their welfare between 1967 and 1987, and attempted to win a degree of consent from them. These attempts failed completely, and subsequently even minimal concern for their welfare was abandoned. Since the Oslo Accords, complete disregard for the welfare of Palestinians in the Occupied Territory has become the norm. Israeli authorities have shirked all responsibility; their only concern is to ensure that these residents do not die en masse (not because they really care, but because this would create a diplomatic problem). They allow limited supplies of electricity, fuel or food aid by international agencies, calculated to be just enough to prevent mass starvation or total infrastructural collapse. Beyond the repressive apparatus of the state, nothing is left. All state functions that could potentially be taken over and democratised have been withdrawn from the Occupied Territory, and those that operate inside Israel are totally inaccessible. While in the Occupied Territory the distinction between citizen (soldier, settler) and non-citizen (Palestinian resident) is paramount, within the Green Line the ethnic distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens is crucial. In the Occupied Territory, both distinctions overlap but this is not so in Israel, which is why it is important not to lump them together in the analysis. The tension between the principles of ethnicity and citizenship opens up opportunities for change. Israeli Palestinians are discriminated against but are not subject to the same system of domination as their counterparts who live under occupation. They can exercise their rights as citizens in order to campaign for meaningful political and social integration. And, in doing this, they could open the way to changing the regime itself. Occupied Palestinians can resist the occupation, but their capacity to change the regime itself is blocked; they have no effective leverage from the external position into which they have been forced. Overall regime change thus hinges on the success of changing Israel from within through the joint efforts of Israeli Palestinians and their Jewish allies. Change inside Israel will open possibilities for further change in the nature of the regime as a whole. Characterising the relations between Jewish and Arab citizens as a system of ethnic democracy (which observes certain democratic norms and rights but displays systematic and growing ethnic bias) has encountered criticism. Oren Yiftachel argues that the regime is indeed a unified system of ethnic rule and exclusion – an ethnocracy – operating according to similar principles on both sides of the Green Line.12 For Yiftachel, the ongoing project of Judaisation is applied in different historical, geographical and demographic contexts, but is governed by the same imperative of gaining control over resources, land and political power. Its overall goal is to entrench the rule of Jewish citizens, wherever they are, over the indigenous Arab population. The result is a system in which many sub-groups with different rights and liabilities co-exist; they cannot be divided neatly into citizens and non-citizens. Palestinian citizens of Israel may be better off than their non-citizen fellows who live under occupation, but they are subject to the same ethnocratic rule, as the long list of violations of democratic norms and rights provided in the article makes clear. 9 In my view, Yiftachel is correct in observing that group affiliation is more important than citizenship status in Israel, and that ethnicity trumps democracy in its ‘ethnic democracy’. As the saying goes, the Jewish democratic state (also known as the ‘Jewish demographic state’) is ‘Jewish’ for Arabs and ‘democratic’ for Jews. However, Yiftachel’s criticism of Azoulai and Ophir is a bit unfair. They are aware of the defective nature of Israeli democracy, and they do not idealise the conditions under which Palestinian citizens live. They may well recognise that Palestinian citizenship is ‘ghettoised’ and embedded within a system of ‘creeping apartheid’ (to use Yiftachel’s terminology), but they contrast it with the much harsher exclusionary oppressive conditions under which occupied Palestinians live. This allows them to highlight courses of action that are open to citizens (even those on the wrong side of the ethnic divide), but not to colonial subjects denied access to any rights. And indeed, without waiting for academics to analyse them, Palestinian citizens of Israel have taken the initiative and come up with their own analysis and political strategies. The vision documents In a series of documents published between December 2006 and May 2007, prominent activists, academics and intellectuals outlined their vision for the future of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, and their relations with their Israeli-Jewish counterparts.13 In the 2006 framework document published by the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel, they present themselves as ‘Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the indigenous people, the residents of the State of Israel’. They go on to state that, as a result of the 1948 Nakba, they were disconnected from the rest of the Palestinian people and Arab world, and since then have been ‘suffering from extreme structural discrimination policies, national oppression, military rule that lasted till 1966, land confiscation policy, unequal budget and resources allocation, rights discrimination and threats of transfer’, but have managed to maintain their ‘identity, culture, and national affiliation’. Israel's definition as a Jewish state excludes them, therefore they call for ‘a Consensual Democratic system that enables us to be fully active in the decision-making process and guarantee our individual and collective civil, historic, and national rights.’14 Analytically, Israel is identified as executing ‘internal colonial policies’ against Palestinian-Arab citizens, as part of a process of ‘judaization of the land and erosion of the Palestinian history and civilization’.15 This makes Israel an ‘ethnocratic state’, which uses ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship ‘as a basic principle of the distribution of resources and abilities’. To overcome this system, ‘the State should recognize the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as an indigenous national group (and as a minority within the international conventions) that has the right within their citizenship to choose its representatives directly and be responsible for their religious, educational and cultural affairs…[and] the State has to acknowledge that Israel is the homeland for both Palestinians and Jews’. The two groups ‘should have mutual relations based on the consensual democratic system (an extended coalition between the elites of the two groups, equal proportional representation, mutual right to veto and self administration of exclusive issues).’ This would lead to the removal of ‘all forms of ethnic superiority, be that executive, structural, legal or symbolic’, and the adoption of ‘policies of corrective justice in all aspects of life in order to compensate for the damage inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs due to the ethnic favoritism policies of the Jews.’16 A long list of areas in which such policies must apply includes land, planning, and housing; employment and service provision; social development; education and culture; institution building. In all these, solidarity with and a sense of common identity and fate 10 with other Palestinian groups and the Arab world are essential. The precise nature of the relations between them is left vague, however. In more legalistic vein, Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, produced a draft constitution to embody the principles contained in the vision framework.17 If it were accepted, its area of application would be ‘the territory which was subject to the Israeli law until 5 June 1967’, in other words Israel ‘proper’. None of the clauses in the document refer to Palestinians in the Occupied Territory or the diaspora. The document simply states: The State of Israel must recognize its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people, both before and after its establishment. The State of Israel must recognize, therefore, its responsibility for the injustices of the Nakba and the Occupation; recognize the right of return of the Palestinian refugees based on UN Resolution 194; recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and withdraw from all of the territories occupied in 1967.18 In a sense, this goes beyond both the 1948 and 1967 paradigms: the occupation is seen as a crucial development linked to the 1948 events and their ongoing legacy, but not as being directly continuous with them. Distinctions must be made between the challenges and opportunities facing each segment of the Palestinian people – they cannot be simplistically lumped together. According to the constitution proposed by Adalah, a democratic Israel would be bilingual, with Hebrew and Arabic as official languages enjoying equal status in state institutions. The state would be multicultural: ‘each group that constitutes a national minority’ would be entitled to ‘educational and cultural institutions’, and the same would apply to religious minorities. All minorities would be ‘entitled to operate their institutions via a representative body chosen by the members of the group’, allocated a suitable budget by the state, and given ‘appropriate representation’ in state structures. Participation of minorities in decision-making is envisaged through a model which requires majority support from ‘parties that by definition and character are Arab parties or Arab-Jewish parties’. Interestingly, the proposed system is premised on indirect ethnic-group representation, rather than universal democracy. It implicitly assumes that people would not transcend their ethnic identity and would continue to vote and act according to their definition of group interests (the reference to ‘Arab-Jewish parties’ seems to be a concession to Hadash – the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – and the Israeli Communist Party, which do not define themselves as Arab, despite the fact that most of their support comes from Palestinian citizens). Another distinctive feature of the proposed constitution is the notion of ‘distributive justice’, which aims to compensate ‘every group of citizens which has suffered from a policy of injustice and historical discrimination’ in the allocation of land, water and in planning. This would enable citizens (and potentially refugees) to reclaim expropriated private, communal and religious property, as well as compensation for having been uprooted by various pieces of discriminatory legislation. These mechanisms of restitution would apply to settled citizens, internally displaced persons, Bedouins and residents in unrecognised villages. Their purpose is to facilitate a return to 11 the normal conditions that are expected to apply in a non-ethnic state. That the proposed constitution makes specific mention of various groups of Arab citizens is due to past discriminatory practices. In all other respects, it proposes that equality between citizens must be the norm. Thus, some of the tension between individual and group rights that appears in the document may be seen as a temporary measure or as a form of affirmative action. It is clear that these vision documents foresee a future grounded in ethnic identity but, unlike the present ethnocratic system, based on equality between the different groups. Thus, Israel would not cease to be an ethnic state, but would become a bi-ethnic (or bi-national) state. This is clearly different from post-apartheid South Africa, which aims to be a non-racial state, in which racial considerations are allowed only for purposes of redress. In Israel/Palestine, the power of ethnicgroup identity and historical links to group members beyond the state’s boundaries seem too strong to be easily overcome in the immediate to medium-term future. This sense of history is expressed forcefully in a May 2007 document known as The Haifa Declaration, and which speaks in the name of sons and daughters of the Palestinian Arab people who remained in our homeland despite the Nakba…[who] affirm in this Declaration the foundations of our identity and belonging, and…[call for] an historic reconciliation between the Palestinian people and the Israeli Jewish people…[based on] continued connection to the other sons and daughters of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation.19 In doing this, the Declaration rejects the label ‘Israeli Arabs’ and reasserts Palestinian and Arab affinities. At the same time, the Declaration defines its specific constituency as having been shaped by the 1948 events, ‘through which we – who remained from among the original inhabitants of our homeland – were made citizens without the genuine constituents of citizenship, especially equality.’ As a ‘homeland minority’, they seek ‘democratic citizenship’, justice and redress as ‘the only arrangement that guarantees individual and collective equality for the Palestinians in Israel.’ The Declaration focuses on Palestinians inside pre-1967 Israel, but within the overall goal of a ‘historic reconciliation’ between the Jewish Israeli people and the Arab Palestinian people, groups that are not confined to specific boundaries. To achieve this, the state must ‘accept responsibility for the Nakba, which befell all parts of the Palestinian people, and also for the war crimes and crimes of occupation that it has committed in the Occupied Territories.’ This should be complemented by recognizing the Right of Return and acting to implement it in accordance with United Nations Resolution 194, ending the Occupation and removing the settlements from all Arab territory occupied since 1967, recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to selfdetermination and to an independent and sovereign state, and recognizing the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel. 12 In exchange, the Declaration continues, Palestinians and Arabs must ‘recognize the right of the Israeli Jewish people to self-determination and to life in peace, dignity, and security with the Palestinian and the other peoples of the region.’ This would require a ‘change in the definition of the State of Israel from a Jewish state to a democratic state established on national and civil equality between the two national groups, and enshrining the principles of banning discrimination and of equality between all of its citizens and residents.’ While the Haifa Declaration puts forward an overall vision of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it leaves a few questions without clear answers. It does not address the tension between the quest for a democratic state with no ethnic character, and the notion of equality between ethnically defined groups. Nor does it attempt to reconcile the right to national selfdetermination with equality at the individual and collective levels. It identifies the role of Palestinians in Israel in transforming the state through their own efforts, but the link between their struggle and that of other Palestinians is not addressed. In addition, the Declaration does not explain how Palestinians in Israel could use their strategic position and familiarity with Israeli Jews to advance support for terminating the occupation, and recognising the right of return of refugees. These questions require extensive discussion, and the Declaration may not have been the best forum for this, but it could at least have noted that these issues would have to be examined in the future.20 The debate over the meaning of Israel as an ethnic state, an ethnocracy as its critics call it, or an ‘ethnic democracy’ as it is referred to by some of its supporters, continues. An editorial in the December 2009 edition of Mada al-Carmel’s journal addressed these debates by expressing regret over the global spread of the ‘political discourse of two states for two peoples – a Palestinian state and a Jewish state’. In their view, ‘the ethnic state is a recipe for continued injustice and for resistance to it, and thus for the continuation of the conflict. It is the democratic state that will guarantee equality among all citizens’.21 Whether the democratic state would be merely ‘a state of all its citizens’, or a state which recognises that its citizens are divided into ethnic groups, to be represented as collectives and not only individually, is an ongoing question.22 Conclusion From the preceding discussion it should be obvious that most Palestinians in Israel do not accept the theoretical arguments presented by Shenhav, Benvenisti, and others, which minimise the distinction between pre- and post-1967 Israel. This has little to do with their acceptance of the democratic credentials of the regime within Israel proper, or with their position regarding the ‘reversibility’ of the occupation. That Israel is an ethnic state, in which Jews occupy a privileged position, and from which all Palestinians – including citizens of the state – are excluded, albeit to different degrees, is not in dispute. Rather, what differentiates Palestinians in Israel from their counterparts in the Occupied Territory and the diaspora is their strategic political location: as citizens of the state, they are the only ones who can organise to change it from within. Their minority status means that such change will not happen through their efforts alone. An alliance with progressive Jewish forces is essential. This is likely to be a long and difficult struggle but not an impossible one. While alliances with other segments of the Palestinian people are important, it is difficult to see what concrete political shape they might take. Attempts to conceptualise such joint Palestinian campaigns normally consists of calls to support the usual 13 political rhetoric (such as the one-state solution) or for solidarity with international campaigns (for example, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement). But, they rarely offer concrete options for action within the physical and political frameworks that people occupy. Going back to Shenhav’s discussion of the 1967 Green Line paradigm, it is easy to see the blind spot in his analysis: accepting that 1948 is the departure point for understanding the overall nature of the conflict does not necessarily imply a unified political strategy of struggle and resistance. We can regard the question of Palestine as an integrated whole, and yet consider different courses of action for various segments of its population, depending on their specific location within the system of control, the concrete challenges they face, and the opportunities with which they are presented. In his eagerness to critique the Zionist left, Shenhav ignores the extent to which the political discourse of Palestinians is based on a distinction between what they can practically do in different arenas of struggle. A similar problem afflicts Benvenisti’s analysis. His model of an ‘inevitable’ bi-national regime is based on an inability to regard Palestinian analysis and action as anything other than a series of self-serving delusions. That these reflect their differential political locations and perspectives, which in turn affect the nature of the regime that rules them, is something his analysis prevents him from seeing. In other words, the organisation and activities of Palestinians in Israel play a crucial role in the way that the Israeli state shapes and reshapes its ethnic character and devises new counter-strategies. The situation does not consist of a single active actor (Israel) and many passive victims, as his writings frequently imply. And yet, despite the fact that Palestinians in Israel are marginal to the theoretical approach of both Shenhav and Benvenisti, both authors end up regarding them as a potential force for change that can trigger broader political transformations. The same goes for Azoulai and Ophir, of course, though in their case that conclusion is consistent with their overall approach. How can we explain this? One thing to keep in mind here is that critical Israeli-Jewish intellectuals, regardless of their theoretical and political perspectives, are far more familiar with Palestinians in Israel than with Palestinians elsewhere. They speak a common language, read the same newspapers, have frequent discussions with them, share educational backgrounds, frequently work in similar institutions, and meet in various political forums and activities. Only rarely do they have a similar degree of intimate interaction with intellectuals and activists in the Occupied Territory, to say nothing about Palestinians in the diaspora. It is not surprising then, that when it comes to outlining concrete political strategies, they are at a loss to identify any concrete course of action that does not centre on the part of the Palestinian people about which Israeli Jews are most knowledgeable and with which they feel the greatest affinity. What can we conclude then about Israel as an ethnic state from the discussion so far? • 14 As Shenhav argues, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its current form started in 1948 and not 1967. A solution must address all components of the conflict, although it cannot be denied that the occupation represents a specific and acute aspect of the conflict and requires its own solution (but not in isolation from other aspects). • As Benvenisti argues, a bi-national reality exists, regardless of the formal political arrangements around it. At the same time, the form and degree of ethnic rule differs for various segments of the Palestinian population, who face different challenges as a result. • As Azoulai and Ophir argue, the regime has a dual character, even if it is embedded in an overall ethnocratic framework (to use Yiftachel’s terminology). The democratic façade it displays in ‘Israel proper’ creates opportunities for changing the ethnic system there, and through that, for changing the regime as a whole. • As the vision documents demonstrate, Palestinians in Israel have an important political and analytical capacity and have taken the initiative in calling for and working for change from within the ethnocratic system itself. Without losing sight of the context of Israeli-Jewish ethnic rule and expansion that affects all Palestinians, nor of their strategic political location within it, they represent the best potential for changing the overall system. Not through their own efforts alone, but together with all other Jewish and Arab forces seeking progressive change. 15 1 Notes Shenhav (2010). 2 For a critique of this argument, see Glaser (2003) and the chapter by Glaser in this volume. 3 The word ‘Mizrahim’ literally means Easterners or Orientals, and is used in Israel to refer to Israeli Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. 4 The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, enacted in 1950, that gives those of Jewish ancestry, and their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship. 5 Shenhav, quoted in Noam Sheizaf, ‘Endgame.’ Ha’aretz (Friday supplement), 16 July 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/endgame-1.302128 (in Hebrew, my translation). The settlers and right-wing leaders referred to in the article propose a gradual move (over decades) towards granting citizenship to Palestinian residents of the West Bank, but not of Gaza, without recognising the right of return of refugees into the country, which they insist will remain a Jewish state. For a discussion of some Palestinian perspectives on this, see Rubinstein (2010) and Farsakh (2011). 6 Two veteran anti-Zionist activists have criticized Shenhav’s book for failing to confront the key issues of Zionist settlement: See Aminov (2010) and Honig-Parnass (2011). 7 Eyal (2006). 8 Meron Benvenisti, ‘United We Stand.’ Ha’aretz, 28 January 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/united-we-stand-1.262282 (All direct quotes by Benvenisti in the paragraphs below are from this article.) An earlier version of the article appeared in the journal Mitaam, in December 2009 (see Benvenisti 2010). Other versions also circulate on the internet, and the one that appeared as ‘How Israel became became a bi-national state’ in Ha’aretz, 22 January 2010, seems to be the most complete. 9 If Palestinians are indeed fragmented into five groups, which have increasingly little to do with each other, Benvenisti may need to explain why a bi-national model (assuming only two groups) is workable. See the criticism by Reuven Kaminer in ‘A response to Meron Benvenisti.’ 2 February 2010, on the Jews for Justice for Palestinians website, http://jfjfp.com/?p=10062. 10 11 Azoulai and Ophir (2008). The Oslo Accords shifted some administrative responsibilities to the newly established Palestinian Authority, thereby providing Israel with an excuse for avoiding its legal obligations as an occupying power. See Gordon (2008). 12 Yiftachel (2009). 13 Adalah (2007), Mada al-Carmel (2007), NCHALAI (2006). 14 NCHALAI (2006: 5). 15 NCHALAI (2006: 9). 16 NCHALAI (2006: 10–11). 17 Adalah (2007). 18 Adalah (2007: 4) 19 This and all the excerpts from the Declaration that follow can be found in Mada al-Carmel (2007: 7–17). Mada al-Carmel, The Arab Center for Applied Social Research, is a Haifa-based policy analysis and research institute, which aims to become a hub of knowledge and critical thinking about Palestinians in Israel, equal citizenship, and democracy. 20 In 2008, the year after the Haifa Declaration was issued, the Haifa Conference for the Return of the Palestinian Refugees and the Democratic Secular State in Historic Palestine, organised by dissident Palestinians in Israel, the Abnaa elBalad movement, called for a single state with no ethnic and religious distinctions in the entire country, but without showing any concrete way of linking the disparate struggles of Palestinians in their different locations. A second Haifa conference took place in May 2010. Further information is available at http://www.ror1state.org/awda 21 22 Mada al-Carmel (2009). The positions on this issue held by leading representatives of the Palestinian population, namely: the Arab High Follow-up Committee, the Israeli Communist Party, the National Democratic Alliance, the Islamic Movement, and Abnaa elBalad, are presented at Jadal, 5, December 2009: http://jadal.mada-research.org/? LanguageId=1. References Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, Israel). (2007). The Democratic Constitution. Shafa’amr. www.adalah.org/eng/democratic_constitution-e.pdf Aminov E (2010) ‘The bi-national state: A new label for the ‘two states’ bluff.’ Hagada Hasmalit (in Hebrew). 7 April. http://www.ror1state.org/awda/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63%3Aq--q-----q-q--&catid=40%3A2010-05-07-11-45-04&Itemid=65&lang=ar Azoulai A & Ophir A (2008). The regime which is not one: Occupation and democracy between the sea and the river, 1967 (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Resling. An excerpt from the book appeared in English as ‘The order of violence’. 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