Who Belongs? Citizenship and Democracy in the Jewish State

1. Who Belongs?Citizenship and Democracy in the Jewish State

2. Questions • What is the political, cultural, and legal character of the state of Israel? • Can a state be “Jewish” and “democratic” at the same time? • Can non-Jews have equal rights and status in a “Jewish State”?

3. 1948

4. A “Frontier Conflict” How to reconcile Jewish sovereignty over the territory of Israel with non-Jewish landownership? A Conflict over Control of Land

5. Resolving the Frontier ConflictThe Role of Law in Forging an Israeli Landscape Phase 1: Creation of Absentee Property (1950) Phase 2: Development Authority Law (1951) Phase 3: Land Acquisition Law (1953) Phase 4: Israel Lands Law (1960)

7. Outcomes of Creating ‘Israel Lands’ • Transformed Dispossession into Law • Created a new spatial and demographic map • Severed connections between Palestinians and their land • Posed question of right of return

8. Lifta

9. Yuvalim

10. From Land to PeopleThe Frontier Conflict and the Question of Citizenship How to assign and allocate rights?

11. 1992 / 1994 Basic Laws of Israel • The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992) • The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect freedom of occupation, in order to establish the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation (1994)

12. Jewish and DemocraticThree Interpretations • Jewish and Democratic “Our existence as a Jewish and democratic state, with non-Jewish minorities who deserve full equality, reflects our basic principles and values.” • Ethnic Democracy Israel has an overall democratic framework but there persist inequalities between Palestinians and Jews. • Ethnocratic State Democracy is a façade behind which stands an institutionalized system of undemocratic inequality.

13. Questions • What is the political, cultural, and legal character of the state of Israel? • Can a state be “Jewish” and “democratic” at the same time? • Can non-Jews have equal rights and status in a “Jewish State”? • Does discrimination and inequality mean that the society is undemocratic?

14. Law of Return (1950) “Every Jew has the right to come to Israel as an oleh[immigrant making aliyah].”

15. Two Contrasting Landscapes

16. Olive-Anchored Village Landscape (Husan)

17. Conifer-Anchored Jewish Landscape(Yuvalim)

18. Jewish National Fund – Land Redemption Planting Settlements Planting Trees

19. Forests as Tombs – Birya Forest

20. Treescape Enclosure --Sakhnin

21. “The historical Hebrew names of places in Eretz Israel are the most reliable testimony that these places have been our patrimony from time immemorial… If the JNF Naming Committee is convinced that a new Jewish settlement is located near a place… where there was a Jewish settlement during one of the periods when the nation of Israel dwelt in Eretz Israel, the committee shall assign to the new or restored settlement the historical Hebrew name.” MenachemUssishkin (1948) MenachemUssishkin / Renaming Land

22. Settlement of MevoHoron

23. Treescape Enclosure --Sakhnin

24. Alexandar Kedar, Challenging the Israeli Land Regime. http://www.seamless-israel.org/images/online%20magazine/Israeli%20Land%20Regime.html Change in Land Ownership 1918-1960(white = Jewish owned land; gray = Palestinian owned)

25. Apartheid Defined by the 1973 UN Convention on the Crime of Apartheid as acts “maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons…designed to divide the population…by the creation of separate reserves and ghettoes for members of racial groups…or the expropriation of landed property. Articles 1 &2, http://www.anc.org.za/un/uncrime.htm

26. Phases of Colonization (Yiftachel) • 1) 1896-1947 (Early Settlement) • 2) 1947-1949 (Creation of Israel) • 3) 1949-1967 (Internal Colonization) • 4) 1967-1993 (External Colonization) • 5) 1993-Present (Consolidation)