The Rule of Difference: How Emergency Powers Prevent Palestinian Assimilation in Israel

Abstract

This article argues that Israel's non-assimilationist policy toward Palestinians-what I term Israel's 'rule of difference'-is embedded in the state's security conception. Under the guise of protecting the state and its people, Israel has successfully achieved two essential prongs of this political objective. Dating from the 1948 War, the state has created a series of legal mechanisms that have enabled it to expropriate Palestinian land. Similarly, it has refused to allow Palestinian political associations that espouse nationalist views or challenge the Jewish character of the state to organize or run candidates, even if their programs are clearly non-violent. Ultimately, the state has effectively blocked Palestinians' ability to participate in shaping policy. Ensuring security has thus aided the state in preventing the assimilation of this group into society.

A Social Resistance Perspective For Delinquent Behaviour Among Non-Dominant Minority Groups

“…The main tensions between the Jewish majority and non-Jewish minority involve conflicts over land and budget allocations, in addition to an underlying struggle over identity due to the status of non-Jews as minority residents in a Jewish state whose main symbols mirror the culture of the Jewish majority (Ben-Porat and Yuval 2011). Moreover, over the years, the Jewish majority has, to some degree, blocked access by the non-Jewish minority to positions of power and authority, thus reducing their ability to participate in shaping policy (Mehozay 2012).…”

Forum

“…Through an elaborate legislative and judicial project, the state appropriated the large majority of Palestinian citizens' lands for the benefit of an emerging ethnocratic settler regime (Holzman-Gazit 2007;Kedar 2003;Mehozay 2012). At the same time, the Palestinian-Israeli population grew from 156,000 in 1948 to 1.4 million in 2012.…”

Inside Outsiders: Comparing State Policies Towards Citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish Descent in Israel and Turkey

“…Second, especially by the 2000s, the Kurdish nationalist movement also turned to the radical democracy discourse in which the subsequent demands for the constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity and culture and greater regional autonomy have been articulated. the Palestinian population, mainly through forced displacement and land confiscation and its further isolation (Lustick, 1980;Mehozay, 2012).…”