Citizens without sovereignty: Transfer and ethnic cleansing in Israel

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 47, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 725-754

  Blecher, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNIC CLEANSING;

ASIA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; ISRAEL; MIDDLE EAST; WORLD;

EID: 27244451058     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417505000332     Document Type: Review

References (156)

1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Fukuyama initially laid out his argument three years earlier in "The End of History?" The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989), 3-18.
2. Norman Naimark has made the most cogent effort to defend ethnic cleansing as an analytic category. By differentiating ethnic cleansing from genocide, and showing how ethnic cleansing springs from the symbiosis of racialist nationalism and the modern state, he argues convincingly that ethnic cleansing is a twentieth-century phenomenon. His precision is a welcome corrective to studies that see ethnic cleansing as an inherent product of the state system, dating to the fifteenth century (Rae), or even less usefully, as a transhistorical phenomenon (Bell-Fialkoff). Norman Naimark. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001);
3. Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
4. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Ethnic Cleansing (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996).
5. For a comprehensive review of the literature on violence and the state that looks at the vagaries of the notion of ethnic cleansing, see Mark Mazower, "Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century" [review essay], American Historical Review 107, 1158-78.
6. Mazower's skepticism about the explanatory power of broad categories is echoed by Rogers Brubaker, who holds that the notion of "forced migration" is "insufficiently differentiated": "The Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples: Historical and Comparative Perspectives," Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, 2 (1995), 189-218, esp. p. 205.
7. For an illustration of how the practices that are condemned as ethnic cleansing in one instance do not merit the same label in another, see Robert M. Hayden, "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers," Slavic Review 55, 727-48, and subsequent debate.
8. On the need to disaggregate types of ethnic violence, see Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of Sociology 24, 423-52.
9. On the variety of definitions of ethnic cleansing, see Patrick Michels, "Le 'Nettoyage ethnique': Definitions et implications," Canadian Review of Studies of Nationalism 25 (1998), 83-94.
10. Brubaker, "The Aftermaths of Empire." Brubaker's wording can be traced back to Lord Curzon, who used the phrase "the unmixing of peoples" to refer to the mass restructuring of populations in the Ottoman Europe during the last half of the long nineteenth century (192). Brubaker problematizes the subsumption of "post-imperial ethnic unmixing" under the rubric of "forced migration" as "too narrow and misleading." He argues, to the contrary, that ethnic unmixing is a protracted process: "One should think about ethnic unmixing in the aftermath of empire not as a short-term process that exhausts itself in the immediate aftermath of political reconfiguration, but rather as a long-term process in which, according to political and economic conjuncture in origin and destination states, migratory streams may dry up altogether for a time, persist in a steady trickle, or swell suddenly to a furious torrent" (204). Brubaker is of course correct that the pace of, and reasons for, ethnic unmixing fluctuate over time, but we ought to keep in mind that the practices and meanings of unmixing vary as well.
11. Naomi Mandel, "Fires of Hatred" [review], Modernism/Modernity 9, 2 (2002), 356-58.
12. See also Akbar S. Ahmad, "'Ethnic Cleansing': A Metaphor for Our Time?" Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, 1 (1995), 1-25.
13. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 186.
14. The literature on the Palestinian refugees is now vast, but the classic treatment remains Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
15. One of the few scholars to argue specifically for ethnic cleansing in the Israeli-Palestinian context is Meron Benvenisti, although the way he delimits the war and haltingly uses the term indicates uncertainty. See his Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), especially chapters three and four.
16. Nur Masalha argues that the displacement of the Palestinians was intentional, yet generally uses the more specific term "transfer": Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992);
17. and "A Critique of Benny Morris," Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 1 (Autumn 1991), 90-97.
18. Laila Parson's work on the Druze during the 1948 War also suggests a certain (though lesser) amount of intentionality on the part of Zionists/ Israelis: The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947-49 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000).
19. On the significance of preventing the refugee's return, see Gabi Piterberg, "Erasures," New Left Review 10 (Jul./Aug. 2001), 31-46. As of 31 March 2003, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) put the total number of Palestinian refugees at 4,055,758 (http://www.un.org/ unrwa/publications/statis-01.html).
20. Estimates of the number of Palestinian refugees produced by the 1948 War range from 550,000 to one million; 700,000 is a conservative yet realistic figure. 450,369 Jews immigrated from Asia and Africa from 15 May 1948 through 1956. S. N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 295.
21. The quotation is from Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1973),276.
22. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 186.
23. Bowing to this convention, I will dispense with quotations marks and italics. While Palestinian citizens commonly. use "transfer," other terms in Arabic are also current, including al-tarhil (especially in the case of Palestine) and al-tathir al-irqi (more generally).
24. "Stationary transfer" and "transfer of rights" are discussed below. The former refers to redrawing Israel's boundaries to exclude pockets of Palestinian citizens, including them instead in a future Palestinian state; the latter refers to re-assigning Palestinians citizenship in another state, usually Jordan. Since this article focuses on Israel proper, the unqualified term "Palestinians" should henceforth be understood as "Palestinian citizens of Israel."
25. Shira Robinson identifies this dynamic as a foundational element of the Israel state and the position of Palestinians within it. See her "Occupied Citizens in a Liberal State: Palestinians Under Military Rule and the Colonial Formation of Israeli Society, 1948-1966," Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, forthcoming.
26. The final editing of this article took place in May 2005, an ambiguous period when the Al-Aqsa Intifada was both happening and not happening at the same time. The use of verb tenses in this article reflects that ambiguity.
27. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 296. Others have also extended the notion of the "right to have rights" to groups other than the literally stateless.
28. Gail Pheterson, "Critères sociaux pour un légitimité politique: La disqualification des femmes," in Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp, ed., Hannah Arendt, les sans-Etat, et le "droit d'avoir A des droits," Vol. 1: La banalité du mal. (Paris: L:Harmattan, 1998), 239-46.
29. Caloz-Tschopp offers the most compelling statement of the utility of Arendtian thought for understanding the plight of today's "humain jetable": Les sans-Etats dans le philosophie d'Hannah Arendt: Les humains superflus, le droit d'avoir des droit et la citoynneté (Zurich: Editions Payot Lausanne, 2000).
30. Saul Newman, "Terror, Sovereignty and Law: On the Politics of Violence," German Law Journal 5, 1 (May 2004), 573. Newman is of course working here with Giorgio Agamben.
31. The Israeli government claims that it de facto applies the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. For copiously documented dissenting views, see the reports by B'tselem, Al-Haq, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, UNHCR, and Physicians for Human Rights. Some Israeli Jewish legal scholars have begun to agitate for dejure acceptance of the Geneva Convention. The Israeli Supreme Court has recently begun to take greater account of international law in its decisions, but these trends are beyond the scope of this paper.
32. Regarding the state of exception, it is worth pointing out that Palestinian citizens are not so much a latter day homo sacer - who, as Agamben explains, can be killed without being sacrificed - but rather a politically superfluous group within the state, excluded from the guarantees of liberal citizenship. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
33. On Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as homo sacer, see Agamben, Homo Sacer
34. Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics," Public Culture 15, 1 (2003), 11-40.
35. Agamben, "The State of Emergency" (http://generation-online.org/p/fpagambenschmitt.htm).
36. Anthony Lewis, "One Liberty at a Time," Mother Jones 29, 3 (May/June 2004), 74.
37. Elaine Cassell, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (of Tricks)" (http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel11102003.html).
38. Thanks to Elliott Colla for the pithy phrases "global gulag" and "politics of repudiation."
39. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, "The Quest for 'Moderate' Islam," Al-Hewar 2 Mar. 2004 (http://www.apomie.com/questforislam.htm).
40. Haaretz, 31 May 2004.
41. Rebecca Kook, "Citizenship and Its Discontents," in Nils A. Butenschon, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, eds., Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 200), 263-87;
42. Gila Menachem, "Arab Citizens in an Israeli City: Action and Discourse in Public Programmes," Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, 3 (1998), 545-57;
43. Zeev Rosenhek, "New Developments in the Sociology of Palestinian Citizens of Israel: An Analytic Review," Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, 3 (1998), 558-78;
44. Zeev Rosenhak and Michael Shalev, "The Contradictions of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel," in Butenschon, Davis, and Manuel, Citizenship, 288-315;
45. Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997);
46. Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
47. Oren Yiftachel, "The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel," Middle East Report 223, 38-44.
48. Khalil Nakhleh, "Anthropological and Sociological Studies of the Arabs in Israel: A Critique," Journal of Palestine Studies 6, 4 (1977), 41-70;
49. Elia T. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).
50. Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
51. Michal Shalev, Labor and the Political Economy in Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
52. N.N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens;
53. Sami Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel: Conflicting and Shared Attitudes in a Divided Society, vol. 1 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989).
54. Alan Dowty, The Jewish State: A Century Later (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998);
55. Asad Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948-2000. A Political Study (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
56. The nation-based character of social science itself has contributed toward the inability to situate Palestinian citizens in the same analytic category as Palestinian refugees. See Timothy Mitchell, "Deterritorialization and the Crisis of Social Science," in Ali Mirsepassi, Amrita Basu, and Frederick Weaver, eds., Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 156.
57. Dan Rabinowich seeks to escape this limitation by describing Palestinians as a "trapped minority," defined as a minority that stretches out over two or more states: "The Palestinian Citizens of Israel, the Concept of Trapped Minority and the Discourse of Transnationalism in Anthropology," Ethnic and Racial Studies 24, 1 (2001), 64-85.
58. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, 193-228;
59. Hillel Cohen, ha-Nifkadim ha-nokhahim: Ha-plitim ha-falastinim be-yisrael meaz 1948 [The present absentees: The Palestinian refugees in Israel since 1948] (Jerusalem: Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, Van Leer Institute, 2000);
60. Charles S. Kamen, "After the Catastrophe I: The Arabs in Israel, 1948-51," Middle Eastern Studies 23 (1987), 435-95;
61. Charles S. Kamen, "After the Catastrophe II: The Arabs in Israel, 1948-51," Middle Eastern Studies 24 (1988):68-109.
62. Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996);
63. Joel Beinin, "Benny Morris, the New Israeli History, and the Limits of the Zionist Peace Movement," Paper presented at the Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence, March 2003.
64. Works that have already done so include Shira Robinson, "Local Struggle, National Struggle: Palestinian Responses to the Kafr Qasim Massacre and Its Aftermath," International Journal of Middle East Studies 35, 3 (Aug. 2003), 393-416;
65. Susan Slymovics, The Object of Memory Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
66. Kamen, "After the Catastrophe I," 485, 493;
67. Benny Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). At least some of these expulsions were carried out by explicit order: "As regards the expulsions from the strip of territory along the Lebanese border in the week after Operation Hiram, including those from Iqrit and Birim, there is no doubt that they stemmed from one central, expulsive directive."
68. Benny Morris, "Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of 1948," in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 54.
69. Kamen, "After the Catastrophe I," 484, 488;
70. Kamen, "After the Catastrophe II," 103-5;
71. Laila Parsons, "The Druze and the Birth of Israel," in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),60-78;
72. Robinson, "Occupied Citizens," ch. 4;
73. Morris, The Birth, passim.
74. Quoted in Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 61-62.
75. Don Peretz, "Early State Policy towards the Arab Population, 1948-1955," in Lawrence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 96-97.
76. Ilan Pappe, "An Uneasy Coexistence Arabs and Jews in the First Decade of Statehood," in, Noah Lucas and S. Ilan Troen, eds., Israel the First Decade of Independence (New York: SUNY Press, 1995), 623.
77. Shafir and Peled., Being Israeli, 110-11.
78. Quoted in Pappe, 622.
79. My emphasis, quoted in Pappe, 623.
80. Quoted in Pappe, 623. In this context, Pappe points out that citizenship was a "natural" right for Jews, but a "privilege" for Palestinians.
81. Quoted in Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State, 62.
82. Shafir and Peled, Being Israeli, 112n.
83. On military rule, see Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State;
84. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel;
85. Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
86. The data in this paragraph is taken from Joseph Schechia, "The Invisible People Come to Light: Israel's 'Internally Displaced' and the 'Unrecognized Villages,'" Journal of Palestine Studies 31, 1 (Autumn 2001), 20-31;
87. and "The Unrecognised Villages," Report by the Arab Association for Human Rights (www.arabhra.org/article26/factsheet4.htm).
88. From Amir Cheshin, et al., Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem, quoted at: http://www.rhr.israel.net/pdf/jerusalem_home_demolitions_fact_sheet.pdf.
89. Oren Yiftachel, Planning a Mixed Region in Israel: The Political Geography of Arab-Jewish Relations in the Galilee (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992);
90. Oren Yifatachel and Avinoam Meir, eds., Ethnic Frontiers and Peripheries: Landscapes of Development (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998).
91. Joel Beinin, "From Land Day to Peace Day ... and Beyond," in Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, eds., Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Research and Information Project, 1989), 209.
92. Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority, 145.
93. Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State, 68.
94. "The Koenig Report," Journal of Palestine Studies 12, 3 (1983), 195-96.
95. This section draws on my article, "Living on the Edge: The Threat of 'Transfer' in Israel and Palestine," Middle East Report 225 (Winter 2002), 22-29.
96. Nur Masalha, A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949-1996 (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 135-75.
97. Haaretz, 21 June 2004.
98. "The Official Summation of the Or Commission Report" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo= 335594&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID= 0&listSrc=Y
99. The Or Commission, tasked with investigating the October Events, condemned the conduct of the Israeli police and government, pervasive discrimination against Palestinians, and the inflammatory rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. It was prompted by a sense of outrage on the part of many Israeli Jews at the police's violent response to the Arab protests. Yet not only has the government refused to implement many of the Commission's recommendations, but the very language of the report reinforces the notion that Palestinians are superfluous in Israel. The report called for "true equality [for Israel's] Arab citizens" in two senses. First, "the state must initiate, develop, and operate programs emphasizing budgets that will close the gaps in education, housing, industrial development, employment, and services." This language is typical of an Israeli Jewish discourse that sets "true equality" for Palestinians within the framework of material gains.
100. Quoted in Haaretz, 8 Oct. 2002.
101. Aida Toma-Suliman, et al., "Palestinian Rights in Post-Oslo Israel: Roundtable Discussion Held on 24 June 1996 in Nazareth, Israel," Middle East Report 201 (1996), 24.
102. Dowty, The Jewish State, 207-8.
103. Toma-Suliman, et al., "Palestinian Rights," 25-26.
104. "The Herzliya Conference on the Balance of National Strength and Security in Israel," Journal of Palestine Studies 31, 1 (Fall 2001), 50-61.
105. Arab Association for Human Rights, Weekly Press Review 95, 9 Oct. 2002.
106. Nadim N. Rouhana and Nimer Sultany, "Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel's New Hegemony," Journal of Palestine Studies 33, 1 (Fall 2003), 18. Rouhana and Sultany's article, published after this one was drafted, makes an argument related to mine: That there is a new Zionist consensus to limit Palestinian citizenship. Notably, the authors observe, "the status of Arab citizens is now very much like that of noncitizen residents in democratic countries" (17).
107. "The Herzliya Conference," 53-55.
108. Haaretz, 19 Mar. 2002.
109. Haaretz, 22 Nov. 2001.
110. In September 2002, the Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, Shlomo Benizri, reconvened the Demography Council after five years of inactivity.
111. Maariv, 11 Sept. 2002.
112. See the website of American Friends of Israel's National Union (http://www.thenationalunion.com/AFINU/exchange.html).
113. Haaretz, 31 May 2004.
114. The senators in question insisted that they met with Elon in his capacity as Minister of Tourism and that the meetings should not be understood as an endorsement of his views. Yet, as critics pointed out, it is difficult to imagine a U.S. Senator accepting a meeting with a Palestinian politician who publicly promoted removing Jews from Israel.
115. The Final Solution was actually approved in January 1942.
116. Kol Hair, 16 Aug. 2002.
117. Haaretz, 23 June 2002.
118. Kol Hair, 30 Aug. 2002.
119. Haaretz, 10 Feb. 2002.
120. Rhoda Kanaaneh, "Embattled Identities: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military," Journal of Palestine Studies 37, 3 (2003), 12.
121. Guardian, 23 Mar. 2002.
122. Rebecca L. Stein, "Israeli Leisure, 'Palestinian Terror,' and the Question of Palestine (Again)," Theory & Event 6, 3 (2002), accessed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/journals/ theory_and_event/v006/6.3stein.html.
123. Haaretz, 25 Apr. 2004
124. N. N. Rouhana and Sultany, "Redrawing the Boundaries," 15.
125. Haaretz, 26 May 2003.
126. In 2003, 55.4 percent of Palestinians said they feared transfer (Haaretz, 25 May 2004).
127. Haaretz, 21 June 2004.
128. "Equality for Arabs in Jewish State: A Goal Unrealizable," Middle East Report Online, 14 Dec. 1999 (http://www.merip.org/mero/mero121499.html).
129. "Exhausting the Dream," Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 30 Apr.-6 May 1998 (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/375/reg0.htm).
130. "A Double Responsibility: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Intifada," Middle East Report 217 (2000), available online (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer217/217_azmi_bishara.html).
131. Guardian, 23 Mar. 2002.
132. "Many Arab Voters Plan Not to Vote," Associated Press, 15 Jan. 2001.
133. Haaretz, 28 Feb. 2002.
134. To pick a few representative examples: Bishara himself commented: "We are not the products of the Israeli media, we have sprouted from the roots and soil of this land.⋯ We do not derive our legitimacy [shariyya] from [Israelis]." The Islamic Movement proclaimed: "We call on the political leadership and the Arab public to stand shoulder to shoulder against this devastating campaign in which we sense a return to the days of Military Rule and the stripping of the legitimacy of our existence." The National Consensus Committee urged: "The legitimacy of our representatives and electoral lists derive from the legitimacy of our people and not from racist, right-wing decisions." Interviews with people in the streets reflected similar sentiments: "Arab citizens in the Israeli state want to be partners in deciding [its] fate ... Instead of responding to our demands and listening to us, it has worked to marginalize us and strip our legitimacy" (Fasl al-Maqal, 2 Jan. 2003).
135. Fasl al-Maqal, the organ of the radically secular NDA, called the arrest an attack not only on a "legitimate political movement," but also on the "right [haqq]" of the "Arab masses [and their] leadership." The paper called the Islamic Movement "a legitimate movement that derives its legitimacy from its society ... [and not from] Zionism and Israel" (15 May 2003).
136. Al-Ahram Weekly, 2-8 Jan. 2003.
137. Even before the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the number willing to include Palestinian parties in the government stood only at 56 percent. "Meded ha-demokratiya ha-yisraelit 2003 [The Israeli Democracy Index 2003]," 18. Full Hebrew text can be found at: http://www.idi.org.il/hebrew/article.php/?id=1461; and a summary of major findings in English at: http://www.idi.org.il/english/ news.php?nid=29773543ee323b0d72ccc5763e07d294. These results are not an isolated instance, since polling data shows that Jewish Israelis have long looked askance on Arab civic equality.
138. See Dowty, The Jewish State, 195.
139. The Knesset, having extended the temporary amendment once, seems poised as of this writing (May 2005) to partially ease restrictions on family unification and to subsequently institute further-reaching changes to the Nationality Law (also known as the "Citizenship Law") writ large. While the details have yet to be settled, Haaretz reports, "There is broad agreement in the government and academia that the policy must be strict and make it difficult for non-Jews to obtain citizenship in Israel" (11 May 2005).
140. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 278-79.
141. Report of Mossawa: The Advocacy Center for Arab Palestinian Citizens of Israel (http://216.239.51.E04/search?q=cache:eJuLgTm2qOQJ: www.boell.org.il/download_en/ CitizenshipLaw.pdf+mossawa+israel&hl=en&ie=UTF-8).
142. Jonathan Cook, "Racism Reinforced," Al-Ahram Weekly, 7-13 Aug. 2003.
143. Associated Press, 31 July 2003.
144. Cook, "Racism Reinforced."
145. Kull al-Arab, 16 May 2003.
146. Fasl al-Maqal, 2 Jan. 2003.
147. Haaretz, 10 Jan. 2003.
148. Al-Sinnara, 8 Aug. 2002.
149. Muslih Kanaaneh, personal contact, May 2003.
150. Of Jewish respondents, 49 percent deny that Palestinians face any disadvantages vis-à-vis Jews in Israel ("Meded ha-demokratiya," 18).
151. At: http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2002_12_20.htm.
152. I use the inclusive pronoun "we" because I signed the petition.
153. Scott Michaelsen and Scott Cutler Shershow, "The Guantánamo 'Black Hole': The Law of War and the Sovereign Exception," Middle East Report Online (http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011104.html).
154. Quoted in Rouhana and Sultany, "Redrawing the Boundaries," 16.
155. The phrase is Agamben's, in "The State of Exception," although he uses it in a utopian context.
156. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 297.