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FROM OVERT TO VEILED SEGREGATION: ISRAEL'S PALESTINIAN ARAB CITIZENS IN THE GALILEE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2018

Gershon Shafir
Gershon Shafir*
Affiliation:
Gershon Shafir is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, Calif.; e-mail: gshafir@ucsd.edu
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Abstract

This article's geographical focus is the Galilee, Israel's only region with a Palestinian Arab majority. Its sociological focus is the drive to Judaize this region, the mirror image of its de-Arabization, which I anchor in Israelis’ morbid fear of settler colonial reversal. Although direct legal discrimination—restriction of movement under a military government and exclusion from publicly administered land—was banned by the government and the High Court of Justice respectively, new modes of discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens have replaced the older forms. I demonstrate how policies that limit Arab middle-class citizens’ upwardly mobile migration into the Judaized spaces of communal settlements (or overlooks) and towns endure. I compare gatekeeping exercised by national-level indirect legal discrimination operating through the admission committees of communal settlements with the institutional discrimination practiced by municipalities of emerging mixed towns against new Arab residents’ public presence. Finally, I highlight the linkages between instances of Judaization across the Green Line, which make the unwinding of segregation, in all of its forms, that much harder.

Keywords

citizenshipIsrael/Palestineminoritiessettler colonialismsociology
Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Hean Zeidner-Kaspi for her invaluable help as my research assistant and for being my partner in interpreting the findings, as well as Rawan Arar, Naama Blatman-Thomas, Roddey Reid, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, and Haim Yacobi for their thoughtful comments.

1 Altogether Adalah's database lists more than fifty additional Israeli discriminatory laws, some adopted very recently. See Adalah, accessed 19 December 2016, http://www.adalah.org/en/law/index.

2 This classification is based on distinctions proposed by Mohammad Zeidan, Director of the Arab Association for Human Rights, Nazareth.

3 Or Commission, “Vaʿadat Hakira Mamlakhtit le-Birur Hitnagshuyot ben Kohot ha-Bitahon le-ben Ezrahim Yisraeliyim be-Hodesh Oktober 2000,” Jerusalem, August 2003, par. 9, accessed 19 December 2016, http://uri.mitkadem.co.il/vaadat-or/.

4 Ha'aretz, 22 December 2014; David B. Green, “The Arabs Next Door,” Tablet, 17 April 2012.

5 Noga Dagan-Buzaglo and Etty Konor-Attias, Israel's Middle Class 1992–2010: Who Are We Talking About? (report for the Adva Center, Tel Aviv, Israel, January 2013), accessed 19 December 2016, http://adva.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/middle-class12.pdf, 3–4.

6 Statistical Abstract of Israel 2014, Table 8.72, Jerusalem, Central Bureau of Statistics, 2015.

7 Abreek-Zubeidat, Fatina and Ben Arie, Ronnen, “To Be at Home: Spaces of Citizenship in the Community Settlements of the Galilee,” in The Politics of Nihilism: From the Nineteenth Century to Contemporary Israel, ed. Lebovic, Nitzan and Ben-Shai, Roy (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 221 Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid.

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38 Globes, 25 July 2010.

39 Knesset, Protocols.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Svirsky, Arab-Jewish Activism,136–39.

43 Knesset, Protocols.

44 Svirsky, Arab-Jewish Activism, 95–98.

45 Ibid., 106.

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53 Khamaisi, ha-Ukhlusiyah ha-Aravit, 45; Ha'aretz, 22 December 2014.

54 Ha'aretz, 2 October 2015.

55 Amnon Beeri-Sulitzeanu and Uri Gopher, “ʿArim ve-Ezorim Meʿuravim: Pnei ha-Machar shel Medinat Yisrael” (paper for the Abraham Fund Initiatives, Jerusalem, 6 May 2009).

56 Green, “Arabs Next Door,” 2–3.

57 UK Task Force, “Briefing: Arab Populations in ‘Mixed Cities,’” 2 January 2012, accessed 19 December 2016, http://uktaskforce.org/docs/uktf-briefing-arab-populations-in-mixed-cities-2-january-2012.pdf.

58 Beeri-Sulitzeanu and Gopher, “ʿArim ve-Ezorim Meʿuravim,” 7.

59 Knesset (17th), Protokol Mispar 394 me-Yeshivat Vaʿadat ha-Pnim ve-Haganat ha-Svivah, 1 July 2008, 8.

60 Beeri-Sulitzeanu and Gopher, “ʿArim ve-Ezorim Meʿuravim,” 5–7.

61 Hamdan, Hana, “Natzrat ʿIlit ke-ʿIr Meʿurevet,” in ʿIr Yisraelit o ʿIr be-Yisrael?, ed. Fenster, Tovi and Yacobi, Haim (Jerusalem: van Leer, 2006), 121 Google Scholar.

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63 Hamdan, “Natzrat ʿIlit,” 120–23.

64 Ibid., 118.

65 Ha'aretz, 22 December 2001.

66 Ibid.

67 Shlomit Tsur, “Rak ha-Haredim Yavtihu she-Natzrat ʿIlit Tishaʾer Yehudit,” NRG, 26 October 2012, accessed 19 December 2016, http://www.nrg.co.il/online/16/ART2/411/391.html.

68 Yacobi, Haim, The Jewish-Arab City: Spatio-Politics in a Mixed Community (London: Routledge, 2009), 80–81 Google Scholar; The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “Beit ha-Mishpat ha-ʿAliyon Isher: Yukam ha-Proyekt li-Yehudim bi-Lvad bi-Lav Ajami,” accessed 19 December 2016, http://www.acri.org.il/he/2611; Ynet, 25 February 2013.

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70 Ha'aretz, 3 March 2010.

71 Tzfadia, “Abusing Multiculturalism,” 1123–24.

72 Ynet, 21 October 2011.

73 Jerusalem Post, 4 November 2010.

74 Ha'aretz, 15 April 2013.

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78 Ha'aretz, 22 December 2001.

79 Green, “Arabs Next Door,” 4.

80 Ynet, 25 February 2013.

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82 Beeri-Sulitzeanu and Gopher, “ʿArim ve-Ezorim Meʿuravim,” 20–21.

83 Ha'aretz, 3 July 2011 and 21 October 2014; Knesset, “Vaʾadat ha-Hakira ha-Parlamentarit be-Nose Klitat ʿOvdim ʿAravim be-Sherut ha-Tzibur,” Interim Report, February 2008–December 2008, accessed 13 September 2017, http://www.knesset.gov.il/committees/heb/docs/arab_workers17.pdf.