Though Israel’s Arab citizens often identify with Israel’s foes, most Israeli Arabs continue to work within the system by supporting officially sanctioned political parties and by participating in general elections and local governing institutions. Outside these official frameworks, they take ample opportunity of their right to engage in civic and collective empowerment peacefully through the establishment of NGOs and other lobbying groups. Yet, however much confirmation exists that Israel’s Arab citizens operate within the system, there is an even broader political consensus within these political elites that the Israeli state must change radically. Within political circles at least, virtual unanimity prevails regarding the need for partition between an Israeli and Palestinian state and discursively at least that Israel must become a bi-national state, which as we have seen is termed erroneously “a state of all its citizens.”

The second point, which appeared in the political platforms of the Arab parties in the 1990s, received further confirmation in four documents that appeared in the following decade and tried to explore the contours of the nature of the state and the relationship of the Arab community to the Jewish majority. These included “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” “An Equal Constitution for All: On a Constitution and the Collective Rights of Arab Citizens in Israel,” “The Democratic Constitution,” and “The Haifa Declaration,” all of which emphasize the foremost need to create an elected representative assembly that runs the internal affairs of Israel’s Arab citizens and the right to veto issues in overriding structures relating to security, foreign affairs, and economic policy.