Summary
In Chapter 9 of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, the unitary one-state model Mazen Masri judges most compatible with his guiding principles: on Will Kymlicka’s definition, a state that upholds common citizenship rights and also adopts group-specific rights recognising ethnocultural groups’ distinctive identities, while keeping citizenship, not ethnic or religious background, as the main relationship between the individual and the state (Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, PDF p.257-261).
Details
- Kymlicka’s three principles as presented: the state belongs to all citizens equally; it accords recognition and accommodation to non-dominant groups’ history, language and culture as it does to dominant groups’; and it acknowledges historic injustice done to minority groups and offers remedy or rectification (PDF p.258).
- In Masri’s application, Arabic and Hebrew would be official languages of equal status, with bilingual state services, parliament and courts and both languages taught in all schools; cultural autonomy would be organised by language rather than religious criteria, so group membership rests on self-identification, and cultural services would remain accountable to the public as a whole (PDF p.258-260).
- Equality in this model is informed by Decolonisation: it aims to remove settler privileges rather than recreate or rename them, and it supports Transitional justice measures because equality cannot be achieved without addressing past injustices (PDF p.259-260).
- Critiques Masri records: emphasis on culture and identity can divert attention from social and economic justice and undermine class solidarity, and protecting group identity can worsen inequalities for internal minorities such as women, sexual minorities and religious dissidents (PDF p.260-261).
Related pages
Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Mazen Masri, One-state solution, Binationalism, Federalism, Transformative constitutionalism