Summary
Molavi’s analytical framework for the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel: the condition produced when inclusion in a citizenship regime is itself the medium of exclusion, so that citizens remain stateless in the state that includes them (Stateless Citizenship (2013), PDF p.26-27, p.41-42).
Details
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The existing literature describes Arab citizenship in Israel as one-way, hegemonic, illusory, shrinking, ghettoized, hollow, mere, something less than citizenship, or emptied of real content — as a citizenship missing something. Molavi does not contest those observations but asks how the space for Palestinian citizenship was (re)shaped, arguing that the means through which marginalized Palestinian existence is maintained in Israel is citizenship itself (PDF p.25-26).
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Through its paradoxical dynamics, stateless citizenship describes the mechanisms and levels of (in-)existence and (non-)representation to which Arabs in Israel are subjected; it is through Israeli citizenship that Arabs are deemed stateless, and through inclusion that they are excluded (PDF p.26-27).
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At the level of nomenclature there is no possibility in a Jewish state for an Israeli nationality: citizenship in a Jewish state becomes Jewish citizenship, and nationalism Jewish nationalism; the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected petitions requesting the legal definition of an ‘Israeli’ nation separate from a ‘Jewish’ nation (PDF p.41).
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The concept’s anatomy, as summarized for Chapter 6, has three dynamics: an exclusive inclusion whereby the community’s bodies become the borders of the state, a stable and perpetual state of emergency, and coexistence without existence (PDF p.42).
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Palestinian citizens remain stateless in the Jewish state despite their citizenship status: the design of Israel’s incorporation regime demarcates their access to rights and representation while its character repudiates their status within the state as citizens of that state (PDF p.41-42).
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Chapter 3 of Stateless Citizenship (2013) arrives at the condition through Hostipitality: the dynamics of Israeli hostipitality “doubly marginalize and exclude the Arab citizenry of Israel from both the Israeli and Palestinian political societies and national projects. In essence, Palestinian-Arabs in Israel are placed in a paradoxical condition: they become stateless-citizens” (PDF p.139).
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Chapter 5 of Stateless Citizenship (2013) (PDF p.167-195, read in part 4) is the chapter that moves “from citizenship to stateless citizenship”: it establishes the impossibility of an Israeli nationality separate from the Jewish nation (the Tamarin v. State of Israel line of cases and the 2003 and 2008 petitions) and surveys the literature’s formulations — Rouhana’s and Ghanem’s incomplete identities, Jiryis’s ‘different’ citizen, Zureik’s Internal Colonialism, Lustick’s control system, Bishara’s incidental citizenship, Zreik’s blurred borders, Yiftachel’s ghettoized citizenship, Jamal’s Hollow Citizenship and Peled’s ethnorepublicanism — as the ground on which Molavi’s own paradigm is introduced at the chapter’s close (PDF p.167-201). Chapter 5 concludes that every surveyed formulation describes citizenship by what it lacks, while the omitted element is the medium itself: “it is through the granting of Israeli citizenship that Arabs are deemed stateless; it is through inclusion within the Israeli citizenship regime that they are excluded” (PDF p.201). Rouhana and Sultany’s citizens without citizenship paradigm and Nahla Abdo’s feminist application of it are the survey’s last and fullest predecessors (PDF p.196-199).
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Chapter 6, “The Anatomy of Stateless Citizenship” (PDF p.203-232), gives the paradigm its three dynamics. (1) Exclusive inclusion: following Giorgio Agamben’s pair, the exception is an inclusive exclusion while the example is an exclusive inclusion — “the example instead functions as an exclusive inclusion [which serves to exclude what is included]” (Agamben 1998, 21, as quoted, PDF p.213) — and Arab citizens, not denationalized or placed outside the law, are excluded exactly insofar as they are included; their bodies become the state’s borders, on Mark Salter’s border-examination account (Salter 2008, 365, PDF p.216-222). (2) A stable and perpetual state of emergency: the emergency declared in 1948 remains officially in force, and Yakobson and Rubinstein themselves call it a “‘chronic disease’ which is an integral part of the state’s existence” (2009, 105-106, as quoted, PDF p.226); stateless citizenship is “a paradoxical status which is both a condition of and conditional to Israel’s very existence” (PDF p.227). (3) Coexistence without existence: Arabs are invited to coexist as ‘non-Jews’, not as Palestinians, their existence as a nation denied — Ben-Gurion in 1946 promising treatment “on the basis of absolute equality as if they were Jews” (Lustick 1980, 37, as quoted, PDF p.230).
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The Conclusion (PDF p.233-237) holds that exclusive inclusion is necessary for the internal coherence of the Zionist juridico-political order, so any challenge must question the incorporation regime and all three dynamics; it extends the paradigm to liberal citizenship’s own exclusions and to Western homogeneity politics under globalization, Israel’s periphery offered as a window on the core.
Related pages
Stateless Citizenship (2013), Israeli Incorporation Regime, State of Exception, Present Absentees