Summary
Author of Chapter 9 of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Constitutional Frameworks for a One-State Option in Palestine: An Assessment, which derives guiding principles — equal citizenship, equitable immigration and citizenship, group rights, transitional justice and Transformative constitutionalism, and Decolonisation — from the existing hierarchy of rights between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and assesses liberal, binational, multicultural and federal models against them, judging the multicultural model most compatible (Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, PDF p.244-245, p.260-261).
Details
- Masri classifies the inhabitants of historic Palestine into six hierarchical legal categories, from Jewish citizens of Israel with the full spectrum of rights to Palestinian refugees lacking even minimum rights, and argues the hierarchy is created and maintained by law and entrenched by the 2018 Nation-State Law (PDF p.245-246).
- On immigration, he distinguishes Jewish “return” under the Law of Return — in Aharon Barak’s words a fundamental, value-laden principle and “the constitutional cornerstone of the character of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people” (PDF p.248) — from Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return, a well-established human right under international law (PDF p.248).
- His assessment finds the liberal difference-blind model too narrow for group rights, transitional justice and decolonization, binational Consociationalism prone to entrenching group division and elite power, and federalism prone to preserving economic inequality and the status quo, while noting critiques of his preferred multicultural model on class solidarity and internal minorities (PDF p.252-264).
Related pages
Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, One-state solution, Multiculturalism, Transformative constitutionalism, Federalism, Binationalism