Michal Biletzki

The modern state system, which emerged following the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, is seen as one based on state-centrist arguments, justifications and terminology. Terms such as sovereignty, citizenship, nations and borders, carry an assumption of the state-territory-citizenship relationship that is seen as naturally, almost inevitably bound together. Indeed, the use of any one of the abovementioned terms implies a turn to the others, and in a sense also their mutual or common justifiability. Interestingly, terms pointing to the external, i.e., that which does not belong to the state, that which is excluded from the state-system, also function in the same way. Refugee, exile, foreigner, and enemy are all used to reinforce, rather than criticize or weaken, the self-fulfilling, self-aggrandizing assumption of the state-system that it is in fact the norm. The abnormalities of the system, rather than the norm, are more interesting to research as they cannot be explained by the regular functions of the system. The quirks of the system itself, the ambiguous insider/outsider, rather than the clear outsiders (used merely to enforce the norm), are the ones that require pointing out, additional research, and better theorizing. It is precisely those aspects of any system, which are the exception to the rule, whose illumination may lead not only to a better understanding of themselves, but also to a better understanding, perhaps even to a more critical one, of the rule, the system. The current research has a twofold goal. On the one hand, I will investigate the development of the citizenship status of the Palestinian citizens of Israel (PcI) – beginning with the 1956 K’far Kassem massacre and ending with the closing of the October 2000 killings case by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz in January 2008 – in terms of their equality with regard to both state actions and state distribution of justice. On the other hand, and vis-à-vis this empirical research, an attempt will be made to expose the inherent deficiencies of the term citizenship, and in effect in any case which involves an internal-outsider in the nation-state. Combined, these two goals carry both a theoretical and an empirical importance. The misuse of the term citizenship in the Israeli case may shed light on other such misuses throughout the world’s democracies and nation-states. Empirically, an understanding of the unpredictable metamorphosis undergone by the status of citizenship of the PcI and their treatment by the state may lead to a better understanding of their future prospects in Israel along with a realization of the type of state the state of Israel actually is