ethnocracy" and its discontents: minorities, protests, and the israeli polity

8/13/2019 Ethnocracy" and Its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity

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"Ethnocracy" and Its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli PolityAuthor(s): Oren YiftachelSource: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer, 2000), pp. 725-756Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344328.

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"Ethnocracy"and Its Discontents: Minorities,Protests, and the Israeli Polity

Oren Yiftachel

1. Thwarting heChallengeDuring Israel'sjubilee year two notable challenges to the order of thingsemerged from peripheral (nonmainstream) groups, both concerning theissue of land control. In early 1997 a group known as the Democratic Miz-rahi Rainbow began a campaign under the slogan "This land is also mine,"demanding a more equal share in the state's vast public lands. These areheld mainly by Jewish rural settlements (kibbutzim nd moshavim) hat aredominated by Ashkenazi Jews.' The Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow claimedthat since the lands were being developed for commercial use, they shouldbe shared more equitably, with more benefits flowing to economically de-prived Mizrahim. As the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow's spokespersonstated, "If the kibbutzim no longer farm much of their so-called agricul-tural land and now lease it for megaprofits to megacompanies who build

I wish to thank Lev Grinberg, Yossi Yonah, and the referees and editorial team ofCriticalInquiryfor their useful comments and suggestions. Unless otherwise indicated, alltranslations are my own. Direct correspondence to [email protected]. Ashkenazi Jews (Ashkenazim in the plural) are those who arrived in Israel/Palestinefrom Europe and America; MizrahiJews (Mizrahim in the plural, also known as Sephardim)came from the Moslem world; while Palestinian Arabs (or Arabs) are the Palestinian citizensof Israel who remained in 1948, as distinct from the Palestinians who reside in the occupied/autonomous territories, or in the Palestinian exile communities and diasporas. The currentmeaning and use of these categories are of course not primordial, but very much a productof political, economic, and geographical forces operating in Israel/Palestine during thelast century.CriticalInquiry26 (Summer 2000)C 2000 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/00/2604-0007$02.00. All rights reserved.

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726 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd ItsDiscontentsshopping malls and gas stations, why shouldn't the benefits be sharedamong the Israeli public? After all, these state lands are ours, too "2

Later that year, two hundred acres of agricultural land belonging toPalestinian Arabs in Rukha, near Um al-Fahem (fifteen kilometers south-east of Haifa), were confiscated for army use, spawning a wave of protestthat ended up in three days of clashes between Israeli police and Arabprotesters. The police stormed a local high school, and, for the first timein the state's history, fired rubber bullets at Israeli (Arab) citizens. Fifty-five local residents and fifteen policemen were wounded, and twenty pro-testors were arrested.3 The anger and frustration of the situation was wellexpressed by a local protester:Can you believe it? First they [the state] come and take from us thelittle land they didn't take last time, then they don't let us protestagainst it, and finally shoot our youth .... Are we citizens or aliensin this state? Do we have any rights here? But forget it, nobody willlisten to us anyhow. . .. After all, we are only Arabs.4But both Mizrahi and Arab challenges failed; control over Jewish ru-ral lands remained unchanged, while the transfer of Arab lands at Rukha

to army use stayed intact. The Mizrahi challenge was quickly attacked bymainstream Israeli politicians as undermining a national symbol. It wasalso attacked by Arab leaders, who pointed to the deep irony of the Miz-rahim demanding from the Ashkenazim that which was not theirs, sincemuch of the land had been expropriated initially from Palestinian Arabs.As an Arab activist noted bitterly, "The Mizrahim simply wish to join inthe looting of Arab lands."52. Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow spokesperson, Hakkoldibburim All talk), Kol Yisrael

(Israeli radio), 103.3 FM, 20 May 1997, 10:00-12:00 A.M.; ee also Yoman Israeli television,channel 1), 23 May 1997; and Ha-aretz(Tel Aviv), 25 Apr. 1997.3. See YeidotAhronot Tel Aviv), 28 Sept. 1998.4. Local Um al-Fahem resident, quoted in "Intifada bameshulash" (Riots in the Trian-gle), Ma'ariv (Tel Aviv), 29 Sept. 1998.5. Raef Zreik, "Arabs n a Disappearing Homeland," lecture delivered at Giva'at Hav-iva seminar on settlement policies, Dec. 1997.

Oren Yiftachel is associate professor and chair of the department ofgeography and environmental development at Ben-Gurion University ofthe Negev, Israel, and is a research fellow at the Negev Center for Re-gional Development. He is author of Planning a MixedRegionin Israel:ThePoliticalGeographyfArab-JewishRelations n the Galilee(1992) and Planningas Control:Policyand Resistance n a DeeplyDividedSociety(1995) and editorof Ethnic Frontiers nd Peripheries: andscapesof Development nd InequalitynIsrael (with Avinoam Meir) (1998) and The Powerof Planning (2000).



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CriticalInquiry Summer 000 727The Arab protest in Um al-Fahem was simply crushed by force. Theproblem of the confiscated agricultural land was passed to a committee

for reconsideration, but as of the time of writing (October 1999) the situa-tion had changed little. The defence minister (Yitzhak Mordechai) re-flected the general mood in Israeli Jewish discourse at the time in hisclaim, "The land is absolutely essential for our training, and besides, ifwe give it back here, we'll have to return to the Arabs many of the army'straining grounds all over the country."6Following these events, the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow changedtack and began to demand not the redivision of national land but thetransfer of Israeli public housing (whose residents are mainly low-incomeMizrahim) to the ownership of their residents. Using a far more ethno-national rhetoric, which emphasized their contribution to the Zionistproject of Judaizing the country, they gradually won public support andeven managed to influence the passage of new legislation that may nowturn this goal into reality.' The consequences among the Arabs are lessclear, but reports of frustration and resignation in Um al-Fahem have alsobeen linked to the strengthening of the Islamic movement and to thesetting of new Islamic educational, cultural, and political agendas amongthe Arabs, some with subversive undertones.8

The two acts of protest serve as a telling entry point to the discussionof this essay, which deals with the position of peripheral groups vis-a-visa repressive regime. They illustrate vividly the ability of a settling ethnicstate (defined below) to subdue challenges from its peripheries, especiallywhen these address issues fundamental to the regime's ethno-territoriallogic. I will begin by sketching the scholarly and historical/geographicalsettings of the social phenomena I explore. The remainder of the essaywill advance in three main stages, moving from theory, to analysis andcritique of the Israeli regime, and later to an exploration of the mobiliza-tion of the two peripheral minorities.2. Setting

In this essay I analyze critically the structure of a regime I havetermed ethnocracy, nd its impact on the position and identity of periph-eral minorities.9 To this end I will probe the resistance to the Israeli Jew-6. BakhatziHayyom In the middle of the day), Kol Yisrael, 27 Sept. 1998.7. At the time of writing the law was still not implemented, with successive govern-ments claiming a shortage of funds to put it into practice.8. In the summer of 1999 three violent attacks were carried out by members of theIsraeli Islamic Movement. The one surviving terrorist in the attack (three others died) men-tioned the "Zionist land grab" as a main reason for his killing of two young Jews ("AravimYisraeliyim hetkifu zug yehudim" [Israeli Arabs attackJewish couple], Ma'ariv,9 Sept. 1999).9. The term ethnocracy as been mentioned in previous literature. See David Little, SriLanka: The Inventionof Enmity(Washington, D.C., 1994), p. 72, and Juan J. Linz, "Totalitar-



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728 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd ItsDiscontentsish ethnocratic regime emerging from two peripheral minorities, namelyPalestinian Arabs (used interchangeably with Arabs) and Mizrahim in thedevelopment towns, the peripheral Mizrahim.My main argument is that Israel's ethnocratic regime, which facili-tates the colonial Judaization of the country, has buttressed the domi-nance of the Ashkenazi Jewish ethno-class and enabled the "blunting"and silencing of the resistance of both Palestinian Arabs and peripheralMizrahim. Thus, despite notable differences, the marginalization of Pal-estinian Arabs and Mizrahi Jews is linked, deriving directly from theverysameJudaization ("de-Arabization")rojectthat positioned these communi-ties in cultural, geographic, and economic peripheries. This was partlyachieved by a duality in the Israeli state between a democratic facade anda deeper undemocratic regime logic, which facilitates the dispossession,control, and peripheralization of groups that do not belong to the domi-nant ethno-class. Thus the very nature of the settling ethnocracy, whichcombines expansion, settlement, segregation, and ethno-class stratifica-tion, militates against the effectiveness of challenges emanating from pe-ripheral groups. The selective openness of the regime, which allows forpublic protest, free speech, and periodic elections, is largely an illusion: theethnocratic regime has arranged itself politically, culturally,and geograph-ically so as to absorb, contain, or ignore the challenge emerging from itsperipheries, thereby trapping them in their respective predicaments.'0ian and Authoritarian Regimes," in MacropoliticalTheory, ol. 3 of HandbookofPoliticalScience,ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass., 1975), pp. 175-411. However,as far as I am aware, it was generally used as a derogatory term and not developed into amodel or a concept, as attempted here. For an earlier formulation, see Oren Yiftachel,"Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation: 'Ethnocracy' and Its Territorial Con-tradictions," Middle EastJournal 51 (Autumn 1997): 505-19. The term minorityrefers hereto marginalized groups of different ethnic backgrounds to that of society's mainstream.These are constructed as minorities as part of the constellation of powers.10. As I show elsewhere, despite the many violations of democratic principles by theIsraeli regime, a wide agreement that Israel is a democracy exists in the literature, althougha debate on the matter has grown stronger in recent years. See Asher Arian, Harepublicahashniyya (The second republic) (Tel Aviv, 1997); Ralph Benyamin Neuberger, Ha-demokratyaha-Yisre'elitDemocracy in Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1998); Yoav Peled, "Ethnic Democ-racy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State,"AmericanPoliticalScienceReview 86 (June 1992): 432-43; Gabriel Sheffer, "Has Israel Really Been aGarrison Democracy? Sources of Change in Israel's Democracy" IsraelAffairs3, no. 1(1996):13-39; and Sammy Smooha, "Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype," Israel Studies 2(Winter 1997): 198-241. For my previous critique, see Yiftachel, "'Ethnocracy': The Politicsof Judaizing Israel/Palestine," Constellations (Sept. 1999): 364-90. See also the recent cri-tiques by Uri Ben-Eliezer, "The Meaning of Political Participation in a Nonliberal Democ-racy: The Israeli Experience," ComparativePolitics 25 (July 1993): 397-412; Nadim N.Rouhana, PalestinianCitizens n an EthnicJewishState:Identities n Conflict New Haven, Conn.,1997); As'ad Ghanem, "State and Minority in Israel: The Case of the Ethnic State andthe Predicament of Its Minority,"Ethnic and Racial Studies21 (May 1998): 428-48; BaruchKimmerling, "Religion, Nationalism, and Democracy in Israel,"Constellations (Sept. 1999):339-63; Yossi Yonah, "AState of All Citizens, a Nation-State, or a Multicultural State? Israel



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 729The two peripheral groups are trapped by the lack of availablechoices through which to mobilize against their collective marginaliza-

tion. But the predicaments of peripheral Mizrahim and Arabs are quitedifferent: the former are trapped inside the Israeli Jewish ethnocracy,while the latter are trapped outside its boundaries of meaningful inclu-sion, a key difference that I explore later. Yet the emergence of an ethno-cratic settling regime in Israel has worked to significantly marginalizeboth groups. The protest campaigns also indicate that the two groups aredeveloping collective identities to counter the marginalizing logic of theregime. The Arabs are gradually disengaging (though not separating)from the state to form an Arab region, while the Mizrahim emerge asa deprived but "moral" ethno-class. Two other notable responses to thepredicaments of the two sectors have been the powerful emergence ofIslamic and Jewish religious movements and a more recent secular mobi-lization around ideas of multiculturalism and binationalism, all of whichoffer mobility and identity outside the existing symbolic grid of the state.

3. OnNationalism,Ethnocracy, nd DemocracyThe conceptual approach of this essay emerges from the growinginterest in nationalism, which has virtually exploded to occupy centerstage in both the social sciences and the humanities." But my stance hereis a critical one. Despite their illuminating insights and breathtaking en-deavors, most studies of nationalism devote only scant attention to theimpact of nationalism on intranationaland intrastatedisparities and cleav-ages, that is, the impact of nationalism on minorities. Most studies havethus largely ignored a critical tension between nation- and state-building,in what was termed by Anderson "the impending crisis of the nation-state

hyphen."'2 Symptomatic of this deficiency has been a lack of engagementon the part of most theorists with the debates on civil society, postcolonial-ism, and the emergence of social movements, and a myopia towards thecentrality of space, its contours and internal divisions.'" With these defi-and the Boundaries of Liberal Democracy," Alpayim 16 (1998): 238-63 and "Fifty YearsLater: The Scope and Limits of Liberal Democracy in Israel," Constellations (Sept. 1999):411-29; and Lev Grinberg, "Demokratiya medumyenet beyisrael" (Imagined democracy inIsrael), SotsyologyahYisre'elitIsraeli sociology) 3, no. 1 (2000): 209-40.11. See, for example, Benedict Anderson, ImaginedCommunities:Reflections ntheOriginand Spreadof Nationalism,rev. ed. (New York, 1991); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism(Oxford, 1983); E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism ince 1780: Programme,Myth,Reality(Cambridge, 1990); and Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalismin a GlobalEra (Cam-bridge, 1995).12. Anderson, introduction to MappingtheNation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (New York,1996), p. 16.13. For a notable exception, see Manuel Castells, The Powerof Identity:Economy,Societyand Culture,vol. 2 of TheInformationAge:Economy,Society,and Culture,trans. pub. (Oxford,



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730 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentsciencies in mind, let us now move from a general discussion on national-ism to a critique of ethnocracy.

Ethnocracy is a specific expression of nationalism that exists in con-tested territories where a dominant ethnos gains political control anduses the state apparatus to ethnicize the territory and society in ques-tion.'4 Ethnocracies are neither democratic nor authoritarian (or "Her-renvolk") systems of government. The lack of democracy rests on unequalcitizenship and on state laws and policies that enable the seizure of thestate by one ethnic group. They are not authoritarian, as they extendsignificant (though partial) political rights to ethnic minorities. As de-tailed elsewhere, ethnocracies emerge through a time/space fusion ofthree major forces:'5 (1) A settlerand/orsettlingstate that promotes externalor internal forms of colonialism (the former typically by Europeans, thelatter by the expanding core of ethnic states, such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia,Estonia, or Serbia); (2) rigidethno-nationalismpremised on an ethnic (andnot territorial) self-interpretation of the legitimizing principle of self-determination, often buttressed by a supportive religious narrative; and(3) an "ethnicogic of capital,"resulting in an uneven economic landscapeand long-term stratification between ethno-classes, expressed by the flowsof investment, development, and labor market niches. The polarizing ef-fect of capital flow has worsened in recent decades following the increas-ing mobility of capital and the globalization of the world economy.'16Despite the many important local variations, ethnocratic states arebroadly typified by a social structure consisting of: (1) a powerful "chartergroup," the founding core of the dominant nation; (2) later groups ofimmigrants from ethnic backgrounds different from the charter group,who are incorporated (usually unevenly) upwards into the host society;and (3) relatively weak and dispossessed local, indigenous, or rival ethnicgroups, which are generally excluded from the meaningful political andcultural realms." This structure exposes the inherent tension between1997), and NestedIdentities:Nationalism,Territory,nd Scale, ed. Guntram H. Herb and Da-vid H. Kaplan (Lanham, Md., 1999).14. My account of the process of ethnicization draws some inspiration from RogersBrubaker, NationalismReframed:Nationhoodand theNational Question n the New Europe(Cam-bridge, 1996). But it takes his concept of the nationalizing state a step further: Brubakeranalyzes a "regular"nation-state structure, whereas ethnocratic regimes undermine the de-mos and, with it, the possibility of a democratic nation-state.15. See Yiftachel, "'Ethnocracy.'"16. See Saskia Sassen, Globalization ndIts Discontents New York, 1998).17. WASP groups in Anglo-Saxon settler societies are one example of a charter group.See Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, "Beyond Dichotomies-Gender, Race, Ethnicity,and Class in Settler Societies," introduction to UnsettlingSettlerSocieties:Articulations f Gen-der,Race, Ethnicity,and Class, ed. Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis (London, 1995), pp. 1-38, andYasemin Nuho--lu Soysal, Limitsof Citizenship:Migrantsand PostnationalMembershipn Europe(Chicago, 1994). Ethnocracy is also particularly problematic for gender equality. See JulieMostov, "Sexing the Nation/Desexing the Body: Politics of National Identity in the Former



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 731the parallel projects of nation- and state-building in ethnocratic regimes.This entails an active exclusion of groups constructed as external to thedominant nation by a combination of legal, policy, and cultural means.The excluded are usually indigenous peoples, but also collectivities thathave been marked as foreigners for generations. Yet at the same timethese groups are incorporated (often coercively) into the project of state-building. This tension of incorporation without legitimation is at theheart of the chronic instability experienced by ethnocratic regimes.18In ethnocracies, as noted, the dominant ethno-class appropriates thestate apparatus and attempts to structure the political system, public insti-tutions, and state culture so as to further its control over the state andits territory. This results in the blurring of state borders in an effort toincorporate diasporic coethnics while at the same time weakening or neu-tralizing the citizenship of minorities. Estonia and Sri Lanka can serve asexamples here. In the former all people of Estonian descent, whereverthey live, are entitled to citizenship, while over half the Russians, whohave resided in the state for over fifty years, are disenfranchised. In SriLanka over two million Tamils who have resided in the country for gener-ations are denied citizenship through their classification as Indian Tamils,thereby maintaining the demographic dominance of the Sinhalese ethnos.

In both cases, as in Israel/Palestine, the notion of the demos is cruciallyruptured. Yet the empowered demos-the community of equal resident-citizens-forms the basis for the establishment of democracy. Its diminu-tion highlights the structural tensions between ethnocracy and democracy.

4. Ethnocracies nd DemocraciesMy account of the ethnocratic regime involves a thorough critique ofits common representation as democratic. On the one hand such a regimeclaims to be a full (and often even liberal) democracy, while on the otherit routinely oppresses and marginalizes peripheral minorities and con-stantly changes the state structure in the majority's favor. The oppressionof minorities is often exacerbated by the legitimacy granted to the state

Yugoslavia," in GenderIroniesof Nationalism:Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (London,1999), pp. 89-110. Mostov has adopted the model to describe the paternalism and maleviolence inherent in ethnocratic systems, which are concerned, first and foremost, with eth-nic reproduction and hence treat women/mothers as bearers of ethno-national honor. Forilluminating discussions on gender and nationalism in Israel, see N. Berkovitz, "Eshetkhayil mi yimtza? Nashim ve'ezrakhut beyisrael" (Who can find a brave woman? Womenand citizenship in Israel), SotsyologyahYisre'elit , no. 1 (2000): 277-318, and Kathy E. Fergu-son, KibbutzJournal:Reflections n Gender,Race,and Militarism n Israel(Pasadena, Calif., 1995).18. See David Held, Modelsof DemocracyLondon, 1990); see also Michael Mann, "TheDark Side of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political Cleansing," NewLeftReview, no. 253 (May-June 1999): 18-45.



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732 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentsin the international arena as a consequence of its purportedly democraticstructure, as is the case in Israel.

This critique emerges from two main positions. First, I employ aGramsci-informed perspective that seeks to discover the underlying logicof power relations within a political-economy of culture.19This perspec-tive is suspicious of official rhetoric and declarations, constantly searchingfor the deeper political and historical transformations and the hegemonicforces, often unseen or silent, that navigate these transformations. Sec-ond, the critique emerges through privileging looking at society from theperiphery into the core, for example, by discussing the mobilization ofMizrahim and Arabs in Israel. This angle reveals the impregnable, strati-fying, and nondemocratic nature of the ethnocratic regime.Needless to say, the term democracys not taken uncritically here. Itis a contested concept, hotly debated, rarely settled, and widely abused,particularly in multiethnic states. It is an institutional response to genera-tions of civil struggles for political and economic inclusion, gradually in-corporating and empowering the poor, women, and minorities into theonce elitist polity.20This is not the place to delve deeply into democratic theory. Sufficeit to say that several key principles have emerged as foundations forachieving the main tenets of democracy-equality and liberty. These in-clude equal citizenship; protection of individuals and minorities againstthe tyranny of states, majorities, or churches; and a range of civil, politi-cal, and economic rights.21These are generally ensured by a stable consti-tution, periodic and universal elections, and free media. In multiethnicor multinational polities, as the seminal works of Arend Lijphart and WillKymlicka have illustrated, a certain parity, recognition, and proportional-ity between the ethnic collectivities is a prerequisite for democratic legiti-macy and stability.While no state ever implements these principles fully,and thus none is a pure democracy, ethnocratic regimes are conspicuousin breaching most tenets of democracy.22

19. My work also draws on Foucauldian, Marxian, and postcolonial approaches asinspiration. See Michel Foucault, Disciplineand Punish: TheBirth of the Prison, trans. AlanSheridan (New York, 1977); Stuart Hall, "Who Needs 'Identity'?" introduction to Questionsof CulturalIdentity,ed. Hall and Paul Du Gay (London, 1998), pp. 1-18; Ernesto Laclau,introduction to TheMaking of PoliticalIdentities,ed. Laclau (London, 1994), pp. 1-8; andEdward W. Said, The Politics of Dispossession:The Struggle or Palestinian Self-Determination,1969-1994 (New York, 1994).20. See Held, Modelsof Democracy, nd Charles Tilly, "Citizenship, Identity, and SocialHistory," n Citizenship,dentity,and SocialHistory,ed. Tilly (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1-18. Seealso Mann, "The Dark Side of Democracy."21. See Held, ModelsofDemocracy, nd Sara Helman, "Warand Resistance: Israeli CivilMilitarism and Its Emergent Crisis,"Constellations (Sept. 1999): 391-410.22. See Arend Lijphart, Democracies: atternsofMajoritarianand ConsensusGovernmentnTwenty-OneCountries New Haven, Conn., 1984), and Will Kymlicka,MulticulturalCitizenship:A LiberalTheoryofMinorityRights (Oxford, 1995).



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CriticalInquiry Summer 000 733To further fathom the workings of ethnocracies we must differentiateanalytically between thefeaturesof a regime and its structure.Some ethnoc-

racies possess visible democratic features, such as periodic elections, freemedia, an autonomous judiciary that protects, and even (some) humanrights legislation. Yet the deeper structure of such regimes is undemo-cratic mainly because they promote the seizure of territory and the publicrealm by one ethnos, thus undermining key democratic principles suchas civil and legal equality, the protection of minorities, and the mainte-nance of equality and proportionality among the collectivities making upthe state. Of course, features and structure mutually influence each other,and neither remains static over time. But the ethnocratic logic of thestructure generally dictates the terms of much of what transpires in themore visible political arenas.Ethnocracies thus operate simultaneously in several levels and are-nas and create a situation where political struggles are often wagedaround the state's features, while little is said and fought over the deeperhegemonic structure. As powerfully argued by Gramsci, a "moment" ofhegemony is marked by the unquestioned dominance of "a certain wayof life ... in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout societyin all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spiritall taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles."23The hege-monic order reflects and thus reproduces the interests of the dominantethno-classes by representing the order of things in a distorted manneras legitimate and moral and by concealing its oppressive or more ques-tionable aspects. This public perception is maintained by preventing, de-flecting, or ridiculing discussions that challenge the structure of theregime and by limiting public debate to its more shallow features. In hisenlightening discussion on resisting hegemony, Gramsci differentiates be-tween "wars of movement" and "wars of position." The former target con-temporary political party conflicts and interests embedded in what I termhere regimeeatures,thus concentrating on short-term political or materialgains. The latter address the deeper and often unseen hegemonic ideasand "truths" that generate long-term power relations and their societallegitimacy, that is, what I term here regime tructure.Gramsci's normativestrategies aim to shift the attention of political entrepreneurs who repre-sent the exploited strata from "wars of movement" to "wars of position"and thus articulate a counterhegemonic consciousness.24In this light, I have identified several structural bases that constitutethe foundation of ethnocratic societies, objects in a "war of position" a

23. Anne Showstack Sassoon, Gramsci's olitics, 2d ed. (Minneapolis, 1987), p. 110 n.1; see Antonio Gramsci, Selectionsfromthe PrisonNotebooks,rans. and ed. Quintin Hoare andGeoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York, 1971).24. Ian S. Lustick, UnsettledStates,DisputedLands:Britain andIreland,FranceandAlgeria,Israel and the WestBank-Gaza(Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), p. 122; for his enlightening discussion onthis subject, see pp. 121-24.



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734 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentsla Gramsci. These include the rules, policies, and institutions affectingimmigration, the spatial system of land and settlement, the state's consti-tution, the role of the military, the nature of the dominant culture, andthe regulation of capital. These bases, each separately and together,powerfully mould ethnic relations in contested territories, but are rarelysubject to day-to-day or electoral deliberation. Genuine debate on thesetaken-for-granted issues is generally absent from public discourse, espe-cially among the dominant majority. But the dominance of the various"truths" behind these bases is, of course, not absolute and may be ex-posed and resisted as political entrepreneurs exploit the tensions andcontradictions in the system to advance antihegemonic projects.

But in Israel most of the structural bases are still intact, as subjectssuch as immigration policies, the role of military, the state constitution,and even the ethnic nature of development policies (which routinely priv-ilege Jews over Arabs) are rarely discussed in national Jewish politics. Thisis not accidental, of course; it allows the dominantJewish ethnos to extendits control over Palestinians (both in Israel and the occupied territories)through the use of discriminatory immigration, land, settlement, cultural,and development policies, as well as through the (nearly unquestioned)centrality of the (Jewish) army in the state's decision-making arenas.

5. Ethnocracy nd MinoritiesThe crux of the ethnocratic system is its ability to maintain the con-trol and dominance of the charter group. This is premised on the exclu-sion, marginalization, or assimilation of minority groups. But not allminorities are treated equally. Some are constructed as internal, whereasothers are marked as external. A critical difference exists between those

considered part of the so-called historical or even genetic nation and oth-ers whose presence is portrayed as a mere historical coincidence or as adanger to the security and integrity of the dominant ethnos. These dis-courses strip the means of inclusion in the meaningful sites of the nationfrom external minorities.25Ethnocracies are driven, first and foremost, by a sense of collective en-titlement on the part of the majority group to control what it thinks of as itsstate and its homeland-a sense of entitlement derived from the notion ofa universal right for self-determination. Thus, belonging to the dominantethno-nation is the key to attaining mobility and resources for peripheralgroups and a strategy adopted by most immigrant minorities, who therebydistance themselves from indigenous or other external minorities.The charter group can thus play a dual game. On the one hand it25. See Peter Jackson and Jan Penrose, Constructions f Race, Place, and Nation (Lon-don, 1993).



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 735articulates a discourse of belonging that incorporates later migrantgroups, inviting them into the moral community of the dominant ethno-nation. But on the other hand the charter group uses this very discourseof inclusion and belonging to conceal the uneven effects of its strategies,which often marginalize the immigrants economically, culturally, and geo-graphically. It would be a mistake, however, to treat this as a conspiracy;it is rather an expression of broad social interest, generally unspoken andunarticulated, which privileges social circles that are closest to the ethno-national core. This seemingly natural process tends to broadly reproduce,though never replicate, patterns of social stratification.The strategy towards indigenous minorities or fragments of rival na-tions is more openly oppressive. They are represented and treated at bestas external to the ethno-national project, or at worst as a subversivethreat. The principle of self-determination is used only selectively, per-taining to ethnicity and not to an inclusive geographical unit, as requiredby the basic principles of the nation-state order and by the tenets of de-mocracy. Many of the projects that typify ethnocracies, namely, frontiersettlement, land seizure, military expansion, and economic growth, en-croach on the position and resources of local minorities. These projectsare often wrapped in a discourse of modernity, progress, and democracy,but the very material reality they produce is unmistakable, entailing mi-nority dispossession and exclusion.However, the self-representation of most ethnocracies as democraticcreates structural tensions because it requires the state to go beyond lipservice to empower external minorities with some (though always lessthan equal) formal political powers. The cracks and crevices between theopen claims for democracy and the denial of full minority participationharbor the tensions and conflicts typical of ethnocratic regimes.26The dual game of a public democratic facade alongside structures ofethnic expansion and control is thus at work against both internal andexternal minorities, although there are differences in practice. The dif-ference lies in the selective imposition of borders and boundaries. Eth-nocracies typically impose a multiplicity of physical, legal, social, economic,and cultural boundaries that differentiate between ethno-classes. Thesehave uneven levels of porousness: the dominant group can usually travelfreely across boundaries; internal minorities are more restricted, oftenculturally and economically, while external minorities, are systematicallyexcluded.

Finally, it must also be emphasized that the breaching of democraticprinciples in ethnocratic states is far more severe vis-a-vis minoritiesmarked as external, due to the systematic rejection of these groups as26. For further discussion of this tension, see Mann, "The Dark Side of Democracy,"and Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," ForeignAffairs76 (Nov.-Dec. 1997):22-43.



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736 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentsmeaningful members of the polity, often expressed by legal and institu-tional means. Minorities characterized as internal face lesser obstacles tothe formal possibility of democratic inclusion. But in ethnocratic regimesthis possibility generally comes with a steep collective price of culturaland economic stratification.

6. The IsraeliEthnocracy:udaizing/Colonizinghe HomelandFollowing independence in 1948 Israel began a concerted and radi-cal strategy of Judaization (de-Arabization). The expulsion and flight of

around 750,000 Palestinian refugees during the 1947-49 war createdlarge gaps in the geography of the land, which the authorities were quickto fill with Jewish immigrants and refugees who entered the country enmasse. The darker side of this strategy was the destruction of 418 Pales-tinian Arab towns, villages, and hamlets and the concurrent preventionof the return of Palestinian refugees.27 During the first decade of inde-pendence Israel built hundreds of Jewish settlements, often near or liter-ally on the site of demolished Arab villages and towns.The duality of the Israeli state can thus be traced to its early days. Itcreated a state with several significant democratic features and formalitiesbut at the same time established a legal, institutional, and cultural regimestructure that advanced an undemocratic project of Judaizing and de-Arabizing the country. This duality became obvious and much criticizedfollowing the conquest of further Palestinian territories after 1967, but itexisted before then and still exists today in "Israel Proper" (that is, Israelwithin its pre-1967 borders) where the laws, policies, and institutions thatfacilitate the Judaization process are still in operation. It is important todistinguish between the pre-1948 period, when Jews arrived in Palestinemainly as refugees, in a population movement I have conceptualized asone of "colonialism of ethnic survival,"and the periods that see the Israelistate engaging in internal (post-1948) and external (post-1967) forms ofcolonialism.28

27. See Ghazi Falah, "The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Trans-formation and De-Signification of Palestine's Cultural Landscape," Annals of theAssociationofAmericanGeographers 6 (June 1996): 256-85.28. See Yiftachel, "Nation-Building or Ethnic Fragmentation? Frontier Settlementand Collective Identities in Israel,"Spaceand Polity, 1, no. 2 (1997): 149-69. Although Israelis gradually shifting from a frontier to a civil society, as Yoav Peled and Gershon Shafir havenoted, this process is far from complete, and the institutional setting of the Judaizationproject is still a major societal force. For the continuing impact of the de-Arabizing drive,see Peled and Gershon Shafir, "The Roots of Peacemaking: The Dynamics of Citizenship inIsrael, 1948-93," InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 28 (Aug. 1996): 391-413, andLustick, "Israel as a Non-Arab State: The Political Implications of Mass Immigration ofNon-Jews," MiddleEastJournal 53 (Summer 1999): 417-33. For an early formulation of Is-



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CriticalInquiry Summer 000 737Because I am mainly interested here in the position of minorities,this is not the place to enter fully the active debate on the level of demo-

cratic institutionalization in Israel. Suffice it to note that several key dem-ocratic principles are routinely violated, all because of the ethnocraticnature of the Israeli regime: Israel never had a constitution, and basichuman rights and capabilities are thus not protected by special legisla-tion; there is no separation between state and church; some twenty piecesof legislation discriminate formally between Jews and Arabs; and, as weshall see below, the state never established the legal-territorial basis fordemocracy-that is, it has not defined its borders, it occupies and activelycolonizes Palestinian and Arab territories beyond its internationally rec-ognized borders, and it has maintained a legal and institutional system ofland control that is deeply undemocratic.29This political design is premised on a hegemonic perception, culti-vated since the rise of Zionism, that the land (ha-aretz)belongs to the Jewsand only the Jews. A rigid form of territorial ethno-nationalism de-veloped from the beginning of Zionist settlement in order to quickly "in-digenize" immigrant Jews and to conceal, trivialize, or marginalize theexistence of a Palestinian people on the same land. The frontier becamea central icon, and its settlement was considered one of the highestachievements of any Zionist "returning" to the revered homeland. A pop-ular (and typical) youth movement song, "Nivne artzenu eretz moledet"("We shall build our land, the homeland"), by A. Levinson, frequentlysung in schools and public gatherings and known to nearly every Jew inIsrael during the nation's formative years, illustrates the powerful con-struction of these icons and myths.

We shall build our country, our homelandBecause it is ours, ours, this landraeli internal colonialism, see Elia T Zureik, ThePalestinians n Israel:A Study n InternalColo-nialism(London, 1979).29. Two basic laws (passed in 1992 by a normal parliamentary majority) have en-shrined significant human rights in the Israeli legal-political system, but these are partialand are not protected constitutionally. For a critique, see Kimmerling, "Religion, National-ism, and Democracy in Israel," and E. Salzberger and S. Kedar, "Hamahapecha hashketa:Bikoret shiputit lefi khukei hayesod hakhadashim" (The quiet revolution), Mishpatumimshalbeyisrael Law and governance in Israel) 4 (1998): 489-519. See also Adalah: The LegalCenter for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Legal ViolationsofArabMinorityRightsin Israel:AReporton Israel's mplementation f theInternationalConventionon theEliminationofAll FormsofRacial Discrimination Shfaram, 1998). The debate on the nature of the Israeli regime hasbeen lively in recent years. For a glowing description of Israel as a liberal democracy, seeAharon Barak, "The Role of the Supreme Court in a Democracy,"IsraelStudies 3 (Winter1998): 113-23. For a systematic analysis, see Ghanem, Rouhana, and Yiftachel, "Ques-tioning 'Ethnic Democracy': A Response to Sammy Smooha," Israel Studies3 (1998): 252-67,and the response by Ruth Gavison, 'Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the 'EthnicDemocracy' Debate," IsraelStudies4 (Spring 1999): 44-72.



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738 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd ItsDiscontentsWe shall build our country, our homelandIt is the command of our blood, the command of generationsWe shall build our country despite our destroyersWe shall build our country with the power of our willThe end to malignant slaveryThe fire of Freedom is burningThe glorious shine of hopeWill stir our bloodThirsty for freedom, for independenceWe shall march bravely towards the liberation of our people30

Such sentiments were translated into a pervasive program of JewishZionist territorial socialization and indoctrination, expressed in schoolcurricula, literature, political speeches, popular music, and other spheresof public discourse.31 The vision promoted was of a pure ethnic state,replicating the East European examples from which the founding eliteshad arrived. Frontier settlement thus continued to be a cornerstone ofZionist nation-building, even well after the establishment of a sovereignstate, forming a central part of the sacred values, the pantheon of heroes,the mythology, and the internal system of legitimacy and gratification ofthe settler society.32Jewish frontierism gained new energies following the 1967 war, afterwhich Jewish control was extended to the entire historic Palestine/EretzYisrael (the land area controlled by the British mandate) and beyond.The scope of this essay does not permit full discussion of the significantimpact of the semiofficial inclusion of the occupied territories into therealm of the Israeli regime, nor of the important changes following the1993 Oslo agreement.33 The mutual recognition between the Jewish andPalestinian national movements is of course highly significant and may inthe future halt the Judaization impulse of Israeli Jews. However, at pres-ent, without peace or stable borders, the moral power of the Judaizationproject is still prominent in Israeli Jewish society.34This is aptly demonstrated by a song, "Artzenu haktantonet" ("Our30. "Nivne artzenu," Shironha-aretz(Songbook of the land) (Tel Aviv, 1995).31. See Yoram Bar-Gal, Moledetve-ge'ografyah e-me'ah hanothinukhTsiyoni Moledetand geography in a hundred years of Zionist education) (Tel Aviv, 1993), and Uri Ram,"Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of BenZion Dinur,"Historyand Memory7 (Spring-Summer 1995): 91-124.32. See Kimmerling, Zionismand Territory: heSocio-Territorial imensionsof ZionistPoli-tics (Berkeley, 1983).33. See A. Kemp, "The Frontier Idiom on Borders and Territorial Politics in Post-1967 Israel,"Geography esearchForum19 (Fall 1999): 102-17.34. It is also reasonable to perceive the 1995 and 1999 withdrawal of Israel frompockets in the West Bank and Gaza as consistent with the Judaization project. The territor-ies with Palestinian majorities are handed to the Palestinian National Council to establishautonomous enclaves, while the rest of the land (some 90 percent of Israel/Palestine, muchof it hotly contested) is being furthered Judaized.



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Criticalnquiry Summer000 739tiny little land"), which became immensely popular during the 1990s,composed and sung by a renowned Israeli rock singer, Rami Kleinstein.It is worth paying attention to the total devotion and even erotic attrac-tion to the land that radiates from the song's lines, as well as its religiousand historical undertones. The Arabs are absent from this idealized land-scape, as evident in the description of the land as barefoot and naked.While the drive to settle the frontier and expand Jewish control haswaned in recent years, it is still a major political and cultural force inIsraeli society, as illustrated by the following passage:

Our tiny little landOur beautiful landA homeland with no clothingA barefoot homelandSing your poems to meYou beautiful brideOpen your gates to meI shall cross them and praise the Lord35

To be sure, the perception of this land and the state of Israel as asafe haven after generations of persecutions of Jews, and especially afterthe Nazi Holocaust, had a powerful liberating meaning. Yet the darkersides of this project were nearly totally absent from the cultural and politi-cal construction of an unproblematic return of Jews to their beckoningpromised land, in a process described aptly by Yitzhak Laor as a "nationalnarrative without natives."36 Very few dissenting voices were raisedagainst the hegemonic Judaizing discourse, policies, and practices. Ifsuch dissent did emerge, the hegemonic national Jewish elites found ef-fective ways to marginalize, co-opt, or gag most challengers.

7.Judaizationand theMakingof EthnocracyThe Judaization strategy became the core project and the main logicaround which both Jewish and Palestinian societies developed in Israel/Palestine. It shaped relations between the two ethno-nations and amongethno-classes within each. The main bases of ethnocratic states identi-fied above have all been central to the regime in Israel/Palestine. Theseinclude Israel's Jews-only immigration policies; its constitution-in-the-making, which enshrines the state'sJewishness; its development and in-vestment strategies, which heavily favored Jews over Arabs but at thesame time maintained ethno-class gaps among Jews; the central and criti-35. "Artzenuhaktantonet," Shironha-aretz.36. Yitzhak Laor, Anu kotvimotachmoledet We write you, homeland) (Tel Aviv, 1996),p. 118.



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740 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentscal role assigned to the military,which excluded the vast majority of Arabswhile exacerbating the stratification between Jewish ethno-classes; andthe firm imposition of the Jewish and Hebrew culture (in its Ashkenaziguise) as the only medium of communication and as the source of thenorms and practices governing the Israeli public sphere.37These are en-shrined in a range of Israeli laws, practices, and institutions, discussed bya vast literature.38The last basis concerns the land, settlement, and planning policieson which I touched earlier. Several mechanisms worked powerfully andsystematically to transfer the ownership, control, and use of land fromPalestinian Arabs to Jewish hands. The Jewish collectivity owned 7 per-cent of the country's lands prior to 1948, and at present the state of Israel,together with the Jewish National Fund, owns over 93 percent. This pro-cess is unidirectional;under Israeli law, state land cannot be sold, includingin the occupied territories where over 50 percent of the land has beeneither transferred to state ownership or to exclusive Jewish use.39 Thecontrol of land enabled the establishment of over seven hundred Jewishsettlements in Israel/Palestine, at a time when no new Arab settlementswere allowed.40The bases of the Israeli settling ethnocracy are all buttressed by thedeclaration that the state isJewish, not Israeli,as would be required undera normal application of the right to self-determination.41 This is not meresemantics, but a profound obstacle to the imposition of democratic rule,which, as noted, should be premised on the empowerment of a sovereigndemos. The Israeli regime has no clearly identifiable demos, but rather a

37. See Yinon Cohen and Yitchak Haberfeld, "Second-Generation Jewish Immigrantsin Israel: Have the Ethnic Gaps in Schooling and Earnings Declined?" Ethnic and RacialStudies21 (May 1998): 507-28, and Peled, "Towards a Redefinition of Nationalism in Israel:The Enigma of Shas,"Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (July 1998): 703-27. See also Helman,"War and Resistance," and Yagil Levy, "Militarizing Inequality: A Conceptual Framework,"Theory nd Society27 (Dec. 1998): 873-904.38. See, for example, Kretzmer, TheLegal Statusof the Arabs n Israel (Boulder, Colo.,1990); Gavison, 'Jewish and Democratic?"; and Kimmerling, "Religion, Nationalism, andDemocracy in Israel."39. See S. Kedar, "Zman shel rov, zman shel mi'utz: Karka, le'om, vekhukei hahityyashnut harocheshet beyisrael" (Minority Time, MajorityTime: Land, Nation, and the Lawof Adverse Possession in Israel), Iyyuneimishpat Law research) 21 (Summer 1998): 665-746,and Arie Shachar, "Reshaping the Map of Israel: A New National Planning Doctrine," An-nals of the AmericanAcademy f Politicaland Social Sciences555 (Jan. 1998): 209-18.40. Except for several towns built for the (often coercive) concentration of Bedouinsin the northern Galilee and southern Negev regions.41. The state is routinely defined as 'Jewish and democratic" by a series of Israeli laws,especially since 1992. But the tension and even contradiction between the two terms isnever resolved by the legal specifics. Further, a 1985 basic law empowers the state to disqual-ify from state elections parties that oppose the status of Israel as the "'state of the Jewishpeople' " (Kretzmer, TheLegal Statusof theArabs n Israel, p. 29).



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 741complex and layered set of stratified group rights and capabilities. Its ethnicinterpretation of the principle of self-determination now creates a distortedsituation where many Jews around the world have two potential rights ofself-determination (as citizens of their countries and as automatic Israelicitizens), while millions of Palestinians are denied even one such right.Thus, strikingly, Jews who are citizens of other countries have morerights in Israel's land and settlement systems than the state's own Arabcitizens. Arab rights under the Israeli regime (that is, the area where Is-rael exercises de facto sovereign control) are stratified legally and institu-tionally among Druze, Bedouin, Palestinian Arab citizens, Palestinianresidents of Jerusalem, and subjects of the Palestinian Authority. This isa vivid illustration of the workings of the ethnocratic regime, where at afundamental level rights and resources are based on ethnicity and not onterritorial citizenship, all geared to facilitate a demographic and spatialexpansion of the dominant ethnos.The ethnocratic nature of the regime is also conspicuous in the selec-tive imposition of boundaries and borders. For example, the Green Line(Israel's pre-1967 border) functions as a barrier for the movement of Pal-estinian Arabs, but not for Jews, who can freely cross it and settle in theoccupied territories. A striking illustration of this undemocratic practiceis the overlooking of the Green Line during Israeli elections, which aredescribed by nearly all commentators as free and democratic. Yet Jewsresiding in the occupied territories have determined the election of right-wing governments four times during the 1980s and 1990s, while thePalestinians, who were subjects of the Israeli regime, remained disenfran-chised. In the 1996 elections, for example, Binyamin Netanyahu wouldhave lost by over 5 percent if results were only counted within the GreenLine. Yet he was elected prime minister, and most scholars continued totreat Israel Proper as democratic 42

Within Israel Proper, for example, Arab citizens are prevented frompurchasing land in about 80 percent of the country, through the imposi-tion of institutional and municipal regulations in rural areas that do notapply to Jews.43 The boundaries imposed on the Mizrahim are less visible,expressed mainly by informal economic, cultural, and geographic barri-ers to their mobility within Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli society. Theseare intimately linked to the Judaization of Israel/Palestine, which delegi-42. On the issue of borders, Israel's continuing (often indirect) sovereign control overthe occupied territories and its active colonization of these territories sharply contradict itsclaim for democratic status.43. This exclusion is mainly achieved by regulations that permit rural Jewish settle-ments to select their residents and by the active involvement in rural planning of Jewishorganizations, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, which have "com-pacts" with the Israeli government allowing them to act exclusively for the welfare of Jewswithin Israel.



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742 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentstimized Arab culture, politics, and capital. This was destructive for mostMizrahim, who at the time could be described as Arab Jews.44 But thecomparison should be qualified: I am not claiming that the ethnocraticregime is formally undemocratic towards the Mizrahim, at least not inrecent decades, but rather that the undemocratic structure of the Judaiz-ing system vis-a-vis Palestinian Arabs has affected the Mizrahim adverselyin a range of cultural, economic, and geographic matters.The dominance of the Ashkenazim was furthered by equating theversion ofJewish Hebrew culture they had constructed with Israel in toto,thereby demoting all other cultural forms. The founding Ashkenazimgained further status by representing "their" state as Western and mod-ern, but at the same time as the bearer of moral projects such as the"ingathering of the exiles" (mizuggaluyot)and the "melting pot" (kurhahi-tuch), both connoting a sense of equality between Jewish ethno-classes.This placed the Mizrahim in a position of weakness, as their only optionfor mobility was to enter the margins of Ashkenazi-qua-Israeli society,whose culture, rules, and practices were alien to their background andcapabilities. It is striking that the Ashkenazim were a numerical minorityin Israel by the early 1950s, but the working of the ethnocratic settlingregime and the fusion of their identity with the general form of "Israe-liness" enabled them to maintain long-term dominance.45The processes described above, however, are not one-dimensionaland must be weighed against countertrends, especially the growing as-similation of Mizrahi Jews into the Israeli middle classes in the country'smain urban areas, the increasing universality in legal and social rightsacross groups in Israeli society, and greater cultural pluralism.46Yet theparallel Judaization and ethnic stratification trends have been powerfuland have come to mark Israel's social landscape.47 This has been trans-lated into a broad ethno-class structure in which the dominant stratum ismainly occupied by Ashkenazim (34 percent), followed by an intermedi-ate Mizrahi stratum (36 percent), and a marginalized Palestinian Arabminority (17 percent).48The rest of the Israeli citizenry is made up mostlyof Russian speakers, who have formed a discernible ethnic enclave thatin the long term is likely to merge with the Ashkenazi group.

44. See Ella Shohat, "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its JewishVictims,"SocialText,nos. 19-20 (Fall 1988): 1-35.45. See Shohat, "The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernisation:The Case of the Mizrahim,"Critique,no. 10 (Spring 1997): 3-18, and Shlomo Swirski, Israel:TheOrientalMajority London, 1989).46. See Zeev Rosenhak, "New Developments in the Sociology of Palestinian Citizensof Israel: An Analytical Review,"Ethnicand Racial Studies21 (May 1998): 558-78.47. See Cohen and Haberfeld, "Second-Generation Jewish Immigrants to Israel,"andPeled, "Ethnic Exclusionism in the Periphery: The Case of Oriental Jews in Israel's Develop-ment Towns,"Ethnic and Racial Studies 13 (July 1990): 345-67.48. Within the entire Israeli control system (Israel/Palestine), Ashkenazim make uponly 21 percent of the population.



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CriticalInquiry Summer 000 7438. PeripheralMinorities

Having established the parameters, I will now focus in more depthon the two minority communities that are the subject of this essay: thePalestinian Arab citizens and the Mizrahim in the development towns.49Given their peripheral status and location, their non-Ashkenazi back-ground, as well as their similar population size, and despite some impor-tant differences, it may be illuminating to compare and contrast theirpolitical mobilization vis-a-vis the state.The Palestinian Arab minority numbered 950,000 in late 1998, con-stituting 17 percent of Israel'spopulation. This minority is made up of thefragments left after the 1947-49 expulsion and flight of some three quar-ters of the Palestinian Arab community, in what is known as the Nakbah (di-saster). The Arabs, who reside in three main regions in the country's north,center, and south, were placed under military rule between 1948 and1966-a period that cemented their position as Israel's lowest socioeco-nomic stratum. During the 1950s, as part of the pervasive Judaization strat-egy, the Arabs lost around 60 percent of their lands through widespreadexpropriations.50 But during the last two decades, levels of control over theArabs have eased; their communities have undergone (partial) modern-ization; and their social, political, and economic capabilities have slightlyimproved, although they remain Israel's most deprived ethno-class.The second periphery, what are called, in an Orwellian usage, thedevelopment towns, includes the twenty-seven urban centers built or sig-nificantly expanded mainly during the 1950s for the housing of new Jew-ish immigrants as part of the official "population dispersal" strategy.51 n1998 they housed a population of 1.01 million, or 18 percent of Israel'spopulation, of which about two-thirds were Mizrahim, and most of therest Russian-speaking recent immigrants. During the 1950s and 1960sthey evolved into a poor, isolated, and distressed sector of Israeli Jewishsociety.52Over the years, the towns were subject to policies that enhancedtheir dependence on the central state apparatus, mainly expressed in thechannelling of labor-intensive and economically insecure industries to thetowns and the mass construction of cheap public housing. These created

49. There are of course other minorities shaped by the Israeli ethnocracy, notably,Haredi Jews and nonenfranchised Palestinians in the territories, and even Israeli and Pales-tinian women, in certain respects, but the analysis of their mobilization must await an-other occasion.50. See Lustick, Arabs in theJewish State: Israel'sControlof a National Minority (Austin,Tex., 1980); Smooha, ArabsandJews in Israel:Changeand Continuityn Mutual Intolerance,vol.2 of ArabsandJews in Israel (Boulder, Colo., 1992); and Zureik, The Palestinians n Israel.51. See Gabriel Lipshitz, Areha-pituah:basis hadash le tikhnunmediniyut Developmenttowns: toward new policy) (Jerusalem, 1990). See also Sachar,"Reshaping the Map of Israel."52. Mizrahim in the development towns are, of course, part of the larger Mizrahicommunity in Israel, although their different geography and organization make them adistinct subsector, a periphery of a peripheral community. See Swirski, Israel.



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744 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its Discontentssocial stigmas and concentrations of social problems and crime, causinga process of "negative filtering" (the ongoing out-migration of upwardlymobile residents) and considerable population turnover.The territorial Judaization policy is of particular relevance to the twoperipheral groups, as the transfer of lands and relentless Jewish settle-ment activity created a layered ethnic geography. Arab geography hasbeen severely contained by the state and remains virtually frozen. Theincreasing encirclement of Arab localities by Jewish settlements and thelack of residential alternatives have effectively caused the ghettoization ofthe Arabs. As for the Mizrahim, around half of them were settled (oftencoercively) in distressed development towns (often built on expropriatedPalestinian land) and thus found themselves residing in segregated andstigmatized enclaves.53Hundreds of kibbutzimnd moshavimwere also built in the same areas,most of which were populated by more powerful Ashkenazi groups.54Butthe state allowed these localities to segregate themselves from both Miz-rahim and Arabs in nearly all facets of daily life, thus creating an uneven,fractured regional geography.55This layered geography of ethnic powershaped the daily existence among both Mizrahi and Arab groups fromwhich the protest analyzed below emerged.

We can thus see how the central Zionist project of Judaizing thecountry has worked to both dispossess the Palestinian Arabs and also tosegregate, weaken, and marginalize peripheral Mizrahim through heverysame settlementprocess.The legal, institutional, and cultural mechanismsgeared to segregate Jews from Arabs that were at the basis of Zionistsettlement were also used-in a different, softer manner-to secludeJewish elites from conational minorities. This was most conspicuous inthe country's rural areas, between kibbutzim nd development towns, butwas also evident in all of Israel's urban areas.56 The two sectors have thusevolved into notable geographical and ethno-class peripheries.57

53. Ashkenazim were also housed in the development towns, but most found ways toemigrate to better locations. During the 1990s, with the large-scale immigration of Russians,some towns grew and developed considerably, although they remain the least developedJewish sector.54. During the 1950s the state also built hundreds of moshavimfor Mizrahim, andthese have become similar to the development towns in their socioeconomic development.55. See David Newman, "Creating Homogeneous Space: The Evolution of Israel'sRegional Councils," in Israel:TheFirstDecadeof Independence, d. S. Ilan Troen and NoahLucas (Albany, N.Y., 1995), pp. 495-519.56. See Amiram Gonen, BetweenCityand Suburb:UrbanResidentialPatternsand Processesin Israel (Aldershot, 1995).57. Recent figures show persisting gaps. In 1998 mean income per capita among Ar-abs reached only 41 percent of the national mean; among peripheral Mizrahim the figurewas 72 percent. Official unemployment in Arab localities and development towns wasaround twice the average among other Jewish localities, and in September 1999, of thetwenty towns declared "unemployment hubs" by the Israeli government, eleven were Araband nine were development towns (Israeli Bureau of Statistics news release, 1999).



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CriticalInquiry Summer 000 7459. ChallengingEthnocracy?ProtestbythePeripheries

Based on conventional theories that link political mobilization to rel-ative deprivation in a democratic regime, one may expect the two sectorsto have developed into significant sites of resistance to the Israeli re-gime.58 Has this happened? Did a challenge emerge from the periphery?And, more specifically, are there any voices addressing the pitfalls of theJudaization project? To explore these questions, I briefly trace here thenature and fluctuation of political protest among Palestinian Arabs andperipheral Mizrahim.59This is not an in-depth analysis, which I have car-ried out elsewhere, but rather a prism through which to illustrate thepositions and capabilities of minorities within the ethnocratic system. Fig-ure 1 traces the evolution of protest among both peripheries (fig. 1).60PalestinianArabs

The public voice of Palestinian Arabs in Israel only began to be heardin the mid 1970s. Prior to that, due to the military rule imposed overtheir localities, as well as to their poverty, isolation, fragmentation, and58. Space limits my discussion of theories of protest and mobilization, although theyare of course relevant to the case and are treated in depth elsewhere. See Ted Robert Gurr,Minoritiesat Risk:A Global ViewofEthnopoliticalConflicts Washington, D.C., 1993); ThePoliticsof Social Protest:ComparativePerspectives n States and Social Movements,ed. J. Craig Jenkinsand Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis, 1995); Sara Helman and Tamar Rapoport, "Womenin Black: Challenging Israel's Gender and Socio-Political Orders,"BritishJournalof Sociology48 (Dec. 1997): 681-700; and Yiftachel, "The Political Geography of Ethnic Protest: Nation-alism, Deprivation, and Regionalism among Arabs in Israel," Transactionsof the InstituteofBritishGeographers, . s., 22, no. 1 (1997): 91-110.59. I counted as protest all verbal, written, and active expressions of collective griev-ance staged in the public domain. I documented all reported events of public protest in orabout the sectors studied here, tallying 726 incidents during the 1960-95 period. Data werecollected from all events reported by any of four leading Israeli newspapers. Overall, of the726 protest events documented, 381 were among the Arabs and 345 among the peripheralMizrahim. Events are coded according to their intensity, using a composite index adaptedfrom Gurr,Minoritiesat Risk,which measures the duration, size, and militancy of each event.60. See Yiftachel, "Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation," and Yif-tachel and Erez Tzefadia, Mediniyotvezehutbe'areiha-pituateh (Policy and identity in thedevelopment towns) (Beer-Sheva, 1999). Surprisingly, relatively little research has been con-ducted on protest among Israeli peripheries. See Shlomo Hasson, "From Frontier to Pe-riphery in Israel: Cultural Representations in Narratives and Counter-Narratives," in EthnicFrontiersand Peripheries:Landscapesof Development nd Inequality n Israel, ed. Yiftachel andAvinoam Meir (Boulder, Colo., 1998), pp. 115-40, and Peled, "Towards a Redefinition ofNationalism in Israel." Studies of Israeli protest have traditionally focussed only on thepolitical and geographical center. See Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-NeckedPeople,Bottle-NeckedSystem:TheEvolution and Rootsof IsraeliPublicProtest,1949-1986 (Bloomington, Ind.,1990); Tamar Hermann, "Do They Have a Chance? Protest and Political Structure of Op-portunities in Israel,"IsraelStudies 1 (Spring 1996): 144-70; and Yael Yishai, "Civil Societyin Transition: Interest Politics in Israel,"Annals of theAmericanAcademy f Politicaland SocialScience 555 (Jan. 1998): 147-62.



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 747peripheral status, Arabs only rarely challenged the Israeli state and itspolicies. In the early years the activities of the national Al-Ard ("TheLand") movement (which was subsequently declared illegal) and annualrallies staged by the communist party around May Day were the mostnotable occasions expressing antigovernment resistance.Serious Arab protest erupted in 1976 as a head-on challenge to theJudaization project. The occasion was the first Land Day in 1976, whichmarked the point of entry of Arabs into Israeli public politics. A generalstrike and mass demonstrations against land expropriation in the Galileetook place, resulting in widespread clashes with the police and the killingof six Arab protesters. Since then Land Day has been commemorated asa major annual event. Despite the traumatic events of that day and thefailure of the campaign to retrieve the land, the Arabs gained a presencein Israeli politics; they could no longer be ignored.Following the first Land Day Arabs began to marshal popular anti-government sentiments and gradually built a well-organized and sus-tained civil campaign around the leadership of voluntary bodies such asthe National Committee of Arab Municipalities, the Following Commit-tee, and recently the Islamic Movement. The civil campaign came intofull force during the mid to late 1980s, combining past grievances with afuture outlook, as exemplified by the following statement by the mayorof Dier Hanna, a medium-sized Arab town, during Land Day of 1983:

Israel has taken our land, surrounded us with Jewish settlements,and made us feel like strangers in our homeland. ... The Jews donot realize, however, that we are here to stay, that we are here tostruggle for our rights, and that we will not give up our identity asPalestinian Arabs and our rights as Israelis.... The more they takefrom us, the more we fight.61The campaign progressed with dozens of preplanned events, a fairlycoherent ideology of peace and equality, and militant rhetoric. In 1987the National Committee even published a ten-point manifesto claimingto represent the goals of the entire Arab community, articulating a visionof Arab-Jewish relations moving towards equality and stability, as well ascalling for greater Arab control over education, planning, and develop-ment issues. This vision expressed for the first time a coherent collectivedissent by Israeli citizens to the tenets of the Jewish and Judaizing eth-

nocracy.What did the Arabs protest against? My analysis reveals three domi-nant issues: land and spatial policies, socioeconomic conditions, and (Pal-estinian) national rights. The continuing prevalence of all three issues inalmost equal intensity is quite striking. Despite yearly fluctuations, we61. Spoken at a rally attended by the author, 1983.



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748 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd ItsDiscontentsconsistently find concerns over land, nation, and resources dominatingPalestinian Arab protest.62But the Arab civil campaign began to wane and change during the1990s. In every year except 1994 we see levels of protest and mobilizationlower than the heyday of the late 1980s (although considerable protestactivity continued). Arab protest has also changed its character: it is farmore local, reactive, and sporadic, in contrast to the more programmaticand preplanned campaign of the 1980s. How can this decline and changebe explained, especially in light of the persisting exclusion and depriva-tion of Arabs in Israel?Some claim that a combination of a pervasive process of "Israelifica-tion," as well as improved government policies, especially during theyears of the Yitzhak Rabin/Shimon Peres government (1992-96), madethe difference.63 Others claim the opposite: Arab marginality within theJudaizing state has caused a prolonged crisis, distorted development, anda confused identity, all militating against the maintenance of an organizedcivil campaign.64 My position is that the Arabs have hit the impregnablewall of the Jewish "moral community," which is still preoccupied with itsown victimizations and fears and thus able to ignore the undemocraticnature of Arab exclusion and the political ramifications of their visibleand obvious deprivation.65There is a prevailing feeling among Arabs that under its current po-litical structure the Israeli state is able to continue to reject, deflect, orignore Arab demands for equality.66Hence, antistate protest may be los-ing its appeal, while other modes of operation gain favor, including thestrategic use of the Arabs' growing electoral clout, or the channelling ofArab energies into a quiet construction of political, social, economic, andcultural enclaves within Israel.67Most recently, the ongoing absence of Arab political gains generateddemands for cultural and religious autonomy and to turn Israel into a"state of all its citizens." In the Israeli ethnocratic setting these basic-

62. According to our index of protest intensity, land and planning issues were the basisfor 33 percent of Arab protest, socioeconomic grievances for 28 percent, and Palestiniannational issues for 38 percent.63. See Eli Rekhes, "Yisraelim akhrei hakol" (Israelis after all), Panim (Faces) 5 (1998):96-101, and Smooha, "Israelisation of Collective Identity and the Political Orientation ofthe Palestinian Citizens of Israel: A Re-Examination," in Ha-'arvimba-politikah a-Yisre'elit:dilemot helzuhut (The Arabs in Israeli politics: dilemmas of identity), ed. Rekhes (Tel Aviv,1998).64. See Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens n an EthnicJewishState,and Ghanem, "State andMinority in Israel."65. See Yiftachel, "Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation."66. See Azmi Bishara, "Alshe'elat hamiu't Hafalestini beyisrael" (On the question ofthe Palestinian minority in Israel), Te'oryaUvikkoret(Theory and critique) 3 (1993): 7-20.67. See Lustick, "The Political Road to Binationalism: Arabs in Jewish Politics,"in TheEmergenceof a Binational Israel:The SecondRepublic n the Making, ed. Ilan Peleg and OfiraSeliktar (Boulder, Colo., 1989), pp. 97-124.



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CriticalInquiry Summer2000 749even banal--democratic demands harbor genuine dissent against a mono-cultural state that often privileges worldJewry over the state'sArab citizens.They have generally caused aggressive Jewish reaction, bordering onpanic, illustrating the obvious gap between Israel's self-representation asa democracy and its ethnocratic reality. Mainstream Israeli Jewish dis-course (of both right- and left-wing parties) has quickly painted the de-mands as radical and subversive. Take, for instance, the recent argumentof Avraham Burg, a Labor MP considered to be a leftist and known forhis propeace activities. In the following statement Burg marks the simplecivic demands as dangerous and raises the shadows of anti-Semitic perse-cutions:

The demands to turn Israel into a state of all its citizens are symp-tomatic of the persistent desire by the Arabs, since 1948, to under-mine the Zionist idea, which, we must remember, comes hard on theheels of generations of Jewish persecutions in the Diaspora. We arenot a normal nation because the majority of Jews live outside theironly state; we therefore cannot become a state of all its citizens, orrisk losing the moral meaning of our state.68

Against this prevailing attitude, the Arab collective entity has devel-oped what can be conceptualized as a "region"in Israel. This is a politicaland spatial entity that lies between local and state levels and combinesthe various Arab localities into a statewide ethnic and political commu-nity. This region is formulated as a clear site of resistance to the order ofthings in Israel, but it is also a painful reminder of the Arabs' inability tointegrate, significantly change, or secede from the state.69It is graduallydeveloping through a crisis-riddled process, during which the PalestinianArabs in Israel are being shunned by both mainstream Israelis and Pal-estinians. The region resembles a "chain of beads," based on the deephistorical roots of Palestinian Arabs in their actual localities and theirhomeland, but also on the common memory of dispossession and depri-vation suffered within the Israeli state, which amplifies the meaning of(the remaining) Arab places and localities.70 This mixture of steadfastnessand militancy with cynicism, irony, and confusion, reflecting the natureof the new Arab spaces within Israel, is strongly in evidence in the lyricsto "Nazareth," a poem written as the first part of a trilogy by a leading

68. Kol Yisrael, 5 Oct. 1999.69. The option of secession, or joining a future Palestinian state, has not even beenaired or articulated seriously among the Arabs, who generally perceive it as unfeasible andundesirable. See Smooha, ArabsandJews in Israel.70. For enlightening discussions on the symbolism of Palestinian dispossession in theirpolitical mobilization, see Dan Rabinowitz, "The Common Memory of Loss: Political Mobili-zation among Palestinian Citizens of Israel,"Journal of AnthropologicalResearch 50 (1994):27-49, and Ahmad H. Sa'di, "Minority Resistance to State Control: Towards a Re-Analysisof Palestinian Political Activity in Israel,"SocialIdentities2 (Oct. 1996): 395-412.



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750 OrenYiftachel "Ethnocracy"nd Its DiscontentsPalestinian Arab politician and poet, the late Tuwafik Ziyyad, who wasmayor of the Galilee city of Nazareth at the time of writing (1989):

We guard the shades of our figsWe guard the trunks of our olivesWe sew our hopes like the yeast of breadWith ice in our fingersWith red hell in our hearts ...If we are thirsty, we shall be quenched by the rocksAnd if we are hungry, we shall be fed by the dust ...And we shall not moveBecause here we have past, presentAnd future.DevelopmentTowns

In comparison to the Palestinian Arab sector, the scene of public pro-test in Israel's development towns has been less volatile.7 Most eventshave been local, although the Development Towns Forum-a statewidevoluntary body of mayors-has also been active in coordinating and pro-moting many events and issues.72Levels of protest in the towns have been persistent, if not spectacular.It achieved notable presence in national politics and carved a permanentniche for peripheral Mizrahim in the policy-making scene. The protestfed on pervasive feelings of neglec

ethnocracy" and its discontents: minorities, protests, and the israeli polity

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