Jewish/Palestinian Self-Determination and Citizenship in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

The paper presents distinction I worked out in great detail in my book A Political Theory for Jewish People: Three Zionist Narratives (Hebrew, 2013, submitted for publication in English) among three versions of Zionism. Mainstream Jewish and Israeli politics are based on Zionism under two conceptions of this ideology. The first is proprietary. According to this conception, Zionism initiated physical repossession of land and of political entity which Jews had owned since antiquity. This ownership has allegedly not lapsed despite physical separation between Jews and their land. The second mainstream conception of Zionism is hierarchical. It is based on hegemonic interpretation of universal right that peoples have to self-determination. According to this conception, right to self-determination is right to a state whose institutions and official public culture are linked to particular national group [and which…] puts those citizens who are not members of preferred [group…] at disadvantage. [Ruth Gavison, the Jews' Right to Statehood: A Defense, Azure 15 (2003), 74-75.] The paper explains main arguments which proponents of these two versions of Zionism invoke in order to support their interpretation of this ideology and explicate their implications regarding citizenship and self-determination in Israel/Palestine. It then proposes third interpretation of Zionism, an egalitarian one. This version of Zionism, which I argued for in A Just Zionism, falls between two mainstream conceptions mentioned above, and on other hand, post-Zionist critique of notion of a Jewish and democratic state.