The Palestinian minority in Israel: The 'challenge' of the Jewish state and its implications

Abstract

The Palestinian minority in Israel, like minorities elsewhere in the modern world, has produced a demand for personal and group equality in the State of Israel. Developments in this sphere support the descriptions of the development of other minorities in various empirical and theoretical studies of societies that are deeply split on an ethnic or national basis. Minorities struggle in various situations against discrimination in order to achieve equality with the majority. The Palestinian minority in Israel wants a change in the ethnic, Jewish-Zionist character of the state. It wants to turn the state into the state of all its citizens and also wants a collective status similar to that enjoyed by the Jews. It wants directly to influence matters affecting these citizens and future developments and the future status of the minority itself. The minority's demands are extremely revolutionary in light of the ethnic character of the state and the fact that the Jewish majority supports a continuation of this character, generally giving priority to continued discrimination against the minority. The combination of the state and the majority support for the current minority policy suggests that the Palestinians will encounter a 'challenge' of institutional and public opposition to their demands. This pushes the minority to an inevitable deeper existential distress. The appearance of clear signs of a deterioration in the minority's status is leading to a multidimensional crisis. The situation described in this article confronts the state, majority, and minority with hard decisions concerning the nature of the partnership that can satisfy the demands of the majority and aspirations of the minority.