Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel’s New Hegemony

This article focuses on the development since the second Palestinian intifada of a new consensus in Israeli Jewish society with regard to the Arab minority, which the authors call “the New Zionist Hegemony.” After describing the attitudes and beliefs undergirding the new consensus, the article focuses on four areas in which it manifests itself: legislation, government policies, public opinion, and public discourse. The result of the new policies is to change the meaning of citizenship for non-Jews in an ethnic Jewish state.

Nadim N. Rouhana is professor of sociology and psychology at Tel Aviv University and the director of the Haifa-based Arab Center for Applied Social Research-Mada. Nimer Sultany is the coordinator of the Political Monitoring Project at Mada and author of Mada's first annual political monitoring report, Citizens without Citizenship.