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9 Toward Fulfilling the Right to Be Included: The Arabs' Future in a Binational Palestinian-Israeli State The distress of the Arab citizens of Israel is epitomized in the fact that they are, at one and the same time, partial Israelis and partial Palestinians ; that is, both their Israeli and Palestinian identities are incomplete. In the present circumstances, neither their Israeli identity nor their Palestinian identity can be full and comprehensive. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of the collective identity of the Arab citizens of Israel (Rouhana 1997). On the one hand, the Arabs in Israel are officially citizens of the state. But their Israeli identity does not exist in the core of their collective identity, as a sense of psychological belonging and emotional sympathy . Israel was established with a Jewish-Zionist character to be the state of the Jewish people. Its objectives, symbols, and policy are built on that foundation and on denying the existence of a Palestinian national minority within its borders. This situation was made worse by the adoption of amendment 9 to the Basic Law: the Knesset, in 1985, whereby "a candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include ... negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the sate of the Jewish people."! Not only does this situation engender discrimination against the Arabs on the day-to-day level and undercut even the theoretical possibility of their attaining equality with the Jews, because of the need to give the Jews a feeling of primacy over others in their own state; in practice it leaves the Arabs in Israel, legally and officially, without a formal setting defined as their state and prevents the emergence ~£ a liberal Israeli identity that could embrace the Arabs as well-analogous to the French, English, and American identities. The Israeli identity incorporates significant elements of Judaism and the Jewish heritage, so 175 9 Toward Fulfilling the Right to Be Included: The Arabs' Future in a Binational Palestinian-Israeli State The distress of the Arab citizens of Israel is epitomized in the fact that they are, at one and the same time, partial Israelis and partial Palestinians ; that is, both their Israeli and Palestinian identities are incomplete. In the present circumstances, neither their Israeli identity nor their Palestinian identity can be full and comprehensive. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of the collective identity of the Arab citizens of Israel (Rouhana 1997). On the one hand, the Arabs in Israel are officially citizens of the state. But their Israeli identity does not exist in the core of their collective identity, as a sense of psychological belonging and emotional sympathy . Israel was established with a Jewish-Zionist character to be the state of the Jewish people. Its objectives, symbols, and policy are built on that foundation and on denying the existence of a Palestinian national minority within its borders. This situation was made worse by the adoption of amendment 9 to the Basic Law: the Knesset, in 1985, whereby "a candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include ... negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the sate of the Jewish people."l Not only does this situation engender discrimination against the Arabs on the day-to-day level and undercut even the theoretical possibility of their attaining equality with the Jews, because of the need to give the Jews a feeling of primacy over others in their own state; in practice it leaves the Arabs in Israel, legally and officially, without a formal setting defined as their state and prevents the emergence ~£ a liberal Israeli identity that could embrace the Arabs as well-analogous to the French, English, and American identities. The Israeli identity incorporates significant elements of Judaism and the Jewish heritage, so 175 176 The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel. HHB-2000 that only Jews can adopt it in full and become Israelis-a process experienced by most of the Jews who have immigrated to Israel since its independence. It is clear that the Arabs cannot be Israelis in the full sense of the word as defined as a stream. This relegates them to the margins of Israeli identity or leaves them only partial Israelis. Until 1948, the Arabs in what became Israel were developing as part of the Palestinian and Arab national movement. The involuntary parting of ways engendered...

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