CHAPTER THREE ISRAELI HOSTIPITALITY Write down ! I am an Arab And my identity card number is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth will come after a summer Does this anger you? Write down! I am an Arab Employed with fellow workers at a quarry I have eight children I get them bread Garments and books from the rocks… I do not supplicate charity at your doors Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber Does this anger you? … (Mahmoud Darwish, Identity Card, 1964) The liberal concept of hospitality is formed by an undecidability argues Jacques Derrida, which simultaneously combines the assertion of a home whose host both welcomes the Other and imposes conditions of a certain hostility towards the Other. Derrida reveals elements of mastery that condition hospitality, asserting that “it gives, it offers, it holds out, but what it gives, offers, holds out, is the greeting which comprehends and makes or lets come into one’s home, folding the foreign Other into the internal law of the host” (Derrida 2000, 7). In other words, the greeting of the host (or one who receives the Other) is only bestowed on the condition of an affirmation, and therefore maintenance, of her/his authority and the law of her/his household. That such an arrangement is requisite to the concept of hospitality is of particular importance when applied to the way state–minority relations and models of accommodation and integration are arranged. Further, as ambiguities and inconsistencies accompany minority categorizations, the recognition and application of these designations are of immense