116 chapter three national minorities. In this sense, the liberal-Zionist account of the hospitable Jewish state as “a home into which the Other [in this case, the Palestinian-Arab citizen] can be welcomed,” is more accurately conceptualized as an exercise of hostipitality. Here, Israeli hostipitality combines hospitality towards and welcoming of the Other and, simultaneously, hostility towards the Other. As such, Palestinian-Arabs are only welcomed, in a state where Jews are the masters of the land, as a socio-politically inferior and legally unrecognized collective. The institutional and structural makeup of the Israeli regime keeps the Arab community in the periphery of the workings of the regime, effectively preventing the equal integration of the two populations into a single society. The questions of ‘who is the guest’ and ‘who is the host’ remain unanswered. As it stands, Jewish-Israelis assume the role of the host or the master of the house (a house which has, particularly since 1967, continued to grow exponentially) through economic control, legal manipulation, political blockade, and military force and occupation. This Jewish-Israeli status of ‘host’ is maintained and reinforced in a hostile fashion quite appropriate to Derrida’s analysis, helping to account for the intensifying socio-political instability between the two collectives. In the case of the Palestinian-Arab citizenry, the community of Arabs within the State of Israel, the question of ‘who is the guest’ and ‘who is the host’, is an interesting and effective tool for conceptualizing the broader conflicting relationship between Palestinian-Arabs and Jews. As Derrida’s analysis indicates, that both populations lay claim to indigenous status – deeming themselves as host and the Other as guest – renders them both historically and politically tied to one another. Acceptance of Jewish-Israeli dominance in the land is necessary for its continued reproduction, because prior to the extension of the welcome lies an assurance of the sovereignty of the host over the space opened up to the guest. But in a situation where this reassurance is not provided by the ‘Palestinian guest’ (or not expressed in the manner preferred by the ‘Jewish host’), it must be extracted through other mechanisms. In the case of Israel, such mechanisms can include legally enforced obligations and limitations, all of which aim at some form of collective ideological, socio-cultural, and behavioural adjustment and redirection. Here one can argue that the imagined Israeli civic identity in the form of ‘Israeli-Arabness’ or ‘Arab-Israeliness’ is part and parcel of the Zionist drive to extract acceptance of the parameters of the Jewish state by its Palestinian citizenry. Derrida writes: