118 chapter three of their Palestinian-Arabness. However, it is only insofar as ‘Arab’ and ‘Palestinian’ is defined as the Other or as peripheral to the Israeli social fabric that ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ can embody its centre. Useful here is the dynamic explicated by feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who writes: “It is not the centre that determines the periphery, but the periphery that, in its boundlessness, determines the centre” (Mohanty 1988, 73–74). Put differently, the identity and existence of the Arab Palestinian Other delimits, shapes and locates the identity and existence of the JewishIsraeli, so that the latter needs the former as an indicator of periphery in order to determine the location of the centre. Though writing about the latent Eurocentrism of certain feminist writings in their treatment of women in the Global South, Mohanty’s formulation illuminates Derrida’s notion that the grace of the visitor carries with it a liberationist potential for the master of the house: The master of the house ‘waits anxiously on the threshold of his home’ for the stranger he will see arising into view on the horizon as a liberator. And from the furthest distance that he sees him coming, the master will hasten to call out to him: ‘Enter quickly, as I am afraid of my happiness’ (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000, 121–123). Far from diminishing the authority of Jewish-Israelis as a host, the Zionist use of the liberal logic of integration through the identity of ‘Israeli-Arab’ reverses this liberating move to reinforce the two categories. With this, the Zionist project is able to meet its political objective of multifaceted Jewish dominance. Acceptance of an ‘Israeli-Arab’ civic identity by the Palestinian population therefore only liberates the Jewish-Israeli from the temporariness of their status as host, master of the household, and custodian of the land, and further entrenches their self-conceived indigeneity. Having posited itself as the centre, the identity of ‘Jewish-Israeli’ remains perpetually dependent on the strength, presence and trajectory of its periphery, formed by the ‘Israeli-Arab’ Other. It is only through the widespread conceptual and practical adoption of an ‘Israeli-Arab’ identity, through the embedding of a hierarchical power relation between the host and her/ his Other, that the Zionist state is liberated from the temporariness and conditionality of its own existence. In the end, the auto-immunizing and self-contradictory components of ‘Israeli-Arabness’ render its realization nonviable. Palestinian-Arab confirmation of the liberal-Zionist invitation locks their status as a guest whose presence on the land is dependent on permission, interrogation and compliance. This makes genuine Palestinian-Arab participation in the