150 chapter five mistranslated as ‘Nationality Law’, establishes a civil status distinct from ‘Jewish nationality’.1 In effect, a relation of non-identification and rejection between PalestinianArab identity and Zionism (even in its most liberal form) emerges with constituent effects on the system of naming used to characterize Israeli identity. On this question of the development of a contradictory and deficient Palestinian social and political identity in Israel, two impressive publications deserve notice. These are Nadim Rouhana’s Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (1997) and As’ad Ghanem’s The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel: 1948–2000 (2001). As evident in the title of his book, Rouhana pays particular attention to the labels that people combine to describe their collective identity. Using a combination of survey research, archival material, first-hand interviews and news and policy reports, Rouhana, a social and political psychologist and Palestinian citizen of Israel, goes on to deconstruct the self-labelling of Palestinians in Israel. He writes: The way in which people combine the various available labels should reflect all layers of their collective identity. People who use different combinations of available labels might hold different political and social views and might have different levels of psychological connection with the political system. Therefore, even apparently slight differences in the way labels are combined might be of extreme importance to the individuals who choose the label (Rouhana 1997, 21).2 In other words, the labels of Arabs of Israel and Israeli-Arabs bestowed to the community by Israeli media, social scientists, and public figures and outside observers indicate a specific socio-cultural, legal, and political relationship with the Israeli state and society. And one that is immensely different from the kind of relationship implied when this community is defined as Arabs (or Palestinians) of 1948, the Arabs inside (Mandate Palestine, or modern Israel), or Palestinian-Israelis used by many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Rouhana 1997, 111–112). 1 United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-ninth session, Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, Mr. Miloon Kothari, on his visit to the occupied Palestinian territories, (E/ CN.4/2003/5/Add.1), June 12, 2002, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/3635 1ea8a4425f1cc1256c84003e0c84/$FILE/G0214506.pdf. It is worth adding here that Israeli civil status is not only “distinct from” but it is also inferior to that of Jewish nationality. The mechanisms of control and discrimination to which those Israeli citizens who do not have Jewish nationality are exposed and outlined in Chapter Two of this book. 2 For more on social identity and minority status see also Suleiman (2002).