from citizenship to stateless citizenship157 ultra-Orthodox students – a clear case of inequality. Barak declared, rather clumsily, that ‘there is room for the idea that a law or Basic Law that denies Israel’s character as Jewish or democratic state is unconstitutional’. Many experts interpreted this to mean that the High Court could abolish a law, or even a Basic Law, if it impairs Israel’s Jewish character, even if equality is at stake. …. Indeed, to protect the Jewishness of Israel, the Knesset could do pretty much what it wanted (Avishai 2008, 56–57). Similarly, and as previously mentioned, in August 2011 the subservience of Israel’s democratic character and the equality of its citizens to the state’s self-definition as a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ was proposed as a new Basic Law. Backed by Members of Israel’s eighteenth Knesset, representing a range of political parties from both the opposition and the ruling coalition, this new proposed legislation would change the existing definition of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” to its definition as “the national home for the Jewish people.” Should the two identities conflict, this new Basic Law instructs the courts to trump the Jewish character of the state over its democratic principles, and can only be amended through the passing of another Basic Law in its place.13 The refocus of the Israeli political and legal establishment on preserving the Jewishness of the state has recently been met with a similar international refocus on the same. Journalist and writer Jonathan Cook explains that in May 2011, American President Barak Obama became the first US president to formally affirm Israel’s self-definition as ‘a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people’.14 In July of the same year the New York Times reported that the Obama Administration is “currently working behind the scenes to press key allies to adopt a formula that would call on Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations on the basis of the 1967-lines and—for the first time in Mideast peacemaking—spell out international expectations that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”15 What comes to the fore here is that an issue absent from both the 1993 Oslo Accords that set into motion the diplomatic process for a two-state settlement and the failed 2000 Camp David Summit, and which was first introduced only at the 2007 Annapolis Conference, has now risen to the level of other long-standing and internationally 13 Lis, “Lawmakers seek to drop Arabic as one of Israel’s official languages.” 14 Jonathan Cook, “Israel’s Jewishness: Precondition for Palestinian statehood,” Al-Akhbar English, October 07, 2011, http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israel%E2%80% 99s-jewishness-precondition-palestinian-statehood. 15 Yonatan Touval, “Israel’s identity crisis,” New York Times, July 29, 2011, http://www .nytimes.com/2011/07/30/opinion/30iht-edtouval30.html.