introduction21 nomenclature,­there is no possibility in a Jewish state for an Israeli nationality. Israel is a Jewish state, and the Jewish state becomes a state of the Jewish people. Citizenship in a Jewish state becomes Jewish citizenship. And nationalism in a Jewish state becomes Jewish nationalism. Taken together, this dynamic is shown to have three profound effects on Arab development, inclusion and identity. First, the development of a contradictory and deficient Palestinian social and political identity in Israel results in a situation where both Arabs and Jews have an incomplete and deficient Israeli collective identity, albeit in different ways. Second, contradictions in the Israeli incorporation regime make it conceptually, ­politically, and legally impossible to define the Israeli nation, or Israeli nationality. This prevents Arab citizens from developing any genuine identification with Israeli society. Here I outline several legal petitions, repeatedly rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court, which requested the legal and political definition and formation of an ‘Israeli’ nation separate from a ‘Jewish’ nation. As I explain, the Court’s consistent refusal to legally define an ‘Israeli’ nation is fuelled by the understanding that any conceptual separation between ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jewish’ would have juridico-political repercussions for the entrenchment of Jewish control within the state. And third, contradictions in the country’s incorporation regime make it impossible for Arabs in Israel to have and practice citizenship in any meaningful way. The chapter outlines a sample of the notable social science research conducted on Arabs in Israel, and compares their respective and various formulations of Arab citizenship and its dynamics and relations of exception. This body of critical scholarship is shown to deconstruct the internal contradictions and paradoxes that emerge, both conceptually and in practice, with the state’s provision of Israeli citizenship to Palestinians on the one hand, and with its unabridged fusing of ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jewish’ identity and nationhood on the other. The chapter ends by pointing out that the above academic literature has largely focused on the question of what Palestinian citizenship entails or lacks, rather than asking how the space for Palestinian citizenship has been (re)shaped. The concept of stateless citizenship is therefore introduced as part of an answer to the question of how Palestinian citizenship came to embody its existing exclusionary dynamics. Together, the first five chapters of the book show that the mechanisms of control and exclusion developing out of the Zionist incorporation regime shape both the changing settler-colonial boundaries of the Israeli polity and, by extension, its hierarchical citizenship framework. At a fundamental level, and despite their citizenship status, the Palestinian