Lana Tatour the time had one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy thousand Palestinian inhabitants, if an international agreement offered it to Israel. Ben Gurion had no hesitation: the answer was an unequivocal “yes.”76 While some cabinet members, such as Moshe Sharett, the minister of foreign affairs, and Dov Yosef, the minister of agriculture, feared an increase in the number of Palestinians, Ben Gurion saw the big picture. He knew that as long as formal citizenship did not exist, residence did not necessarily translate into suffrage or citizenship, and suffrage did not necessarily mean citizenship. Creating a vulnerable status for the Palestinians under Israeli rule was his guiding principle. For Ben Gurion, Jewish citizenship was not really in question; he considered and treated the Jewish population as citizens. As for the Palestinians, Ben Gurion wanted their status to remain a matter of administrative—and preferably military—discretion. Preserving that discretion was the main motivation behind his decision to disestablish the Ministry of Minorities Affairs nine months after it had been formed.77 Ben Gurion did not want a ministerial overseer. He sought to keep Palestinians in a liminal position between law and lawlessness, governed by a state of temporariness. As long as Israel was expanding territorially and as long as the question of borders remained open, Ben Gurion sought flexibility. Citizenship, he recognized, could provide protections that would make scenarios of future expulsion more complicated, if not almost impossible. Despite Ben Gurion’s objection, the government decided to bring the bill to a vote. It passed by the thin margin of six to five, demonstrating the issue’s contentiousness.78 Citizenship, however, was not constituted as an inclusionary measure. At the same time, it was more than an exclusionary measure.79 The decision to form an Israeli citizenship was guided by the desire to solidify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The same aspiration drove both the opponents and the proponents of a citizenship law: to limit the number of Palestinians in Israel. They differed only on whether a citizenship law would advance or hinder this goal. Opponents of the citizenship law shared Ben Gurion’s position, while proponents argued that leaving the citizenship question unresolved would jeopardize Jewish demographic superiority. This lacuna in the law, they feared, could inhibit rather than facilitate the deportation of Palestinians. It could also invite the court’s interference, creating legal precedent that might impede the war on infiltration.80 Citizenship, the law’s proponents stressed, would cement 23 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3533490