Lana Tatour prompted Israeli leaders to enfranchise Palestinians.53 Pursuing an image of a normal democratic state that enjoys the consent of its native minority, Israel made sure to highlight to international audiences the Palestinians’ electoral participation of Palestinians and to showcase the elected Arab members of the Knesset.54 Importantly, enfranchising Palestinians allowed Israel to claim that it was fulfilling its obligation to safeguard equality under the 1947 UN Partition Plan and to push back against international pressure to permit the return of refugees.55 While the desire to succeed in its second UN bid was important, other geopolitical considerations of territory and sovereignty also played a role in Israel’s decision to extend voting rights to Palestinians. Arab suffrage, the discussions among Israel’s leaders reveal, was instrumental to the making of Jewish sovereignty. The head of the Foreign Office’s Middle East division, Yaacov Shimoni, and the prime minister’s adviser on Arab Affairs, Joshua Palmon, objected to enfranchisement, fearing that it would encourage integration. They warned: “Enfranchising the Arabs will strengthen their feeling of citizenship. They will demand restitution of property, many will return, claim freedom of movement—all these are undesirable.”56 While most ministers supported enfranchisement, Bechor-Shalom Shitrit, the Minister of Minorities’ Affairs, argued during a cabinet meeting that Arab suffrage contravened Jewish interest, since borders were yet to be defined. This argument would be repeated in subsequent debates about whether Israel should pursue the enactment of a citizenship law. Mobilizing international law to make his claim, Shitrit asked: “Would anyone dare to consider that England would include residents of her administered territories in her parliament?”57 To that, Felix Rosenblueth (later known as Pinchas Rosen), the justice minister, replied: “We have done something that perhaps contravenes international law: we applied the state laws on the administered territories. Therefore, we have an obligation to hold the elections also in these territories.”58 Rosenblueth and the other ministers understood what Shitrit and state clerks had missed: that the question of suffrage was intimately tied to the question of territory and sovereignty. By applying Israeli law in the territories (especially in parts of the Galilee) that the international community had not yet acknowledged as part of the Jewish state, and by holding elections and giving Palestinians in those territories voting rights, Israel kept the question of territory and borders open. In effect, the state advanced international recognition of its 19 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3533490