ARTICLES
CITZENSHIP AS DOMINATION:
SETTLER COLONIALISM AND THE MAKING OF
PALESTINIAN CITIZENSHIP IN ISRAEL
By Lana Tatour
During the 1948 war, over two thirds of the Palestinian population became
refugees. A small, defeated minority remained in what became the state of
Israel. It is no secret that the state did not want these Palestinians. As the
Zionist adage goes, Israel wanted the dowry (the land) but not the bride (the
Palestinian people).1 The adage holds true to this day.
Beginning with the establishment of Israel and continuing until 1966,
the Israeli state subjected Palestinians in territories under Israeli control to
a Military Government regime and an elaborate system of surveillance.2 At
the same time, Israel extended suffrage and then citizenship to some, but
not all, of those Palestinians. Despite the award of citizenship, the Israeli
state did not regard Palestinians as indigenous to the space or as natural
subjects of rights.
This view of Palestinians has not changed. In 2018, seventy years after
the establishment of the Jewish state, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset,
adopted the Basic Law: Israel—the Nation-State of the Jewish People, also
known as the Nation-State Law. The law, which enjoys constitutional status,
Lana Tatour is the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellow
at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
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Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3533490