from citizenship to stateless citizenship155 formally – and even equally – incorporate a non-Jewish collective within the self-definition and self-understanding of the state that renders Tamarin’s petition a danger to the existing Zionist consensus. Though put forth by a Jewish citizen concerned with the state’s hegemony over personal status, the petition simultaneously and acutely points to the absence of any meaningful Israeli citizenship for the non-Jewish Arab community within the state. Understanding this, we come to learn that the accusation of separatism by Justice Agranat is not inconsistent with the Zionist foundations of the State of Israel. This is because its language, conceptual framework and practices eternally fuse Israel with the Jewish people; both within and outside of its ‘formal’ borders. As it stands, Israel remains the only recognized state in the world whose citizens do not constitute its nationals. In fact, although the Interior Ministry includes 137 nationalities in its list of recognized designations for Israeli citizens, including Assyrian, Albanian, Burmese, Hong Konger, Samaritan, and even Hebrew, it denies its citizens an ‘Israeli’ nationality.8 The Israeli government has even gone so far as to create nationalities that are not recognized outside of Israel including ‘Arab’, ‘Druze’ and ‘Unknown’ to evade the formation of an ‘Israeli’ nationality.9 Tamarin’s initiative has been reawakened in recent years. In December 2003, thirty-eight signatories mainly composed of Jewish-Israelis but also including some Arab citizens submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice asking it to “order the Ministry of the Interior to inscribe their nationality as Israeli in the population registry” (Avishai 2008, 54). Though unsuccessful, the petition put forth by this group of academics, and social, cultural and political figures urged the formation of a more inclusive nationality that does not simply privilege Jewish members of Israeli society over their non-Jewish counterparts. This request again resurfaced in 2008 when a similar group of Arab and Jewish citizens, including former Members of Knesset, submitted a petition challenging the state’s refusal to recognize an ‘Israeli’ nationality. Here they argued that an ‘Israeli’ nation was simultaneously created with the establishment of the Israeli state. Headed by retired professor Uzi Ornan, the petition argued that the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, its Declaration of Independence, also distinguished between the ‘Jewish nation’ within Israel and the ‘Jewish nation’ abroad. The former collective was to “establish the state and 8 Jonathan Cook, “Why There Are No ‘Israelis’ in the Jewish State,” Dissident Voice, April 6, 2010, http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/04/why-there-are-no-israelis-in-the-jewish-state/. 9 Cook 2006, 15–17.