ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to answer these questions following an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that has conceded to the demands of an Israeli Arab organization to use Hebrew-Arabic bilingual signs in all public domains in four Jewish-Arab mixed cities. The ruling effectively requires the 'bilingualization' of public signs under the jurisdiction of these municipalities. The chapter is based on a series of interviews with decision-makers in the relevant cities and at the national level, supplemented by relevant public texts and additional public discourse resources. The linguistic landscape (LL) studies have revealed the power relations between social groups and the various interests of each group, as well as highlighted the societal cleavages that stem from struggles over collective identities and ideologies. City decision-makers do not regard Arabic's status as a co-official language of Israel as relevant policy dictum in determining criteria for language treatment on municipal signs.
