ABSTRACT
Citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and minority are four categories in a taxonomy of the Israeli national, though their uneasy fit with one another continues to be worked out. The State shaped the categories of citizenship (ezrakhout) and nationality. Over the years, nationality has been developed as the taxonomic strategy to differentiate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Citizenship is legal membership in the State. Citizenship in the modern democratic state is an egalitarian idea – in principle each individual citizen is the equal of every other. In Israel, the State divides its citizens among categories of nationality. As a monothetic legal category, citizenship accords perfectly with the forming qualities of bureaucratic logic. With limited exceptions, one either is or is not a member of the state. Though citizenship may be elaborated in ways beyond the legal, it bolts the individual to the state, to its legal apparatus, to its rules and regulations.
