ABSTRACT
Israeli citizenship, as defined in its declaration of independence, promises equality regardless of religion, gender or nationality.1 To override this proclamation of equality, the Israeli nation-state devised a system of differentiated citizenship in order to distinguish between several classes of citizens, similar in concept to the Brazilian system described by Holston:
Israel’s system of differentiated citizenship has been discussed through the lens of ethnicity (Yiftachel, 2006), and social class has been framed extensively as a marker of ethnicity in scholarly and popular debate (Yiftachel, 2006; Yacobi, 2007b; AharonGutman, 2014). Aspects of Israel’s differentiated citizenship have been the focus of studies of the consequences of Israeli statehood for various publics vis à vis access to education, positions of power in society and cultural marginalization (Svirsky, 1981; Shohat, 1988; Shadar, 2006). This chapter argues, however, that one’s class of Israeli citizenship is based primarily on one’s access to ‘proper’ housing, manifest to a great extent in housing architecture.
