Introduction

This is the theoretical and political paradox that intrigued me and led me to write this book. It is a paradox because the existence of recognized borders for a nation-state, which define the equal citizens of the state, is a precondition of democracy. The majority of Israelis do not recognize the borders of their own state, although they consider it a “Jewish democracy” – a term that ignores the civil and political rights of the Palestinians under military occupation and economic domination, and ignores the formal and informal discrimination of Palestinian citizens within the imagined borders of the “sovereign” state, namely the preoccupation borders between 1949 and 1967 – the so-called Green Line1 (Smooha, 1993).