ABSTRACT
Arab-Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their vulnerable citizenship status for two main complementary reasons. The first is that Arab citizenship in Israel is viewed selectively by the state authorities and leadership. It is also increasingly conceived as contradictory to their national affiliation to the Arab-Palestinian community, something that is leading to the widely propagated formula of “no citizenship without loyalty” promoted by a central Israeli party in the current Israeli government. The second is that Arab citizenship in Israel is not fully respected by state authorities and is not translated into policies that address the genuine needs of the Arab-Palestinians. This process of dissatisfaction with citizenship status has led a rising number of Arab-Palestinian intellectuals and politicians to seek to reframe the Arab struggle for equality and to refocus their search for full citizenship in Israel by emphasizing the obligation of the state to recognize them as an indigenous national minority that deserves rights beyond citizenship status (Jamal 2009a, 2005a; Bishara 1993). The reframing is a gradual and dialectical process that has reached various peaks in the last few decades, one of which was the creation of the future vision documents, published by a number of Arab-Palestinian NGOs between December 2006 and May 2007. In this context, indigeneity as a basic characteristic of the Arab-Palestinian community located in its historical framework, which precedes the state, is becoming a central political formula promoted by the political, civic and intellectual leadership of the community. Indigenous rights are being constructed as a central legitimizing principle, in addition to citizenship, for Arab collective rights within the State of Israel (Jabareen 2001). Indigenous rights entail confronting past wrong-doings, especially the process of material and cultural dispossession, as well as solving the problem of internally displaced refugees.
