As'ad Ghanem

Questioning "Ethnic Democracy": A Response to Sammy Smooha

IN THIS ESSAY WE PRESENT a critique of the “ethnic democracy” model, formulated by political sociologist Sammy Smooha to account for Israel’s political structure. During the last two decades, Smooha’s voluminous work on ethnic politics in Israel has gained a central position among social scientists in Israel and beyond. His conceptual and empirical explorations of the country’s ethnic relations have laid important and insightful foundations for Israeli critical research by thoroughly documenting and explicating Israel’s pervasive ethnic stratiWcation and disparities between Jews and Palestinian-Arabs, as well as between Ashkenazi and Mizrakhi Jews. Most notably, his “ethnic democracy” model, which provides a structural account of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, has been widely accepted in recent literature on Israel. The most lucid elaboration and explication of the model was published recently on the pages of this journal. In this model, Smooha manages to combine theoretical claims about the nature of democratic states dominated by an ethnic majority, with a wealth of (mainly attitudinal) data and a new conceptualization of the Israeli case. On the theoretical level, he claims,

Citizenship and the parliamentary politics of minorities in ethnic states: The Palestinian citizens of Israel

Equal citizenship in multi‐ethnic states entails that citizens, regardless of ethnic affiliation, have equal influence on the political system through voting and other forms of political participation. Ethnic states often curb the minoritys ability to influence the ethnic political system through a variety of control mechanisms. This article examines how the ethnic Jewish character of Israel places the Palestinian minority in a political predicament and how this predicament has been reflected in their voting behaviour and parliamentary politics, particularly in the last two parliamentary elections.

The Empowering of the Israeli Extreme Right in the 18th Knesset Elections

The Israeli general elections that were held on 10 February 2009 resulted in a historical victory for the right and a vast defeat for the ‘Historical Israeli left’. The Israeli ‘extreme right’, to the right of the Likud, rejects any ‘concessions’ for the Palestinians, supports the continuation of the settlements and holds racist views against the Arabs, won 38 seats – a historical achievement since the creation of the state of Israel. While, on the other hand, the total collapse of the Israeli historical left, the Labor and Meretz parties, that together won 56 seats in 1992, only managed 16 seats in the last elections. The election results are part of a general Israeli trend where the Israeli public, elite, media and academia are moving towards the extreme right, with almost total support for punishment measures against the Palestinians. Israel, due to historical, social and cultural developments, is moving towards the ‘extreme right’; the ‘peace option’ is no longer viable. This article aims to present a critical and new assessment to the trend in Israel and to analyse the factors behind these developments.

The Palestinians in Israel: The Challenge of the Indigenous Group Politics in the ‘Jewish State'

The Palestinians in Israel are those Palestinians who remained on their land during the Nakba in 1948, and later became Israeli citizens. The political discourse of Palestinians in Israel has moved during the last two decades, since the Oslo agreement, from the individual achievements level to the politics of rights on the collective level, and to the politics of identity. This discourse is considered of utmost importance in the politics of indigenous marginalized groups within colonial entities. Similarly, it represents a change in the evolution of the political discourse of Palestinians in Israel throughout the last two decades. In the following article we will analyze the main political changes that occurred among the Palestinian minority in Israel since 1948 and the main challenges that they raise for the Palestinians in facing the “Jewish state”.

Arab Local Government in Israel: Partial Modernisation as an Explanatory Variable for Shortages in Management

Abstract About one-third of all local and regional councils in Israel are Arab. Ever since their establishment, and especially during the last decade, the Arab authorities have suffered from financial crises and from administrative and organisational deficiencies that jeopardize their functioning. Arab local politics is characterised by the increased strength of traditional clan-affiliated forces, at the expense of modern representative groups. The present article has tried to explain the problems that beset the management of Arab local government in Israel. We believe that the explanation is rooted in the fact that ‘partial modernisation’ is the dominant explanatory variable for Arab local government shortages.

Understanding Ethnic Minority Demands: A New Typology

The development of demands advanced by ethnic minorities has received broad coverage in the scholarly literature on divided societies. Current literature offers models that predict a radicalization of minority demands as the result of diverse factors, including modernization processes, discrimination, and a mother countrys support for the minoritys demands. The present article offers an alternative approach, one that combines the type of minority with the type of regime as fundamental elements that shape a minoritys demands. The model presented in this article distinguishes between four situations in which minorities might find themselves: an indigenous minority living in a democratic regime; an immigrant minority living in a democratic regime; an indigenous minority living in an ethnocratic regime, and an immigrant minority living in an ethnocratic regime. The demands that a minority will develop in these different situations range along an axis from radical to moderate and from secession to integration on the basis of equality in a reconstituted state. As part of my analysis, I cite several examples of minority demands across the world.

Strategies of electoral participation by Islamic movements: the Muslim Brotherhood and parliamentary elections in Egypt and Jordan, November 2010

Most scholarly and public perceptions and analyses of political Islam are beset by prejudice and misunderstandings. Political Islam movements are presented as irrational and obstinate, stubbornly refusing to change despite the circumstances with rigid beliefs and political tactics with an anti-democratic orientation. This article argues that the relationship between political Islam and democracy as a whole, and its participation in the political process in the modern state, are expressions of the unique situation of each Islamic political movement and its leaders. Islamic political movements actually take a wide range of positions on democracy and have diverse approaches to participation in elections. This stems from their unique relationship with the regime and the state.

The 2015 Israeli General Election: The Triumph of Jewish Skepticism, the Emergence of Arab Faith

Abstract: The results of the 2015 Israeli election, primarily the sweeping victory of Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, surprised most analysts. In this article we employ political scientist Michael Oakeshott’s distinction in arguing that the campaign dynamics and the consequent electoral results reflect the triumph of a “politics of skepticism” among Jews, and the emergence of a “politics of faith” among Israel’s Arab-Palestinian citizens. Both derive from a combination of external and domestic circumstances and their effective exploitation by charismatic political leaders.

Democracy and distributiveness: patterns of transition from hegemony in divided societies

Many culturally heterogeneous societies with functioning democratic regimes nonetheless fail to grant equal status to different ethnic and cultural groups within their borders. To a great extent, scholars discuss such inequalities within the analytical boundaries of the discourse on democracy and democratization. We argue that such discussions overstretch the concept of democracy. In this research, we offer a novel axis of inquiry, namely distributiveness. We define distributiveness as the egalitarian distribution of resources – political, material, cultural-symbolic, institutional, and territorial – among different ethnic, religious, or cultural groups which self-identify as collectives within society. The aim of this new conceptualization is to (1) restore conceptual clarity to the literature on democracy, (2) enhance our capacity to assess the allocation of resources within a given polity, and (3) elucidate the processes that lead to change in patterns of allocation.

The Israeli negotiation strategy under Netanyahu: settlement without reconciliation

Purpose – This article aims to analyse the Israeli negotiation strategy in reference to the theoretical frameworks of reconciliation and settlement. It focuses on the Israeli‐Palestinian negotiation experience over the past three years, or since Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of the Israeli Government in 2009.Design/methodology/approach – Theoretical literature provides two hypothetical frameworks for resolution of conflicts: a political settlement; and reconciliation between parties to the conflict. This article argues that Israels vision of conflict resolution effectively attempts to integrate both hypothetical frameworks by proposing a political settlement for Palestinians in return for obtaining reconciliation from them. To analyse this strategy, this article explores the Israeli political discourse over the past three years, as well as Israels vision of the conflict resolution as is manifest in this discourse.Findings – The article argument is based on the indication that willingness of a par...