Towards a Post-Citizenship Society? A Report from the Front

Abstract

Modern citizenship has been characterized by three essential features: membership in a political community that transcends all other memberships a person might have, and that entails some degree of mutual responsibility between all members; a certain level of equality of rights guaranteed to all who are considered citizens; and an executive limited by the rule of law. In recent years, the combination of neo-liberal economic policies, which have seriously undermined social rights, and the global “war on terror”, which has tarnished the protection of civil and political rights, may be leading towards a post-citizenship society in Western liberal democracies. To illustrate this argument this paper examines the case of Israel, traditionally considered a strong state, with a robust form of citizenship based on an ethno-republican discourse. While a Jewish state by self-definition, and therefore not a liberal democracy, Israel respected the citizenship rights of its Jewish citizens, and since 1966 of its Palestinian citizens as well, although not to the same degree. However, since the mid-1980s economic liberalization has resulted in the decline of the institutions safeguarding social rights and the liberal high court has failed to protect them. With the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, the civil rights of the Palestinian citizens began to be encroached upon, and pressure has been building on their political rights as well. Finally, the state's shirking of its responsibility for social rights reached a crisis proportion with its utter failure to care for the needs of the residents of northern Israel during the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Notes

¹ A much more radical thesis, that Israel actually drives US policy in the Middle East, was offered by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two highly respected American scholars of international relations (Mearsheimer & Walt, 2006). For my argument I don't need to assess the validity of their thesis.

² For the views of the proponents of the law I will rely primarily on the interim report of the academic committee appointed to prepare the permanent version of the law (Advisory Committee, 2006), and on a law review essay written by the committee's chair and its secretary (Rubinstein & Orgad, 2006). For the views of the opponents of the law I will rely primarily on Davidov et al. (2005).

³ In a famous case related to this law that came before the HCJ, where one of the couple seeking unification was Jewish and the other one Palestinian, Justice Mishael Cheshin suggested to the couple that they live together in the West Bank.

⁴ HCJ (2006); Advisory Committee (2006, p. 5); Association for Civil Rights in Israel (http://www.acri.org.il/english-acri/engine/story.asp?id = 255).

⁵ Changes in the Gini coefficient do not tell the whole story, of course, since it measures only wages and salaries, not capital gain income.

⁶ http://trade.walla.co.il, 16 March 2004.

⁷ In early 2004 Moody's rating service declared the economic policy of the Sharon government to be the best in Israel's history: http://news.walla.co.il, 15 March 2004.

⁸ As I was putting the final touches on this paper, it was reported that the British government was considering asking university teachers to spy on their Moslem students (Dodd, 2006). In the US an organization called Campus Watch has long been asking students to spy on their Middle Eastern studies professors.