The Palestinian minority in Israel: The 'challenge' of the Jewish state and its implications

The Palestinian minority in Israel, like minorities elsewhere in the modern world, has produced a demand for personal and group equality in the State of Israel. Developments in this sphere support the descriptions of the deve lopment of other minorities in various empirical and theoretical studies of societies that are deeply split on an ethnic or national basis. Minorities struggle in various situations against discrimination in order to achieve equality with the majority. The Palestinian minority in Israel wants a chan ge in the ethnic, Jewish-Zionist character of the state. It wants to turn t he state into the state of all its citizens and also wants a collective sta tus similar to that enjoyed by the Jews. It wants directly to influence mat ters affecting these citizens and future developments and the future status of the minority itself The minority's demands are extremely revolutionary in light of the ethnic character of the state and the fact that the Jewish majority supports a continuation of this character, generally giving priori ty to continued discrimination against the minority. The combination of the state and the majority support for the current minority policy suggests th at the Palestinians will encounter a 'challenge' of institutional and publi c opposition to their demands. This pushes the minority to an inevitable de eper existential distress. The appearance of clear signs of a deterioration in the minority's status is leading to a multidimensional crisis. The situ ation described in this article confronts the state, majority, and minority with hard decisions concerning the nature of the partnership that can sati sfy the demands of the majority and aspirations of the minority.