Whose Republic: Citizenship and Membership in the Israeli Polity Symposium 13 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 1998-1999

13 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 233 (1998-1999)
Whose Republic: Citizenship and Membership in the Israeli Polity

handle is hein.journals/geoimlj13 and id is 243 raw text is: WHOSE REPUBLIC?: CITIZENSHIP AND
MEMBERSHIP IN THE ISRAELI POLITY
AYELET SHACHAR*
I. INTRODUCTION
Citizenship means drawing borders: between peoples, between states,
between insiders and outsiders. Citizens assume their positions because of
their legal status, their shared history, or their sense of identity. For a variety
of historical reasons the constituency of such a group may be distinctly
heterogeneous. In Israel, a land of immigrants, roughly 80% of the citizenry
is Jewish and 20% is Palestinian Arab.' A significant number of the Jewish
Israeli citizens are foreign-born. In 1996, for example, following the large
influx of Jews born in the former Soviet Union, approximately 38% of the
Jewish population in Israel (1.75 million) had been born outside the country.2
In other words, one in every three Israelis was an immigrant. By way of
comparison, according to the United States Census Bureau, in 1997 nearly
one in ten residents of the United States (25.8 million) was foreign-born,3
and that is in the context of one of the largest immigration waves in United
States history.
In the words of Rogers Brubaker, citizenship is a powerful instrument of
social closure.,4 In Israel, immigration also serves as an important strategy
in the project of nation-building,5 and a means to affect the demographic
balance between Jews and non-Jews occupying the land.6 Like any other
* Senior Research Associate, Yale Law School. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the
Carnegie International Migration Project Comparative Citizenship Conference, Airlie Center, Virginia,
June 4-7, 1998, and the Third International Metropolis Conference, Zirchron Yaacov, Israel, November
30-December 3, 1998. I am grateful for the responses I received, particularly from: Ari Zolberg, Joe
Carens, Christian Joppke, Doug Klusmeyer, Kathleen Newland, Demetri Papademetriou, Don Galloway,
Miriam Feldblum, David Martin, Dan Friedman, Caroline Sand, and Lisa Brill. I would also like to thank
the members of the Legal Department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), especially Dan
Yakir, Orna Kohn, and Anat Shekolnikov for their insights regarding the issues raised in this article.
Special thanks to Alex Aleinikoff for his comprehensive assistance and detailed comments.
1. As of May 1998, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics announced that the current population of
Israel is estimated at 5.94 million. Of the total population in 1998, approximately 4.76 million were Jews
and 1.18 million were non-Jews. See Israel at 50: A Statistical Glimpse (visited Sept. 22, 1998)
<http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/facts/israel50.html>.
2. See 48 STAT. ABsTRAcr OF ISR. 1997 at 49 (on file with author).
3. U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Born Population Reaches 25.8 Million, According to Census Bureau
(Apr. 9, 1998) <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/cb98-57.html>.
4. ROGERS BRUBAKER, CTZENSHIP AND NATIONHOOD IN FRANCE AND GERMANY at x (1992).
5. See Calvin Goldscheider, Israel, in HANDBOOK ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION 131, 131 (William J.
Serow et al. eds., 1990).
6. See id. at 138. See generally Amon Soffer, Demography and the Shaping of Israel's Borders, in
ECONOMIC, LEGAL, AND DEMOGRAPHIC DIMENSIONS OF ARAB-ISRAEL RELATIONS 289 (Ian S. Lustick ed.,
1994) (explaining the function of demography in the shaping of Israel).

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