A Tale of Two Conferences: On Power, Identity, and Academic Freedom

This article will examine the extent of the applicability of academic freedom in relation to scholarship on the Israeli‐Arab conflict. This will be done by comparing two conferences that took place in the same city at almost the same time, both dealing with issues pertaining to Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East conflict. The article will argue that in reality, academic freedom is relative. The level of protection in fact varies according to the power that interested parties wield and the identities at play, and the vulnerability of scholars is usually a reflection of the current power dynamics in the nonacademic world. This differential applicability of academic freedom is the result of uneven application of academic standards and sometimes the creation of standards that are expected to apply solely to scholarship on the Middle East and the Israeli‐Arab conflict that is not “pro‐Israel.” This uneven and differential protection may become a threat to academic freedom

Colonial Imprints: Settler-Colonialism as a Fundamental Feature of Israeli Constitutional Law

Many constitutional questions in Israel are dealt with through the lens of the nation-state paradigm where the state is constitutionally associated with an ethnically and religiously defined majority group. Thus, many of the challenges that face Israeli society and the legal system are often presented as a result of an exceptionally antagonistic majority-minority relationship in a nation-state. This article offers a novel way of analysing the Israeli constitutional regime using the framework of settler-colonialism. It argues that adding the settler-colonial lens will help better understand many features of Israeli constitutional law. Drawing on theoretical frameworks developed by theorists of colonialism, the article explores a number of foundational aspects of Israeli constitutional law and demonstrates how they were shaped, and continue to be shaped, by settlercolonialism. The article argues that settler-colonialism is one of the central features that animate Israeli constitutional law

The Two-State Model and Israeli Constitutionalism: Impact on the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Partitioning historic Palestine into two states is often presented as the most plausible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This article examines the potential impact of such a development on the Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI), primarily from the vantage point of Israel’s constitutional regime. The article explores three fundamental aspects of the Israeli constitutional system—its instability, the “Jewish and democratic” definition of the state, and the exclusion of the PCI from “the people” as the unit that holds sovereignty—and argues that the envisaged two-state solution will only reinforce the definition of Israel as a Jewish state and consequently provide further justification for the infringement on the rights of its Palestinian citizens