Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T05:39:00.197Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perception of Legal Inequality in Deeply Divided Societies: The Case of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Elia Zureik ,
Fouad Moughrabi  and
Vincent F. Sacco
Elia Zureik
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada.
Fouad Moughrabi
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee, 615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, Tenn. 37403, U.S.A.
Vincent F. Sacco
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When commentators discuss the Israeli political system, they invariably single it out as the exception in a region otherwise lacking in democratic and representative regimes. Although political philosophers and theorists remind us that the test of de mocracy hinges on, among other things, the way a society treats its minorities and guarantees them civil and political rights in the face of majority opposition, the de bate over what constitutes justice, equality, and freedom is unlikely to be resolved in a discussion centered on abstract principles and their absolute meanings. It is one thing for a society to profess egalitarian values and another to measure the extent to which these values are perceived and experienced by those immediately affected by them. This does not mean that there are no universal standards of justice against which to measure performance of the law. Our point is that the experiential dimen sion of the law is equally relevant, for it mediates between the meaning of the law as derived from abstract principles and the way it is implemented in daily life.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 1993 , pp. 423 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

Authors' note: Research for this study was made possible through a grant from the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security in Ottawa, and the School of Graduate Studies and Research at Queen's University. The authors are solely responsible for the results of the study.

1 Adam, Heribert, “Israel and South Africa: Conflict Resolution in Ethnic States,” Telos 82 (1989–1990): 27–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Smooha, Sammy, “Existing and Alternative Policy towards the Arabs in Israel,” in Politics and So ciety in Israel, vol. 3 of Studies in Israeli Society, ed. Krausz, Ernest (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985), 357Google Scholar.

3 Shamir, Michael and Sullivan, John L., “Jews and Arabs. Everybody Hates Somebody, Sometime,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 29, 2 (06 1985): 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Kretzmer, David (with Osama Halabi), The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Tel Aviv: The International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1987)Google Scholar; Rosenbloom, David H., “Israel's Administra tive Culture, Israeli Arabs and Arab Subjects,” Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 3, 3 (Spring 1987): 435–73Google Scholar.

5 See Arian, Asher and Shamir, Michael, ed., The Elections in Israel—1988 (Boulder, Colo.: West-view Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Aʾsi, Murad, “Israeli and Palestinian Public Opinion and the Palestine Question,” in Public Opinion and the Palestine Question, ed. Zureik, Elia and Moughrabi, Fouad (London: St. Mar tin's Press, 1987), 143–201Google Scholar.

6 Smooha, Sammy, Arabs and Jews in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), vol. 1Google Scholar of Conflicting and Shared Attitudes in a Divided Society; and idem, The Orientation and Politicization of the Arab Minority in Israel (Haifa: The Jewish-Arab Center, Haifa University, 1984)Google Scholar.

7 Katz, Elihu and al-Haj, Majid, “Peace: Arab and Jewish Attitudes,” Jerusalem Post, 4 08 1989Google Scholar.

8 Simon, Rita J. and Landis, Jean M., “Trends in Public Support for Civil Liberties and Due Process in Israeli Society,” Social Science Quarterly 71, 1 (1990): 93–104Google Scholar.

9 Simon, Rita J. et al. ,, “Israeli Confidence in Social Institutions and Belief about Democracy,” un published paper, cited in Stanley Cohen, (with Mohammed Yahia), Crime, Justice and Social Control in the Israeli Arab Population (Tel Aviv: The International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1989), 25Google Scholar.

10 The Jewish survey was carried out by the Israel Institute for Applied Social Research in Jerusalem. The face-to-face interviews were conducted on the basis of a representative sample of Israeli Jews twenty years of age and older who reside in urban centers. Twelve urban centers were represented, and 605 in dividuals were interviewed. The sample was drawn randomly from the latest available list of voters. The Arab study was conducted by the Galilee Center for Social Research in Nazareth. Here, too, households were randomly selected from the list of voters, and personal interviews were carried out with individuals eighteen years and older, resulting in 800 participants in the survey. A stratified random sample was con structed in order to capture all Arab towns, mixed towns, and large and small villages. Based on the Israel Census Abstract (1986)Google Scholar, the 138 Arab localities were divided into eight main geographical regions. Within each region, respondents were chosen to reflect gender, religion, and size and type of location.

11 Friedrichs, D., “Radical Criminology in the United States: An Interpretive Understanding,” in Radical Criminology, ed. Inciardi, J. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1980), 35–60Google Scholar.

12 Sacco, Vincent F., “Images of Public Opinion in the Study of Legal Control,” in The Social Dimensions of Law, ed. Boyd, N. (Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1986), 86–97Google Scholar.

13 Sarat, A., “Studying American Legal Culture: An Assessment of Survey Evidence,” Law and Soci ety Review 11 (1977): 427–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Gusfield, J., Symbolic Crusade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

15 Michalowski, R. and Bohlander, E., “Repression and Criminal Justice in Capitalist America,” Sociological Inquiry 46, 2 (1976): 95–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sinden, P. G., “Perceptions of Crime in Capitalist America: The Question of Capitalist Manipulation,” Sociological Forces 13, 1 (1980): 75–85Google Scholar.

16 Chambliss, W., “On Lawmaking,” British Journal of Law and Society 6, 2 (1979): 149–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Huggins, Martha, “Approaches to Crime and Societal Development,” Comparative Social Research 8 (1985): 17–35Google Scholar.

18 Hagan, John and Albonetti, Celesta, “Race, Class and the Perception of Criminal Injustice in America,” American Journal of Sociology 88, 2 (1982): 329–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Smooha, Sammy, Israel: Pluralism and Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

20 Lustick, Ian, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

21 Greenberg, Stanley, Race and State in Capitalist Development (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer sity Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

22 Carmi, Shulamit and Rosenfeld, Henry, “The Origins of the Process of Proletarianization and Ur banization of the Arab Peasants in Palestine,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 220, 6 (1974): 470–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Zureik, Elia, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979)Google Scholar.

24 Yiftachel, Oren, Planning a Mixed Region in Israel: The Political Geography of Arab-Jewish Relations in the Galilee (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992)Google Scholar.

25 Davar, 3 02 1987Google Scholar.

26 lsrael Census Abstract, no. 40 (Jerusalem, 1989), 292–93Google Scholar.

27 Annual Report of the Institute of National Insurance (Jerusalem, 1987), 57–67Google Scholar.

28 Dor, Isqschar, Ben-Tovia, Sheila, and Deychev, Elena, Classification of Local Authorities Accord ing to the Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Population (Jerusalem: Ministry of Interior and Cen tral Bureau of Statistics, 1989), Tables 9 and 10Google Scholar.

29 Falah, Ghazi, “Israeli ‘Judaization’ Policy in Galilee and Its Impact on Local Arab Urbanization,” Political Geography Quarterly 8, 3 (1989): 229–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khamaysi, Rassem, Planning and Housing Policy in the Arab Sector of Israel (Tel Aviv: International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1990)Google Scholar.

30 Statistical Abstract of Israel, no. 40 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1989), 311Google Scholar.

31 For a discussion of the political and legal consequences of zoning regulations in the Arab sector, see Cohen, , Crime, Justice and Social Control, 106–8Google Scholar.

32 al-Haj, Majid and Rosenfeld, Henry, Arab Local Government in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

33 Statistical Abstract of Israel, no. 40, 599–600, 613Google Scholar.

34 Zureik, Elia, “Palestinians under Israeli Control,” Arab Studies Quarterly 7, 23 (1985): 104–19Google Scholar.

35 Cited in Cohen, , Crime, Justice and Social Control, 25Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 25–26.

37 Ha-Aretz, 2 01 1984Google Scholar.

38 Fishman, Gideon, Rattner, Arye, and Weiman, Gabriel, “The Effects of Ethnicity on Crime Attribu tion,” Criminology 25, 3 (1987): 507–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Globe and Mail, 30 05 1990Google Scholar.

40 Jerusalem Post, 16 06 1990Google Scholar.

41 American-Israeli Civil Liberties Coalition Newsletter, 11, 1 (1991)Google Scholar.

42 The “Bus 300” incident refers to the highjacking in 1984 by four Palestinians from Gaza of a commuter bus headed south from Tel Aviv to the coastal city of Ashkelon. They demanded safe haven to Egypt and the release of 500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Two of the highjackers were killed by security forces when they stormed the bus, and the remaining two died under suspicious circum stances. Reports circulating after the incident confirmed that the two highjackers were taken alive and that they died while in the hands of their captors. Publicity over the incident and attempts at a cover-up forced the government to investigate the conduct of the Shin Bet, the internal security apparatus re sponsible for detaining the two highjackers. A deal was worked out, whereby in June 1986 President Chaim Herzog issued a blanket pardon to three officers of the Shin Bet and its chief, who according to the attorney general, was on the scene and personally ordered the prisoners clubbed to death.

43 In the early 1980s, a group known as the Jewish Underground organized lethal attacks on Pales tinian personalities in the West Bank and attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The group carried out car bombings that maimed two West Bank mayors and a grenade-and-gun attack that killed three Palestinian students and wounded thirty others at Hebron's Islamic College. After their convictions in court, President Herzog gradually granted reprieve to the entire group, the last of whom were released from jail in December 1990. In Israel, a life sentence for murder usually means a minimum of twenty years.

44 Mann, Michael, “The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy,” American Sociological Review 35 (1970): 432–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Lustick, , Arabs in the Jewish State, 77Google Scholar. In a more recent article, Lustick appears to revise his con trol model in order to take into account the “strategic” political behavior of Israel's Arabs during elec tions. See Lustick, Ian, “The Political Road to Binationalism: Arabs in Jewish Politics,” in The Emergence of Binationalism in Israel. The Second Republic in the Making, ed. Peleg, Ilan and Se-liktar, Ofira (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 97–123Google Scholar. There is no denying the fact that Zionist parties vie for Arab votes during elections, with various promises made to alleviate the hardships faced by the Arab minority. However, data reviewed in this article and elsewhere do not alter the objective situation that in economic, political, and cultural terms the Arab minority continues to play a marginal role in influencing key decisions affecting their lives in Israel.

46 Zureik, Elia, “Control of the Palestinians in the Jewish State,” Social Justice 17, 1 (1990): 55–69Google Scholar.

47 Shamir, Ronen, “Legal Discourse, Media Discourse, and Speech Rights: The Shift from Content to Identity-the Case of Israel,” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 19 (1991): 61Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., 59.

49 Negbi, Moshe, “On Occupation, Intifadah, and Constitutional Crisis in Israel,” Jerusalem Quar terly 52 (Fall 1989): 18–36Google Scholar; Pez, Reuven, “The Islamic Movement in Israel and the Municipal Elec tions of 1989,” Jerusalem Quarterly 53 (1990): 3–26Google Scholar.