Constituting the Jewish State

Today, the full political subject in the State of Israel is not the citizen, but rather the figure of the 'immigrant'. Although formed through the historical matrix of European colonialism, serving as a site of Western power in the Middle East and influenced by European citizenship and nationality regulations, the constitutional structures in those countries were unable to fully encompass the parameters of Israel's particular logic of inclusion-its signature of colonial apartheid.

Shourideh C. Molavi examines Israel as a novel constitutional phenomenon with major features of nation-statehood, including territorial borders, demography, and sovereignty largely remaining incomplete, unresolved and illegitimate-resulting in its ability to interrogate and dilute the figure of the citizen. Building on her previous research on the ways in which Israel employs citizenship structures to place non-Jewish citizens in a relation of 'exclusive inclusion, ' Molavi argues here that this arrangement it has rendered the 'Jewish immigrant' as the primary figure making up the Israeli body politic. This book outlines the core analytical feature of what Molavi terms Israeli 'colonial inclusion', unpacking the mechanisms through which the colonial logic of pre-1948 Zionism resurfaces in contemporary Israeli citizenship structures.