Outsiders' Identity: Are the Realities of "Inside Palestinians" Reconcilable?

The writer is a professor of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University, and Director of Mada, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa.

The Palestinians in Israel were known in Palestinian political jargon as the “Inside Palestinians” in reference to their geographical location inside Palestine. The Palestinian political center moved from exile to the West Bank and Gaza after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, so the term “Inside Palestinians” started to also be used for people in the West Bank and Gaza. “Inside Palestinians ” have always been on the outside of both Palestinian and Israeli society and politics and, in a way, outside the Israeli and Palestinian national experiences and authentic identity. This article examine how this dual “outsiders” reality has become the defining characteristic of the collective identity and national existence of the Arabs in Israel, and questions whether their conflicting political realities are in fact reconcilable.