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Law, citizenship and social solidarity: Israel’s “Loyalty-Citizenship” Laws as a test case

ABSTRACT The concept of loyalty to the state has been occupying an increasingly central place in political discourse in Israel. The underlying premise of this discourse is that citizens owe a duty of loyalty to their state. Israel’s Arab-Palestinian citizens, it is argued, fail to fulfill such duty. In the legal arena, this discourse has been manifested in a series of bills referred to by the media as the “Loyalty-Citizenship Bills,” justified by their initiators both as measures necessary to protect the state from alleged threats posed by disloyal citizens and as means for strengthening citizens’ loyalty to the state. This article challenges the premise underlying the Loyalty-Citizenship Bills and criticizes the Bills’ content. The article argues that to the extent that citizens can legitimately be expected to be loyal to their state of citizenship, such expectation derives from the existence of social solidarity. While the initiators of the Loyalty-Citizenship Bills fail to demonstrate how the Bills advance any legitimate goal, the Bills are likely to have a negative effect on social solidarity by nurturing a public discourse that alienates Israel’s Arab-Palestinian citizens and undermines their citizenship.