A “third camp” in Israel’s constitutional upheaval: The voice of the silent Palestinian-Arab minority

Abstract The Israeli government’s controversial initiative to instigate sweeping judicial reforms, conceived in early 2023, gave rise to an unprecedented opposition movement. So intense was the public pushback that the initiative sharpened existing conflicts, bringing old and new schisms to the surface. One primary stakeholder in the judicial reform initiative, had it proved even partially successful, was the Palestinian-Arab minority. However, this minority was virtually absent from the protests and the deliberations that took place to work out a compromise between the two camps. Referencing the theory and practice of “democratic deficit,” this article explains this striking absence by drawing attention to the fact that the “democratic deficit” that so concerns the Palestinian-Arabs is endemic in the constitutional order that the pro-reform camp wanted to see strengthened, and one that the anti-reform camp would have settled for maintaining. Being against the proposed reforms but simultaneously unwilling to join forces with the public anti-reform pushback, the Palestinian-Arabs thus constituted a “third camp” in Israel’s constitutional upheaval. The article traces the consolidation of this “third camp” and highlights why its positioning as such has constituted the Palestinian-Arab minority as a distinct group that, in contexts predating the constitutional upheaval of 2023, has mounted, and continues to mount, unique challenges to Israel’s constitutional order.