Abstract Much of the discourse surrounding Palestinian rights under international law has focused on the theme of denial across various spheres. This includes collective rights, particularly the right to self-determination, as well as individual rights such as family reunification and freedom of movement. However, another less-discussed area of injustice is recognition. A critical examination of Israeli private international law reveals a clear positioning where the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are treated as seemingly independent entities with their own courts and laws for civil litigation among Palestinians. However, this review essay introduces what I call a Third World Approach to Private International Law (TWAPIL) and contends that what was technically framed as an act of recognition amounted to unjust relegation. Directing Palestinian plaintiffs to litigate their claims in the OPT courts – especially in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and until the establishment of the Palestinian Authority – meant subjecting them to a dysfunctional judicial system compromised by the very occupation that had granted it recognition. Meanwhile, Israeli actions entrenched settler-colonial policies, allowing Israeli settlers unrestricted access to Israeli courts. Analysing this development in private international law exposes the doctrines of this legal framework to critical scrutiny, enabling acts of recognition to be reinterpreted as acts of oppression.

To what extent may an American class action entertain claims held by foreign class members and governed by foreign law? Thus far, courts and scholars have addressed this question by formulating a body of doctrines—in the domain of personal jurisdiction and class action certification preconditions—that is both incoherent and inefficient. Absent from this practice, however, is any discussion about whether the American class action mechanism itself can have any extraterritorial reach in light of its own regulatory and public virtues. Attuned to these virtues, this Article will offer a typology of class actions and identify the kind of conflict-of-laws considerations that should restrict or extend the territorial reach of class actions. By providing a better understanding of the proper extraterritorial reach of class actions, the Article also seeks to offer valid instrumental guidance for a body of law that is not only adrift but also costly.

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.

The religion-and-state debate in Israel is Jewish-centered, systematically disregarding the status of the Palestinian-Arab minority. This is rather puzzling, not least because, in many other countries, this debate does pick up conflicts pertaining to minority religions, and the Palestinian-Arab minority has generated a rich and diverse series of questions that might easily have qualified as highly relevant to it. The article decodes this anomaly by pointing out the existence of a legal matrix in the Israeli religion-and-state conflict. This matrix identifies a value system in the Israeli legal system by which the recognition accorded to Jewish religious institutions and norms is regarded as "public and coercive" and the recognition accorded to the Palestinian-Arabs is regarded as "private and liberal." The second part of the article comments on some legal implications of this matrix and critically evaluates the question whether what seems to be "private and liberal" is so in fact.

The religion and state debate in Israel has overlooked the Palestinian-Arab religious communities and their members, focusing almost exclusively on Jewish religious institutions and norms and Jewish majority members. Because religion and state debates in many other countries are defined largely by minority religions' issues, the debate in Israel is anomalous. Michael Karayanni advances a legal matrix that explains this anomaly by referencing specific constitutional values. At the same time, he also takes a critical look at these values and presents the argument that what might be seen as liberal and multicultural is at its core just as illiberal and coercive. In making this argument, A Multicultural Entrapment suggests a set of multicultural qualifications by which one should judge whether a group based accommodation is of a multicultural nature.

This chapter takes a critical look at the characterization of the Palestinian-Arab religious jurisdiction as a liberal multicultural accommodation and re-characterizes it as a “multicultural entrapment.” The jurisdictional authority accorded to the Palestinian-Arab religious communities does not meet what can be defined as “multicultural qualifications” exposing them as mere mechanisms of control and oppression. However, both the Israeli establishment and the Palestinian-Arab political establishment are interested in presenting religious jurisdiction among the Palestinian-Arab as multicultural. The characterization covers for Israel’s “embarrassing” interest to maintain the religious divides among its citizens in order to maintain its Jewish character. The characterization also helps the Palestinian-Arab politicians to maintain their refined liberal agenda while not upsetting the conservative religious establishment that exists within. Given the adverse implications religious jurisdiction has in terms of personal liberty and its pseudo-liberal multicultural character, the acute individual predicament of the Palestinian-Arabs thus emerges as a multicultural entrapment.

In many countries, minority religious issues figure centrally in the religion-and-state debate. Western legal systems have long grappled with the way they should accommodate religious minorities, such as the Mormons (polygamy), the Amish (home schooling), Muslims (the veil, shari’a tribunals, halal slaughter of animals), the Jewish community (yarmulke in the military, male circumcision) just to name a few. Yet, in Israel the debate excludes the different religious minorities and is Jewish majority-centered. This chapter exposes the exclusive nature of the religion-and-state debate while showing the rather rich and diverse religion-and-state conflicts produced by the Palestinian-Arab religious minorities since the establishment of the state of Israel until the present day. These conflicts include challenges to Israel’s criminalization of polygamy, the creation of a civil cause of action in order to challenge such religiously sanctioned practices as unilateral divorce, overt discrimination in budgetary allocations for the Palestinian-Arab religious communities, the extraterritorial jurisdictional authority of Palestinian-Arab religious tribunals, and much more. This suggests that the Jewish-centered nature of the religion-and-state debate in Israel is a matter of constitutional design, and this is in fact what I will argue all throughout.

Covering is a descriptive theory concerning the existence of the gap between how a social-legal order is presented and how that social-legal order operates, in practice. In spite of the fact that the reality of the social-legal order can be repressive, it can nonetheless survive and persist if a cover in the form of a positive agenda is thrown over it. Thus far, covering has been associated with the agenda of assimilationin the name of which the accommodation of a different identity is denied. In this Article, I argue that covering is also discernible when multiculturalism and its explicit agenda for the accommodation of minority groups, namely, assimilation's antithesis, is the overall guiding norm. When the reality is that of a nation-state where one's group identity can determine the kind of norms by which members are governed, presenting this reality as multicultural covers for repressive group norms over individual group members and helps avoid the construction of a shared identity that can threaten the structure of the nation-state. I will seek to demonstrate this type of covering by focusing on the accommodation of Palestinian-Arab religious minorities in Israel.

Thus far, “covering” has been associated with assimilation. In the name of commonality, individuals are pressured to repress their particular group identity (be it ethnic, religious, racial, cultural, or sexual orientation) and adjust to the general standards of society. Although assimilation can be seen as a uniting force in a society characterized by differences, covering differences is always a coercive means for achieving a desired societal norm – and as such, it comes at the expense of individual members of minority groups. First, these individuals tend to be members of non-ruling groups whose endeavors to assimilate demand much more personal sacrifice than is required of majority group members whose interests largely control the terms of assimilation. Second, given the generally positive preconceived ideas regarding aspects of assimilation, the agenda of assimilation is uncritically accepted. Ultimately, therefore, the assault on particular identities is masked and passes as legitimate. Assimilation seen in this sense is seductive – a magic formula for societal success. These basic features of the theory of covering were articulated principally in the context of the United States, where assimilation is the norm and the accommodation of identity groups is the exception. In this article, I argue that covering can also be found when multiculturalism and its explicit agenda for the accommodation of minority groups is the overall guiding norm, and assimilation is the exception. The theory and discourse of multiculturalism that is generally taken as a call for toleration, pluralism, and affirmation of underprivileged identity, tends to be an appealing normative agenda with the power of masking a repressive reality and thus can be as seductive and magical a cover as assimilation.

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ConstellationsVolume 23, Issue 1 p. 71-83 Original Article Tainted Liberalism: Israel's Palestinian-Arab Millets Michael Karayanni, Michael KarayanniSearch for more papers by this author Michael Karayanni, Michael KarayanniSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 October 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12186Citations: 6Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume23, Issue1March 2016Pages 71-83 RelatedInformation