Questioning "Ethnic Democracy": A Response to Sammy Smooha

Israel has thus operated in recent decades as a polity, without clear borders. This undermines a basic requirement of democracy: the existence of a "demos." The "demos," as already defined in ancient Greece, denotes an inclusive body of empowered citizens within a given territory. It is a competing organizing principle to that of the "ethnos," where membership is determined by common origin. The term "democracy" thus means the role of the "demos," and its modern application points to an overlap between permanent state residency and political rights as a necessary democratic condition. Such overlap is the one and only way to enable the "law of the land" to be equally imposed over all subjects. This entails the institutionalization of clear and permanent borders. In other words, the state should belong to all its citizens and only to these citizens.