Nationalism, Human Rights, and Security: Ben-Gurion, Israeli Arabs, and the Boundaries of Democracy and Mamlakhtiyut

The 1948 War, during which Israel was born, utterly changed the demography, politics, and economy of Palestine-Israel. Before the war, a total of 870,000 Arabs had lived in the part of Mandate Palestine that became the state of Israel, but by the end of the war, only 160,000 of them remained—a small, wounded, depleted, and destitute population lacking effective leadership. For them, the war had been a catastrophe—the Nakba, as they called it. The Jews, who had just recently been a minority, became the rulers of the land, held most of its soil, and imposed military rule over