Discourses on Statehood and Ethnic Diversity in Jerusalem: The Notion of Apparatus of Israelization

Abstract

On this occasion, I will continue the challenge that many of my predecessorsand colleagues had taken up for years, however, I will slightly change the question.While the task can be conceived as the need to achieve an eloquent definition of whatthe Israeli form of the society should be addressed, I will focus on the question ofhow power is exercised. Indeed, instead of supporting the legitimacy of a term suchas ethnocracy or ethnic democracy, I am interested in understanding how politicalauthorities conceive the challenge to rule and deploy political power in Israel.I understand that by putting the accent on how power relations and politicalsubjectivities are configured it is possible to comprehend how democratic and nondemocratic dimensions may arise at the same time with no need of expanding thebestiary by creating a new classification. Along these pages, I will therefore sharesome findings of my analysis on the irruption of an original political economy in theexercise of power in Jerusalem between 2009 and 2018, which correspond to NirBarkat’s tenure as mayor. I argue that in that period, Barkat introduced a mutation inthe order of execution of the tactics to govern the city and sustain Israeli sovereignty:my challenge is to understand what, if any, these mutations and continuities consistedof.To do this, I will offer a systematization of literature were the recent history ofthe Judaization process, particularly in Jerusalem, has been thoroughly examined.Furthermore, this will allow me to introduce a critical contribution to the issue bypresenting the concept of the apparatus of Israelization, with which I traced the sets ofvisibility and enunciation curves between discursive and extra-discursive elementson the exercise of power in Jerusalem, as a local empirical referent of a broaderpolitical regime.