“The State of Israel does not function like a normal state”

Professor of political science at the Open University of Israel, in Raanana (Israel), Denis Charbit wrote Israel and its paradoxes (Le Cavalier bleu, 2015) and has just published Israel, the impossible normal state (Calmann Lévy, 300 p., 19,90 €).

Your new book not only paints a critical portrait of a State without a Constitution, without citizenship and partly devoid of defined borders, but you also specify that none of these points, almost eighty years after the birth of Israel , is in the process of being resolved. For what ?

Everyone can make this observation: the State of Israel does not function like a normal State. But, before examining what this abnormality owes to the conflict [israélo-palestinien] – a long-term, passionate conflict, pushed today to extremes, including rhetoric (“pariah state”, “apartheid”) –, and instead of considering this conflict for the exclusive reason of this abnormality, I intend to examine what we, the Israelis, have helped to do for seventy-six years, our share of responsibility. It is an attitude, let’s say scientific, which consists of examining what we have produced, precisely, in terms of the Constitution, religious power, and nationality/citizenship.

Do you anticipate criticism of the word “normality”?

Indeed, it can have very strong connotations in French, as shown by the meaning that the expression “normalization” has taken on throughout history. I say “normality” not in the sense of “normal”, but of “norms”. A democratic state is defined by certain norms that we deviate from in Israel – probably because of the conflict, but also because we have made certain decisions that we are not about to change.

Alongside this scientific hypothesis, instead of corroborating what we call, in our social science jargon, common sense – give us peace and we will comply with the standards – I put forward a moral and ethical point of view . It’s about the personal dimension of this story, how I define independence. It’s not “I do what I want”, it’s only owing the faults and errors that we make to ourselves. What we do includes the Nakba [l’exode des Palestiniens, en 1948, lors de la première guerre israélo-arabe, qui ont été ensuite interdits de rentrer dans le territoire devenu l’Etat hébreu]like the war as it is being waged today in Gaza.

I of course leave the freedom to the reader, but the common thread of this book is that we must not combine the decisions we make with the luxury of saying that, in a certain way, we have been given the imposed. I am too attached to individual freedom to think that everything comes down to the pressures exerted on us. This is not a good way to arrive at the truth, which is after all the goal of all of us.

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