BECK: Israel, ¿A democratic State?

Cold war value: bulwark to constraint the Soviet influence in Middle East. The West support it because of that.

Now, even though western countries claim it relations with Israel are based in common and share value, the fact is that because of the crimes commited to palestine, we cannot call it like that

Today's reason to keep relations with Israel is the fact the country is the only democracy surrounded by autocracies in the area

Freedom House have always labeled it as a democracy

Then. ¿Why isn't it a democracy?

Lots of scholars are studying this aspect and certainly one of them,Ilan Pappe, outline that one of the constituents of democracy is TOLERANCE to minorities living in the country. Regarding this aspect, Israel has failed.

Discussion: Why Israel is not demicratic

Smooha: Israel is not a western style democracy but an Ethnic democracy

Palestinians are still discriminated and "somehow" represed

Though, Palestinians have full access of democratic political rights

Controverted point of view

Problems with the application of democracy definition

Democracy definition is somehow arbitrary and if scholars deeply analyze all available politcal system, then almost all of them can hardly be recognized as democracies. Cause all of them cause some kind of discrimination againts minorities groups.

That is why they prefer to label Israel as a democracy

Definitions are not meant to be true or false but useful and apropiate. A thin or thick concept of democracy depends on the aims of the study

When speaking about Israel, a thin definition is more usefull

Evidently, Israel conquered Palestinian territories between 1940 and 1967, the fact that it include the population on the Israeli political system, change the image

the annex and the fact that people of this area did not had citizenship rights

Key element to differentiate ethnic democracy from fully founded democracy

East Jerusalem intergated into Israel polity

Though, Israel has refarined full citizenship rights to all iinhabitant of Jerusalem in clear violation of democratic values

Also, the ocupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip would only not violate democratic standards if the occupation were temporary

However the 15 year colonozation of East Jerusalem and west bank + the 10 year occupation of Gaza make the "temporary assumptio" lacks legitimacy

Because of that Israel can be defined as a "flawed" democracy, tehnic democracy and democracy state not well grounded