Last month, despite unprecedented mass protests, strike threats, and military resignations, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel passed a controversial judicial reform law through the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to weaken the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government decisions. Dubbed a “judicial coup,” the law is seen by Israeli liberals as an existential threat to Israeli democracy, and it has intensely divided Jewish Israeli society. But “pro-democracy” protests against Netanyahu exhibit a glaring omission: the Palestinians, for whom Israeli democracy has never really existed.

Sami Abu Shehadeh is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a former member of the Knesset, and the leader of the political party Balad (the National Democratic Assembly). While Palestinian citizens of Israel face institutional discrimination and the state openly proclaims itself “not a state of all its citizens,” Palestinian citizens have voting rights and are much better off than their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The latter live under military occupation, displacement, blockades, and frequent military attacks, and have no rights at all under the Israeli state that rules them.

For Jacobin, Jordan Bollag spoke with Shehadeh about the current political moment in Israel and how Palestinians feel about a conflict over an Israeli “democracy” that has never truly included them.