“Dangerous populations”: State territoriality and the constitution of national minorities

They are also our fallen. They were also Israeli citizens. Like us they participated in the national ballots and when they felt hurt, they went out onto the streets. None of them was armed. Yet most of them died from gunfire, or from rubber bullets or from a sniper shot. Thus reads the beginning of an article published on the eve of the creation of the Or Committee, appointed by the Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and chaired by former Supreme Court judge Theodore Or, to investigate the circumstances that led to the killing of thirteen Palestinians, twelve of them Israeli citizens, by the Israeli police during the clearing of demonstrations in October 2000. The article, published in Israel's most widely circulated daily newspaper, and the dozens or more that have been published since in Israeli media, are trying to make sense of the tragic events. Although too soon to be lent to academic analysis, as of today, few would dispute that the course of events that led to October 2000 mark a watershed in the history of the Palestinian minority/Jewish majority relations in Israel. Whether interpreted as a legitimate expression of Palestinian protest against five decades of institutional discrimination and nefarious neglect or as a confirmation of the Jewish majority's latent distrust on the “inner enemy,” most Israeli observers would agree that things would never be the same.