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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBut around the time of the establishment of Israel a competing concept to the concept of \u201cribonut\u201d prevailed in the public discourse, which is the concept of \u201cadnut,\u201d which appears in the document \u201cThe Principles of Renaissance\u201d by Avraham Stern\u2019s Lehi. Both \u201cribonut\u201d and \u201cadnut\u201d draw on names of God from biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew, which is consistent with the idea of sovereignty evolving in the modern era as a divine role transferred to humankind (in Thomas Hobbes, for example). But \u201cadnut\u201d has another dimension even in biblical Hebrew, which is a master-slave relationship. As opposed to ribonut, which derives from alliance and mutual consent \u2013 an aspect that was very important to the philosophers of modern sovereignty, who imagined it as a social contract that arose from the presumption of equality \u2013 adnut is imagined as imposed from above, as subjugating. In Lehi the aspiration of domination over the land was not concealed, and war and conquest were portrayed as means to domination and redemption. Lehi and the Irgun did not concede the use of non-establishment violence and did not accept the principle of partition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seemingly, ribonut became hegemonious in the state and the representatives of adnut were pushed to the margins. But now we are in a reality that undermines that belief, and along with other subjects from Ben-Gurion\u2019s legacy that are currently being questioned, so has the sovereignty question been reopened. With the subsiding of the two-state idea in the Israeli discourse on the right, and to a lesser degree on the left as well, and with the ideological vacuum that was opened, we currently witness the rise of domination under the guise of sovereignty. If we follow the development we will see continuity between Lehi\u2019s concept and the right-wing concept prevailing today. The move began with the 2005 Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, when wide circles on the right, who had suffered a grave setback, turned to conceptual work to make it harder for the state \u2013 not only physically but also ideologically \u2013 to concede additional territories from the Land of Israel and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. The idea of sovereignty, which traditionally supported partition, was perceived as a key concept, and when the Women in Green movement founded the Sovereignty movement, not only did its definition of sovereignty not support partition, it also completely lost the meaning of self-rule. Sovereignty was defined as rule over a territory or nation, and the Sovereignty movement from its inception promoted domination under the name of \u201csovereignty.\u201d Thus for example the movement\u2019s journal, distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies in 2010, carried an opinion piece by Geula Cohen, a former member of Lehi, that advocated for the idea of \u201csovereignty\u201d as domination. The representatives of the idea of domination under the name of sovereignty published new definitions of sovereignty on the Internet, and returned the term to the center of public discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The success of the settlement movement and the Sovereignty movement to change the discourse is unmistakable. Today in the Hebrew entry for \u201csovereignty\u201d on Wikipedia the meaning is not self-rule, as the concept is defined on the English Wikipedia, but rather ruling over a territory or nation. According to the entry, international recognition is not necessary for sovereignty \u2013 contrary to the definition in English \u2013 and instead of a history of the idea of sovereignty and its application, as appear on the Wikipedia pages devoted to the idea in English, the Hebrew entry carries a section on \u201ccolloquial uses of ribonut,\u201d based largely on quoting Israeli generals. There is a cross-reference to \u201cSovereignty: A Political Journal\u201d (the journal of the Sovereignty movement), and this definition serves young and old people wishing to understand the term, which is also perceived as central in the international political discourse. Beyond Wikipedia, all of the free online dictionaries in Hebrew define \u201cribonut\u201d according to the Wikipedia definition or the Sovereignty movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another aspect of the Sovereignty movement\u2019s success is changing the discourse. Before the sovereignty concept became central to the right-wing movements, it was hardly discussed in Israel. Even in the days of the Oslo process there was reticence to speak about Palestinian sovereignty, and only during the Sharon government did the idea find its place in the Roadmap Plan. But after 2010 the concept of \u201csovereignty\u201d received a new status. The frequency of the mention of sovereignty in news reports soared, and it was usually mentioned in the context of annexation. During the time of the rise of the sovereignty discourse there was a decline in the democracy discourse, and out of 10,600 news reports in 2010-2019 that mentioned the term \u201csovereignty,\u201d only 1,800 also mentioned the term \u201cdemocracy.\u201d Meanwhile, the Bnei Akiva movement endorsed the sovereignty agenda, as did the Likud party\u2019s Central Committee. 39 of the 120 members of the Knesset, including ministers and deputy ministers from previous and current Knessets, appeared in the Sovereignty Journal. And finally, when the national unity government was formed in May 2020, the sovereignty issue \u2013 which is to say domination \u2013 was agreed between both sides of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In conclusion, the sovereignty discourse in Israel today includes elements of domination and constitutional inequality. These are presented as inherent parts of sovereignty, which serves as an organizing concept of international politics. If we want to create an alternative to paternalist power structures, we must bring back into the discourse the meaning of the term sovereignty that is accepted throughout the world \u2013 whether in order to advocate for partition or to contribute to the conversation over the boundaries of the concept of sovereignty in a multinational reality and to conceive of alternatives to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In every attempt to rethink nationality in Israel-Palestine, or to conceive and consider political structures that would express the will and self-realization of its inhabitants, the concept of sovereignty as it appears in contemporary Israeli discourse poses a significant obstacle. Seemingly, sovereignty is a main organizing concept in the modern political world, and means primarily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","journal":[4072],"class_list":["post-2451719","journalpost","type-journalpost","status-publish","hentry","journal-issue-09"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n