Palestinian citizens in Israel constitute a special community. They are the remnants of Palestinian society who, after the 1948 war, were to become citizens in the newly established state of Israel. Although they remained in their homeland, this society has undergone massive transformations in almost all aspects of life. The 1948 war, which for the Jewish-Israelis was a war of independence and for the Palestinians a Nakba, a catastrophe, made the Palestinians in Israel a minority, where they were a majority before the war. Palestinians in Israel not only had to adapt to their new status as a minority, they also had to adjust to a new political reality and, no less importantly, to the encounter with a new cultural environment.

The main concern of this study is to investigate and understand the process of change in, and the transformation of, the Palestinian national discourse from 1948 until recent years (the time frame of this study is 1948−2010). In other words, my research aims at understanding the underlying forces that evolved the discourse of Palestinians from that of a liberation movement up to 1948 to that of a discourse that now calls for civil equality with the Jewish-Israelis. This political orientation contrasts with the national discourse of the rest of the Palestinian nation that lives outside Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza Strip − under Israeli military occupation, the neighbouring Arab countries and the rest of the world), and maintains its struggle for emancipation against Israel, sometimes by force. Moreover, understanding the political orientation of Palestinians in Israel cannot be separated from the cultural aspects of their experience in Israel. For more than six decades, Palestinians in Israel have been exposed to Israeli-Western culture and have been directly influenced by it.

In this Introduction, I will address several aspects regarding this study and its methodology. This book aims to outline and understand the evolution in Palestinian identity in Israel over six decades after 1948. The initial assumption, then, is that identities are in constant change and adjustment to social, political and economic environments. However, despite the use of ‘evolution’, this book does not follow the theoretical lead of social Darwinism.