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The purpose of this article is to explore the difficulties facing entrepreneurs in three groups of women in Israel: immigrant women from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), women belonging to the Palestinian Israeli minority and Jewish Israeli women belonging to the majority population. Relying on the stratification approach, the authors investigate the extent to which labor market, resource and women-specific disadvantages constrain women's entrepreneurship within these three groups.

The target research population consisted of 477 women entrepreneurs who operated businesses between 2009 and 2010. Using systematic sampling, the authors surveyed 148 FSU immigrant women business owners, 150 Jewish Israeli women business owners and 170 Palestinian Israeli women business owners, using a comprehensive questionnaire administered in the entrepreneurs' native language.

The authors found similarities and differences between the three groups as to their ability to handle difficulties deriving from labor market, resource and women-specific disadvantages. Overall, the authors found that Palestinian women entrepreneurs have relatively more difficulties than the other two groups.

Women entrepreneurs' socio-political status within stratified social realities imposes constraints on their economic activities. Further research should investigate policies, which could assist in overcoming these constraints taking into consideration similarities and differences between specific groups.

In addition to shedding light on the impact of socio-political environmental circumstances on women entrepreneurs in a particular country, the authors believe that applying the social stratification approach is especially valuable at the intersection of minority status, gender and entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that attract (pull) or discourage (push) Palestinian students from Israel (PSI) to study at a Palestinian university, the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ), for the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948.

A qualitative research method using in-depth interviews with 15 PSI who study at AAUJ attempts to define the motivations behind PSI preferring AAUJ, on one hand, and constraints, on the other hand.

The findings of the study show factors that attract PSI to study at the AAUJ and what subjects they choose to study there, the encounter with a similar culture and nationalism in a Palestinian campus in the occupied West Bank; the most significant difficulties and impediments they face there, whether economic or political, are discussed. This paper contributes to an understanding of the new national re-encounter between two Palestinian groups in a university campus, one under Israel’s occupation and the other that has Israeli citizenship.

It is a unique phenomenon in the trends of international students’ mobility in the world.

The paper seeks to analyze the characteristics of higher education (HE) among Palestinian Arabs in Israel (PAI). It aims to indicate the main trends that have taken place in higher education since the establishment of the State of Israel, especially in the last decade, and to examine the main factors that have hindered access to higher education for this minority group.

The study is based on a meta‐analysis of official statistics and other official documents, and on an analysis of relevant recent research studies.

The analysis shows that although there has been an increase in the numbers and percentages of PAI studying in Israeli HE institutes, especially for women, structural blocks still hinder their access to Israeli HE institutes, a situation exacerbated by their deficient preparation in secondary school. Their disproportionate under‐representation in the HE system reflects policies relating to power distribution and control in Israeli society.

Policy favoring re‐distribution of power alongside affirmative action legislation could influence the structure of the HE system and improve PAI minority representation in Israeli HE institutes.

The paper indicates the need for affirmative action to increase the Palestinian minority population's access to higher education in Israel.

This study aims to examine inter‐group relations between two religious minorities, Palestinian Christians and Muslim citizens of Israel, by measuring perceptions of in‐group and “other” group collective narratives.

Data were collected from a representative sample of 1,121 Muslims and 756 Christians in Israel. The questionnaire presents narratives that are common among Muslim and Christian populations in Israel, relating to eight different historical, social, or political events. Subjects were asked to rate levels of legitimacy, feeling of empathy, and anger towards each one of the presented narratives.

In comparison to Muslims, Christians reported a lower tendency to give legitimacy to the narrative of the other, showed more emotions of anger, and lower feeling of empathy towards the Muslim narrative. In addition, a content analysis of the narratives that were used in the questionnaire revealed two different patterns of response to narratives. One related to narratives with national issues, where Christians seemed to be excluded from the Palestinian nation, and the other related to narratives with religious issues, where Muslims reported more anger, less empathy and less legitimacy towards the Christian narratives.

The paper presents a new tool based on Sagy, Adwan and Kaplan, developed to examine perceptions of in‐group and “other” group collective narratives. This study examined the tool in a different context of conflict. In addition to the quantitative measures of the perceptions of the collective narratives, the paper describes a new method for analyzing the data collected by this tool.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conflict analysis framework that better captures the complexity of conflicts in divided societies by including the differing perceptions of identity boundaries between ethnic majorities and minorities in divided societies.

The analysis draws on the social boundaries and societal security literatures to develop a typology representing four dyads of perceived identity boundaries that illustrate the different dynamics of ethnic relations in divided societies.

The exploratory cases illustrate how the perceptions of identity boundaries have implications for conflict dynamics that call for different conflict management strategies.

The empirical cases serve to illustrate the application of the theoretical framework. Policy makers devising conflict management strategies in these deeply divided societies are likely to err if differing perceptions of social boundaries are not taken into consideration. Thus, the authors provide explicit policy recommendations for conflict management in each of the dyads presented in the typology.

Using the framework that incorporates differing perceptions of identity allows analysts to account for the impact of external actors in shaping and maintaining identity boundaries and allows for a consideration of the possible differing interpretations of the boundary held by different groups as well as the implications this has for conflict analysis and management.

The authors develop a model that accounts for the perceptions of both the majority and the minority of the identity boundaries that separate divided societies. They account for the implications for conflict dynamics and thus for conflict management strategies of differing perceptions of identity boundaries, which provides a perspective that is both theoretically significant and policy relevant, as most policy makers assume that ethnic minorities and majorities see the social boundary between them in similar terms.

The extent to which opposition movements engaged in contention are able to broaden the scope of their struggle has garnered the attention of scholars of ethnic conflict, social movements, and contentious politics alike. The ability to broaden the scope of contention is known as scale shift. It is of paramount importance in cases of ethnonationalist movements, given the nature of their claims and the oppressive and repressive sociopolitical setting in which they are often situated. Our study advances social movement theory by developing a more nuanced understanding of the process by analyzing rich historical evidence from a failed attempt of scale shift: the case of Israeli-Arab 1976 Land Day. Utilizing Tarrow and McAdam's (2003) model, we analyze scale shift and its constituent mechanisms of brokerage and diffusion as they operate across different political opportunity structures and encounter different levels and types of repression. Based on our findings, we modify the model by highlighting a set of intermediary mechanisms, namely individualization, segmentation, resource restriction, exclusion, co-optation, defection, and internalization/externalization. We argue that these intermediary mechanisms largely account for the failure of scale shift in the specific repressive settings of the Arab minority in Israel.

How are social groups unmade? Current theories identify the symbolic power of the state as a primary factor in the creation of social groups. Drawing on Gramsci's The Southern Question, this chapter extends state-centered theories by exploring policies that are critical but under-theorized factors in group formation. These include the concession of material benefits as well as the use of coercive means. Further, while current theories focus on how social groups are made, a Gramscian perspective draws attention to how the state intervenes to prevent or neutralize group-making projects from below. This chapter explores a case of a decrease in national group solidarity. Specifically, this study explains how in the 1990s the Israeli state weakened national group formation among Palestinians by adopting two spatially distinct but coordinated strategies. First, the rearrangement of the military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank through the establishment of an authority of self-rule (the Palestinian Authority) demobilized and divided Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories, especially along class-cum-moral lines. Second, state practices and discourses centered on citizenship rights shifted the center of political activism among Palestinian citizens of Israel toward citizenship issues. I argue that these two routes, which I call the indirect rule route and the civil society route, were complementary components of a broader attempt to neutralize Palestinian collective mobilization around nationhood. Despite recent changes and contestations, these two strategies of rule continue to affect group formation and to create distinct experiences of politics among Palestinians under Israeli rule. Analysis of the Palestinian–Israeli case shows that the state can unmake groups through the distribution of interrelated policies that are specific to certain categories of people and places. Understanding the conditions under which certain policies of inclusion or exclusion affect group formation requires going beyond the analytic primacy currently given to the symbolic power of the state.

Israel ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and has subsequently worked towards putting disability-empowering policies and facilities in place. This study explores the experiences of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel with disabilities in everyday life including education, employment and accessing disability facilities and services.

This study explores the challenges and experiences of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a disparate group of Arab men and women with various forms of disabilities.

This research indicates that Arabs with disabilities are either unable to access them or do so with great difficulty relative to their Jewish counterparts. The findings suggest that this is due to one of two reasons: first is institutional discrimination by Jewish and Arab staff, and second is structural discrimination as facilities and services are specifically designed for the Jewish majority and their areas of residence as opposed to Arab residential areas.

Guided by intersectional theory, this article explores how the multiple identities of Arabs with disabilities living in Israel are co-constituted and ordered by different social and political structures which inform their daily lived experiences. This research illustrates that in Jewish politics and institutions, Arabs with disabilities in Israel are “otherised” by being flatly identified as Palestinians; yet, within their Arab communities, they are “otherised” by being reduced solely to their disability. This article examines how this variation in ordering and reduction can lead to specific experiences and forms of discrimination that requires multi-dimensional approaches and ways forward.

How can we account for patterns of mobilization undertaken by ethnic movements? What leads ethnic collectives to shift between mobilization strategies? Addressing the general lack of attention in the ethnic conflict literature to the diverse political strategies employed by ethnic minorities – particularly those in democratic and semi-democratic contexts, this chapter accounts for mobilization as developing along an institutional spectrum of ethnic contention. I argue that the internal dynamics of ethnic movements shape patterns of mobilization. Utilizing literature from new institutionalism and employing the approach advanced by the study of contentious politics, ethnic movements are theorized as developing through the interplay of three causal mechanisms, which combine to form processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. The process of deinstitutionalization is explored through the case of the mobilization of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, tracing the development of the three causal mechanisms and their influence on the collective’s mobilization pattern. The chapter concludes by considering the range of movements that can be explored along the institutional spectrum.

This study aims to expand the authors’ exploratory qualitative study, describing the characteristics of the flow of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (PAI) to Jordanian higher education (HE) institutes as an alternative to HE studies in Israel (Jordanization).

At this stage of the study, 460 PAI studying in six Jordanian universities answered a questionnaire indicating the factors that led them to seek HE in Jordan. Respondents’ comparisons between the Israeli and Jordanian HE systems were analysed.

Results showed that Jordanian HE attracts PAIs for practical reasons: lenient acceptance policy and better chances to graduate, while cultural and linguistic similarities between the PAI and Jordanian societies are less influential. Israel's HE is attractive for financial reasons and employment qualification.

Future research should compare the absorption of these graduates of Jordanian universities in Israel's labour market with the absorption of other graduates from Israeli and foreign universities.

The under‐representative proportion of PAI students in Israeli universities indicates the need for diversified programmes and reforms to bring more PAI students into Israeli campuses. Pre‐academic programmes focusing on acquisition of academic learning skills could assist PAI students during their first academic year and help prevent dropout.

This study provides unique and specific knowledge concerning the topic of indigenous ethnic minorities who migrate to study outside their states.