In the first two decades of the 2000s, after Israel recovered from an economic crisis, its Palestinian citizens had an expanded presence in the Jewish economy. At first, this derived from the efforts of private actors—Jewish and international employers, on the one hand, and Arab workers and self-employed individuals, on the other—but later the economic integration of the Arabs became a declared government policy. In 2015, the right-wing–religious government approved a five-year plan “for economic development of the population of minorities” (government decision 922). In practice, the aim of the plan was to take advantage of the productive potential of Palestinian citizens of Israel by attracting them to the non-Arab labor market and upgrading their skills, while continuing the ethno-national separation and perpetuating their political inferiority. As part of the plan there was unprecedented public investment in Arab individuals and locales. No less innovative were the determination with which government-employed economists acted to expose and reduce the chronic budgetary discrimination against the Arab population, and the important role given to the Arab local authorities in implementing key components of the policy.

Integration under Separation: Palestinian Citizens in Israel in the Neoliberal Economy is the first book on this topic. Its articles were written by scholars in political economy, political science, sociology, and geography, who adopt diverse analytical frameworks. The articles analyze key issues related to the period of economic integration in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, with a focus on the 2015 five-year plan. Among our questions are the following: Who initiated and promoted the plan, and why? What role did fundamental characteristics of Jewish-Arab relations—including spatial separation, an imbalance of power, and the rise of Jewish-nationalist populism—play in the consolidation, implementation, and socio-political ramifications of the government’s policy? What influences did the plan have on Arab society itself and the inequality in it?