Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinian Arabs have served in its military. This little-known reality, brimming with contradiction, reflects the enduring complexities of the regional conflict and the politics of conditional citizenship in a militarized state.
The Ladder and the Gate is the first comprehensive, unified history of Arab communities in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the first three decades of statehood, weaving together the experiences of Sunni Muslims, Christian Arabs, and Druze into a single narrative. Rami Zeedan demonstrates how military service functioned as a mechanism of both inclusion and exclusion, operating along lines of ethnicity, political expediency, and state-building imperatives. In so doing, he introduces a compelling framework for this negotiated, uneven, and deeply political process: differentiated militarized citizenship.
Carefully balancing operational, political, and social histories, Zeedan traces the experiences of the Arab soldiers in the IDF from the years preceding the establishment of the state through the 1970s, including the 1948 War, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the 1973 War. These moments of armed conflict became flashpoints, wherein the need for more service members was negotiated alongside intensifying debates over identity and loyalty.
Zeedan argues that the IDF acted as both a ladder and a gate, offering status, employment, and opportunities for civic integration for some Arab groups, while also setting the boundaries for that inclusion. Amid the highly dynamic period of early statehood, the Israeli state used military service as a tool for differentiation, surveillance, and the establishment of unequal belonging. At the same time, some Arab communities exercised their own agency, actively shaping outcomes alongside the state despite very unequal positions of power.
The Ladder and the Gate is a groundbreaking history that offers a deeper understanding of the complexities of minority-majority relations, military-civilian dynamics, and nation-building processes, revealing how military service functions as both a tool for integration and a means of control.
