ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the Israel/Palestine case to make a broader claim about deradicalization efforts in non-democratic contexts. Therefore, before delving into the case, important clarifications with regard to premises, assumptions, and concept definitions are in order. First, by non-democratic contexts I mean situations in which the targets for deradicalization come from communities that do not enjoy equal civil and political rights. Such rights include the right to vote and to be elected, freedom of expression and association, alongside other rights specified in the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). These communities could be occupied by a foreign power or disenfranchised by their own government due to their ethnic, racial, religious, gender, political, or other affiliation. Non-democratic contexts of course most clearly also include authoritarian regimes, where the entire citizenry is denied civil and political rights. The premise of this chapter is that, in such non-democratic situations, the state-centered security approach to deradicalization is both ineffective and normatively questionable.
