Arab Israelis have equal rights. They can vote and become judges and doctors.

This myth instrumentalizes the Israeli citizenship granted to Palestinians inside the Green Line as evidence of equality. The reality is the opposite. After the Nakba, around 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside the new settler-colonial state (now more than 2 million) were granted Israeli citizenship. Yet Israel distinguishes between citizenship and nationality. Nationality is tied to Jewish identity and serves as the basis for superior rights and privileges under Israeli law and policy. Palestinian citizens continue to face structural discrimination under more than 65 discriminatory laws governing land ownership, housing, education, public infrastructure, and political expression.

Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are not exercising self-determination when they vote in Israeli elections. Self-determination means the right of a people to determine its own political future free from occupation, apartheid, and colonial domination. That right remains denied to all Palestinians, including those in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, and in exile, as explicitly stated in Israel's Nation-State Law. Even if all 15 million Palestinians could vote under the current colonial system, this would still not amount to self-determination. Palestinians do not seek political participation under colonial rule, but freedom, self-determination, and independence in their own homeland.

Voting rights do not amount to political equality. Palestinian citizens of Israel are politically marginalized in a Knesset dominated by ultra-nationalist parties. Palestinian political parties have been banned or systematically excluded from governing coalitions. Knesset members are required to swear allegiance to the state, a condition many Palestinians reject in principle. Political participation is further constrained by surveillance, prosecution, and restrictions on political activity. Knesset members have been disqualified and stripped of immunity for political speech.

The existence of Palestinian doctors, judges, or other professionals does not negate structural discrimination. A report by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel documents how the Israeli healthcare system's public image as a space of coexistence masks a reality of structural discrimination, political repression, and militarization. Palestinian health professionals with Israeli citizenship have faced widespread discrimination, suspensions, disciplinary proceedings, investigations over social media posts, pressure to avoid speaking Arabic, and "loyalty tests." Meanwhile, Palestinian judges have served in a judicial system that continues to uphold laws and policies sustaining apartheid, occupation, and genocide.

The existence of Palestinian judges, doctors, or other professionals no more disproves apartheid than the existence of Black judges, doctors, or elected officials disproved Jim Crow or apartheid in South Africa. Their existence was not evidence of equality, but was used to mask systems built on racial domination.