This position paper, submitted to the Or Commission, presents mainstream research on the status of minorities. According to the author, the existence of a Palestinian minority in the Jewish State highlights the main contradiction in Israel’s self-conception as Jewish and as democratic. By considering the status of the minority as the ultimate test for the true nature of the regime, the author discusses various analyses that try either to legitimize the regime and underscore its virtues or to give expression to the unbridgeable gap between its rhetoric and practices.