Deliberative Democracy as a Tool to Steer Historical Reconciliation in Deeply Divided Societies? Reflections on the Case of the Palestinian Community of Israel

This article develops the concept of incremental deliberation to address the normative and practical limitations of deliberative democratic theory in contexts of structural asymmetry. While deliberative democracy offers powerful tools for inclusion and legitimacy, its conventional focus on inter-group dialogue and systemic integration often presumes conditions—such as balanced power, mutual recognition, and shared authority—that are absent in protracted asymmetric conflicts. Drawing on the case of Israel/Palestine, the article critiques dominant paradigms, including mini-publics and deliberative systems theory, for their limited capacity to address foundational inequalities. It argues that in such contexts, deliberation must be embedded in broader processes of political transformation. The proposed framework unfolds along three dimensions: issue-oriented deliberation, which engages with normative imperatives such as decolonization and historical reconciliation; intra-community deliberative empowerment, which builds deliberative agency within marginalized groups; and segmental system transformation, which targets specific domains to catalyze democratic innovation through political contention. By foregrounding deliberation as a means of empowerment and structural change, this model offers a context-sensitive approach that reconfigures the role of deliberation in deeply divided societies.