Respect for the rule of law is a concept thrown around by our U.S presidential candidates and branded on the media as one of our nation's core values. Yet, we often forget that this concept is not limited to, but also includes, a written constitution and written laws. Indeed, one of the most essential aspects of the rule of law is the destruction of the arbitrary. This means the individual citizen will know exactly what actions are illegal and exactly what consequences these actions will entail. This summer, I lived in Israel and worked with the Bedouin population. The experience showed me the potential ills that can result from violations of this essential aspect of the rule of law.Under President Bush, this concept has come under attack. The firing of at least eight U.S attorneys without any warning or connection to performance seem to me at least to be the definition of the arbitrary. A recent law passed by congress that expands the President's ability to declare a state of emergency and take full control of the nation's machinery also suggests a nation that has lost its clear delineation of powers and laws. However, my summer experience allowed me to truly see what happens when this delineation vanishes completely.

Israel is a country without a written constitution. This inevitably leads to an expansion of legal ambiguity and uncertainty. However, many of the country's actions seem designed to generate arbitrariness as a point of policy.

One can best see this principle at play at border crossings or security checkpoints. At the end of the summer, the students in my program spent three days in Jordan and then attempted to cross back into Israel at a major Israel-Lebanon border crossing, the Allenby Bridge Crossing. Our group was made up of, among others, 15 Americans, and yet each experienced a different level of challenge and interrogation as he attempted to enter the country. Because I am an American-Israeli dual citizen, I was waived through without any problems. Meanwhile, other American citizens received light to heavy questioning. Two of those in our group were held back for over an hour because they had Muslim family members. Another was held for an equal length of time because her name was somehow deemed suspicious.

Having additional procedures in place for those of Arab or Muslim background is dubious, but perhaps justifiable in Israel's case. The major problem is that the process is completely based on the whims of the individual officers. Individuals may be kept aside for seemingly no reason and for an indefinite period of time. At a border crossing between Israel and a secular Muslim Arab nation, one would expect quite a few people of Arab descent or Muslim faith crossing through. When hundreds or thousands are subjected to this annually, one would expect a standardized process to be developed.

This unpredictable procedure actively cultivates uncertainty and tension. It makes each individual subjected to questioning feel uncomfortable and powerless. It eliminates the ability to appeal a violation of norms because the norms themselves are shapeless and obscure.

Over the summer, I lived in the Negev, the southern desert of Israel, with a Bedouin, the semi-nomadic indigenous people of Israel, family. Through my internship work with The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, a Bedouin organization, I saw the impact of arbitrary policy first-hand. Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and yet the government has treated them with legal disdain. In the 1950s, the south of Israel was under military occupation, and the Bedouin were forcefully moved around. Since then, the government has continually attempted to concentrate them on ever-decreasing tracts of land. The government has made promises, only to disavow them months or years later. It has taken land on every conceivable pretext-military training, airports, Jewish wineries and settlements. It carries out a policy of seemingly random demolitions in villages it does not recognize. These can occur at any time, and with no warning. This policy has the aim of pressuring the Bedouin to leave their lands and move to the improvised and crowded villages the government offers them instead.

Even though my examples focus on those of Arab or Muslim descent, one should not think that Jewish citizens of the state are exempt. From the Gaza Strip's former Jewish settlers encouraged by the government since the 1970s and now abandoned with false promises of assistance, to the Jewish single family farms the government used as outposts in the Negev and now views contemptuously as illegal, the state seems to function in a state of ambiguity that leaves citizens uncertain about the consequences of their actions. This leaves individuals feeling that the government can at any time turn against its citizens with little legal recourse.

This is a dangerous state of mind for citizens of a state. For a civic arena to develop and a steady economy to boom, the inhabitants of a nation must feel secure in their legal and political rights. In Israel, as in America, the courts can provide some minimal checks to the arbitrary actions of governments. Yet, in both countries, there is a steady stream of opposition crying out against judicial activism and ready to strip away the final bulwark against an unchecked legislative/executive.

In America, our constitution and our historical foundation in protecting the rule of law have so far been a strong enough bastion to check tyranny, but the current status of the rule of law in Israel should serve as a warning to our nation about what we stand to lose. We must be ever vigilant against the encroachment and elimination of the balance of powers that threaten to topple the rule of law.