Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel adopt two main, distinct approaches for articulating demands for equality for the Palestinian minority: the citizenship approach and the indigeneity approach. The citizenship approach demands civic equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, justifying demands through citizenship claims and advocating for limited policy reform. The indigeneity approach, however, derives legitimacy for demands by employing ethnic rhetoric and asserting the status of the Palestinian minority as an indigenous community, seeking collective minority rights and recognition through extensive structural transformations. The argument that is advanced in this study is that the state may tolerate demands for equality that are constructed upon equal citizenship claims, but it acts in a defensive manner toward claims for national minority rights and recognition. This is because the first approach conforms to existing boundaries of political discourse that is deemed legitimate and does not challenge paradigms of ethnic domination, while the second demands ethnic minority recognition and challenges the very ethnocratic nature of the state that marginalizes the Palestinian minority. The study engages extensive literature on ethnocratic states (Yiftachel, 2000 & 2006), ethnic civil society (Haklai, 2011), Palestinian civil society activism in Israel (Payes, 2005; Jamal, 2011), and further scholarship on civil society, ethnic democracies, ethnic minorities and the Palestinian minority in Israel. Empirically, the project examines Sikkuy as an organization following the citizenship discourse, and Adalah as one following the indigeneity approach. I review Sikkuy’s participation in the Committee for Social and Economic Change, and other equality projects, to study its approach and the state response to its demands through reviewing government decisions following Sikkuy’s demands. For Adalah, I review court decisions in which the organization served as the main petitioner against certain state policies, particularly in issues of land and housing. Reviewing these primary sources will enable me to investigate the approach of the two organizations and alternate state responses toward their demands, thus allowing me to examine the effectiveness of different modes of activism and alternate dynamics of state-society interaction, and their impact on improving the civic status of the Palestinian minority.