The Undoing of Israel

At Israel’s creation, in May 1948, its founders envisioned a country defined by humanist values and one that upheld international law. The Declaration of Independence, Israel’s founding document, insisted that the state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex” and that it would “be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” But from the very beginning, this vision was never fulfilled—after all, for nearly two decades after the signing of the declaration, Palestinians in Israel lived under martial law. Israeli society has never been able to resolve the contradiction between the universalist appeal of the declaration’s ideals and the narrower urgency of the founding of Israel as a Jewish state to protect the Jewish people.

Over the decades, this intrinsic contradiction has surfaced again and again, creating political upheavals that have shaped and reshaped Israeli society and politics—without ever resolving the contradiction. But now the war in Gaza and the judicial crisis that preceded it have made it harder than ever to go on this way, pushing Israel to a breaking point.

The country is on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path. Unless it changes course, the humanist ideals of its founding will disappear altogether as Israel careens into a darker future, one in which illiberal values define both state and society. Israel is on track to become increasingly authoritarian in its treatment not just of Palestinians but of its own citizens. It could fast lose many of the friends it still has and become a pariah. And isolated from the world, it could be consumed by turmoil at home as widening fissures threaten to break up the country itself. Such is the perilous state of affairs in Israel that these futures are not at all outlandish—but neither are they inevitable. Israel still has the capacity to pull itself back from the brink. The cost of not doing so may be too great to bear.

THE END OF ZIONISM

Hamas’s bloody October 7 attack hit Israel at a time when it was already facing tremendous domestic instability. The country’s electoral system, which relies on proportional representation, had in recent decades allowed the entry of ever more fringe and extreme political parties into the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Since 1996, there have been 11 different governments, an average of a new government every two and a half years—six of them led by the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And between 2019 and 2022, Israel had to hold five general elections. Small political parties have played key roles in forming—and toppling—governments, wielding disproportionate influence. After the last election, in November 2022, Netanyahu formed a government with the backing of political parties and leaders from the far right, bringing to power forces in Israeli politics that had long lurked on the margins.

In 2023, Netanyahu and his far-right allies then pushed for a judicial reform bill that sought to substantially reduce the Supreme Court’s oversight of the government. Netanyahu hoped that the proposed reform would protect him from an ongoing criminal case against him. His ultra-Orthodox allies wanted the reform to prevent the drafting of thousands of yeshiva students, who have long been exempt from military service. And the religious Zionists designed the reform to block the Supreme Court’s ability to limit the construction of settlements.

Israel is on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path.

The proposed judicial reform sparked massive protests across the country, revealing a society deeply fractured between those who wanted Israel to remain a democracy with an independent judiciary and those who wanted a government that could do more or less whatever it pleased. Demonstrators brought cities to a standstill, military reservists threatened not to serve if the bill passed, and investors hinted that they would take their money out of the country. A version of the bill still passed the Knesset in July 2023 but was struck down by the Supreme Court at the beginning of this year. At present, the governing coalition is attempting to revive some elements of the judicial reform even as the war in Gaza rages.

The judicial reform protest certainly revealed concerns within Israel about the character of the country’s democracy, but it did not raise questions about Israel’s responsibility toward Palestinians living under occupation. Indeed, many Israelis see their country’s treatment of Palestinians as separate from its functioning as a democracy. Israelis have long tolerated, if not sanctioned, violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians. In a contravention of international law, Israel subjects Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to what is in effect martial law. Successive Israeli governments have overseen the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, imperiling the future creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. The war in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed around 40,000 people, according to conservative estimates, has revealed a country that appears unable or unwilling to uphold the aspirational vision in its independence declaration.

As many progressives within Israel have long acknowledged, the brutality of the military occupation and the imperatives of being an occupying military power have a corrupting effect on all of Israeli society. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli scientist and philosopher, observed “the national pride and euphoria” that followed the Six-Day War, in 1967, and saw a darker turn ahead. That celebration of country, he warned in 1968, would only “bring us from proud, rising nationalism to extreme, messianic ultranationalism.” And such extreme passions, Leibowitz claimed, would be the undoing of the Israeli project, leading to “brutality” and ultimately “the end of Zionism.” That end is now closer than many Israelis care to admit.

SPARTA WITH A YARMULKE

On its current path, Israel is veering in a deeply illiberal direction. Its current hard-right turn, pushed by politicians as well as by many of their constituents, could see Israel become a kind of ethnonationalist theocracy, run by a Jewish judicial and legislative council and right-wing religious extremists, nothing less than a Jewish version of Iran’s theocratic state. Israel’s demographic and sociopolitical changes, including a rapid increase of the ultra-Orthodox population, the rightward tilt of young Israeli Jews, and a decline in the number of Israeli Jews who identify as secular, have produced a more devout body politic that perceives the continued existence of Israel as part of an irreconcilable struggle between Judaism and Islam.

Ultra-Orthodox nationalist politicians who overtly call for a state in which religion plays a more definitive role include Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Avi Maoz—all key players in Netanyahu’s coalition government. They represent a relatively new but increasingly influential segment of the religious Zionist movement known as the Hardal, which believes that God promised the entire biblical land of Israel to the Jews, rejects Western culture and values, and fundamentally opposes the accepted norms of Israeli liberalism, such as LGBTQ rights, some separation between synagogue and state, and gender equality. Figures associated with the Hardal currently serve as ministers in the Israeli government, occupy powerful positions in the Knesset, and are prominent leaders of yeshivas and pre-military preparatory academies known as mechinot. Political and demographic trends suggest that the far right in Israel will remain electorally influential, even dominant, for the foreseeable future.

But many Israelis who are not especially religious are also beginning to subscribe to this increasingly extreme ethnonationalist ideology. Since the October 7 attacks, the Israeli right wing has grown even more radical. For them, and many others in Israel, Hamas’s massacre proved that there can be no compromise with the Palestinians or their supporters. These conservatives see Israel as existing in an eternal state of war, with peace unthinkable—a state, to borrow the phrase of Israeli historian David Ochana, akin to “Sparta with a yarmulke.”

That stance could harden into a broad consensus among Israeli Jews and produce a fully illiberal Israel, in which the war in Gaza leads to the complete erosion of democratic norms and institutions that were weakened by Netanyahu and his allies. The war has already provided the government with an excuse to restrict civil liberties; the Knesset’s National Security Committee, for instance, recently promoted legislation that authorized the police to conduct searches without warrants. There has also been an increase in state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli peace activists are increasingly viewed as traitors. An Israel dominated by the far right would become more authoritarian, with civil liberties curtailed, particularly gender rights. The state would wield a deleterious influence on public education, with a rounded civic understanding of Israeli democracy replaced by a more baldly nationalist and illiberal one.

An illiberal Israel would also become a pariah state. Israel is already becoming increasingly isolated internationally, and multiple international organizations are seeking punitive legal and diplomatic measures against it. The genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its recent opinion about the illegality of the occupation, the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and numerous credible allegations of war crimes and human rights violations have dealt a blow to Israel’s global standing. Even with the support of key allies, the cumulative impact of negative public opinion, legal challenges, and diplomatic rebukes will increasingly marginalize Israel on the global stage.

An illiberal Israel would still receive economic support from a few countries, including the United States, but it would be politically and diplomatically isolated from much of the rest of the global community, including most G-7 countries. These countries would cease to coordinate with Israel on security matters, maintain trade agreements with Israel, and buy Israeli-made weapons. Israel would likely end up relying entirely on the United States and become vulnerable to shifts in the U.S. political landscape at a time when more and more Americans are questioning their country’s unconditional support for the Jewish state.

The social contract between state and society in Israel currently hangs in the balance. Should Netanyahu and his allies have their way, Israeli democracy will become hollow and procedural, with traditional liberal checks and balances fast eroding. That would place the country on an unsustainable path that would likely lead to capital flight and brain drain—and deepening internal strains.

A FRACTURED ISRAEL

As Israel becomes more authoritarian, that illiberal turn would not mask the growing fissures within Israeli society. The state would increasingly lose its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, and divisions could inflame to the point of civil war. The recent violent confrontation at the Sde Teiman detention facility, where soldiers suspected of abusing a Hamas terrorist were taken for questioning, could augur what lies ahead. Reserve soldiers, civilians, and even a far-right parliamentarian attacked the military police inside the base, incensed that military personnel were detained for their maltreatment of a Palestinian prisoner. In the future, such episodes may become more common. Other signs of the fragmentation already underway within Israel’s security apparatus include the growth of settler militias—groups that the state has been unwilling to suppress despite their violent attacks on Palestinians—and the fact that soldiers have tipped off vigilantes to illegally stop the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The rule of law in Israel could break down. Israel would remain a more or less functional economic state. It would protect private property. There would still be universities, hospitals, and some kind of public education system. The high-tech economy—the heart of Israel’s claim to be a “startup nation”—could still function for a time. But the state would operate without the rule of law, in keeping with the hollow democracy favored by the extreme right. Security would devolve into a fragmented system with no oversight and no unified command, with the monopoly over the legitimate use of force eroding. Different groups would claim the right to violence, including armed settler militias, civilians who align with the far right, and the existing security forces.

This future is not the province of dystopian science fiction. The conflict in Gaza has intensified political divisions within the country, particularly between right-wing groups advocating for extreme military and security measures that utterly disregard international humanitarian law and others calling for a more conciliatory approach toward the Palestinians. The war has also deepened divisions between secular and religious Jews. A major debate within Israel regarding whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be obliged to serve in the military—as all other Israelis are—has stoked these tensions. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that the government cannot avoid drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews and must refrain from funding yeshivas whose students are not enlisting as mandated by existing laws—a decision that has galvanized attempts to revive the judicial reform legislation.

This weakening of the central authority of the state could presage a more shocking unraveling. Beyond administering the economy, the government would be unable (and even unwilling) to fulfill any of its other traditional political responsibilities, including the provision of security and a stable legislative system of governance that guarantees accountability. The presence of competing security groups and lax parliamentary supervision would weaken Israel’s overall security deterrent and undermine any coherent system of governance in Israel’s security establishment. An Israel in this condition could well be at odds with itself. It could become a kind of balkanized entity with the religious and nationalist right-wing elements building up their own de facto state, most likely in the settlements of the West Bank. Or it could witness a rebellion of religious extremists and ultranationalists that would divide Israel in a violent civil war between an armed religious right wing and the existing state apparatus. Short of civil war, this situation would still prove unstable, and the economy would collapse, leaving Israel a failed state.

A PATH AWAY FROM CHAOS

The weight of events and the prevailing political forces are pushing Israel in these dangerous directions. It is becoming a country that its founders would not recognize. But it does not need to go this way. To avoid these outcomes, Israel needs to restore political stability in the country by shoring up its constitutional foundations, strengthening the rule of law, reaching more productively for a lasting settlement to the conflict with Palestinians, and better ensconcing itself within the region.

Israel should set up an independent constitutional commission to address the country’s political instability and provide a firm foundation for the future of Israeli democracy. The commission would need to draft a constitution that would not be as easy to change as the Basic Laws—the 14 laws that together compose the closest thing Israel has to a constitution—and would have to adhere to the original humanist values of the state’s founding. Such a commission has been held in the past, and its revival would require significant cooperation among what remains of the political center, the political left, and Israeli Arab political parties. Interestingly, Yoav Gallant, the current Israeli defense minister, has called for Israel’s Declaration of Independence to be the first text in such a constitutional document.

Israel also needs to better enforce the rule of law both inside Israel and in the West Bank, which means that the state can no longer tolerate violence by settlers toward Palestinians. Moreover, the military occupation over the Palestinians needs to end, and a binding peace process needs to be initiated involving neutral third-party negotiators. At a minimum, Israel should commit to addressing the ICJ’s recent opinion regarding Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

To better guarantee domestic stability, Israel needs to legitimize its place in the Middle East, building on the gains made in the Abraham Accords and strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia and other regimes in the region. To safeguard its relations with G-7 countries and the broader international community, Israel should reiterate its commitment to international law, including by making military operations more transparent, ensuring accountability for any violations of international law, and ratifying the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002.

The steps described above would face potentially insurmountable opposition in Israel, but such opposition would only reaffirm our fears for Israel’s future. To be sure, Israel does face real and dangerous enemies, which, like Hamas, are guilty of human rights abuses. But the trajectory Israel is on is not a winning one. On its current course, the state may morph into something that would destroy the humanist Jewish vision that inspired many of its founders and supporters around the world. It is not too late for Israel to save itself from its own demise and find another way forward.