From a historical perspective, five different currents can be identified in Zionism: the spiritual current of Ahad Ha’am; the political current, which is attributed to Herzl but whose beginnings already existed in the first half of the 19th century; the socialist current; the religious current; and the revisionist current.
Despite the classification into five currents, it can be argued, quite easily, that they all had a common vision that can be summed up as follows: to bring as many Jews as possible to the Land of Israel, and to acquire as much land as possible in order to settle Jews there. Political, practical Zionism operated in exactly these directions from the beginning of the First Aliyah until the establishment of the Jewish state. Along the way, several stops are worth noting, such as the Balfour Declaration (1917), the Great Arab Revolt (1936), and the partition decision (November 1947).
The common denominator of all currents was one: an understanding that Jews could not be equal in countries ruled by foreigners. Theodor Herzl, for example, wrote about this extensively in his diary. And when he was looking for land in which to settle Jews, he thought that they must manage their affairs independently. Actually, Herzl asked for emancipation. Why? Because the basic idea was that the person (the Jew) is at the center of a heated philosophical debate about what will lead to the freedom of Jews. The common conclusion was simple: a free Jewish state.
In 1948, the vision became a reality. For the first time in history, a Jewish state was established, as stipulated in the Israeli Declaration of Independence. But after almost 77 years, it seems that Zionism has deviated from its path and needs to recalculate its course.
What went wrong on the way?
First, Israel has experienced three traumatic events since it was established. The first was the October 1973 Yom Kippur War; the second was the assassination of a prime minister in 1995; and the third was the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. As strange as this may sound, these events did not bring about a unification of forces in the society of the Jewish majority but rather illustrated the depth of the imaginary divide between the Right and the Left.
Why is the gap between Right and Left imagined, and why is it deepening? Here is the explanation. After 1967, the Religious Zionist current began a campaign for a complete Land of Israel. For those who are familiar with the details, it was no surprise to realize that this vision completely matched the ruling coalition, headed then by Mapai. Practically, it was not surprising that a (imaginary) left-wing government began to settle Jews in Judea and Samaria. Over time, the idea of Jewish settlement in the territories became central and dominant in Zionism, until human centrality became marginal and its place caught the importance of the area.
The evidence of the validity of this argument is the countless cases of attempts to evacuate illegal outposts in Judea and Samaria (especially remember the evacuation of Amona in 2006). The decision of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon to disengage from the Gaza Strip (2005) also revealed the depth of the centrality of the land to most Religious Zionists (and not only to them). In the Israeli discourse, the camps were crossed like this: If you are against disengagement from Gaza, you are on the Right side of the political map; if you support it, you are on the Left. The historical truth is that all currents of Zionism thought about the settlement of the whole Land of Israel, in the Bible version, without ideological differences. The reality of life and the thought of creating a better security situation for the residents of Israel led to the decision to give up territories that all Zionist currents previously thought were part of the homeland.
There is another important point that should be mentioned in a historical analysis of the Zionist idea. The attitude toward the place of religion in the life of the state, the attitude toward economic policy, and the attitude toward non-Jews have also undergone real changes. Precisely the one who is considered my father, on the Right, Zeev Jabotinsky, believed that an Arab deputy prime minister should be appointed in a Jewish state where there would be a Jewish majority. After 1948, it was precisely the left-wing government that chose to impose a military government on the Arab minority and wield a heavy hand in the treatment of this population until 1977. The (imaginary) right-wing government headed by Yitzhak Shamir began in 1990 to change the policy towards the Arab society, and Benjamin Netanyahu continued this line in order to make them equal citizens. This did not prevent him from shouting in 2015 that “the Arabs are flocking to the polling stations, and there is a danger to the right-wing government.” This was enough to label the Right as the enemy of the Arabs and erase everything that was done in the past to bridge gaps.
This trend of right-wing elements cooperating with Arab political elements continued in the last decade as well. This was done for political rather than ideological reasons (e.g., Netanyahu’s ties with Mansour Abbas). At the same time, right-wing elements continued offensive public discourse towards the Arab minority and added to it a blatant discourse toward (imagined) left-wing elements. The last two years have exacerbated these trends in the political and social discourse in Israel to the point of a deep rift characterized by severe verbal violence and sometimes physical violence.
Finally, if the Zionist idea is content with establishing a national home for the Jewish people, then it was realized a long time ago. If Israel wants to preserve it as a Jewish majority, it must find a new vision (in the form of a constitution, for example) which will answer questions concerning the nature of the state (liberal/conservative), the characteristics of the economy, the place of religion in the life of the state (including equal burden), and the attitude toward non-Jewish minorities. Without broad agreement on these issues, Israel will have difficulty standing as a society in the face of the enormous challenges expected of it in the coming decades.■
The writer is chairman of the Department of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at Ariel University.