Israel is often described as a society deeply divided by several ideological, ethnic and religious cleavages that threaten the nation’s cohesion.
The acerbity of election campaigns is usually seen as reflecting those rifts, rather than simply as the local political culture.
But in fact, Israel is less divided than a decade ago on most issues.
For many years, Israeli political camps pondered the wisdom of fulfilling the vision of Greater Israel by annexing the West Bank and by indiscriminately settling as many Jews as possible there. The ascendance of the Likud to power in 1977 made this issue a continuous bone of contention in Israeli politics.
Yet, whether we like it or not, this great debate is over.
After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government signed the Hebron agreement and subsequently the Wye memorandum, it became very clear that even the Likud was implementing, albeit reluctantly, the Oslo accords — the partition of the Land of Israel. This was traditionally Labor’s position and the rationale for signing Oslo with the Palestinians.
The present policy debate revolves around the amount of percentages of land under Israeli control to be handed over to the Palestinians. The current dispute is not couched in ideological reasoning, but in a pragmatic assessment of what is needed for Israeli security and what is least costly in terms of domestic politics.
The present differences of opinion between the two largest parties on the Palestinian issue are not that great and are more related to nuance than to different approaches.
Moreover, even the possibility of a Palestinian state — once regarded as a mortal threat to Israel — no longer evokes an uproar in Israeli public opinion. Similarly, the majority within the political elite views such a development merely as a fait accompli to which Israel must adapt.
The Sephardi-Ashkenazi rift has also become much less divisive in Israeli society than in the past. The number of such “intermarriages” is on the rise, obfuscating the ethnic differences.
The political system has responded to Sephardi complaints of discrimination by increasing the number of Sephardi politicians at the local and national levels. The past two decades also have seen an influx of Sephardi Jews into the middle class and a dramatic increase in the proportion of university students of Sephardi origin. While the ethnic anxieties have not disappeared, this issue is no longer politically explosive.
The role of the government in the economy was, in the past, also a source of debate. Israel was established with a large public and governmental sector, as part of the prevailing socialist ideology at the time. Over the years, this economic structure came increasingly under criticism and provided ammunition for heated arguments.
Nowadays, privatization is the catchword and nearly all Israelis seem to agree that capitalism is the best way to assure a higher standard of living. The pursuit of happiness — i.e. money — is unashamedly declared by many new economic entrepreneurs.
The only rift within Israeli society that still is of great social, cultural and political importance is the religious-secular divide. The lifestyle and cultural differences between the Orthodox communities and the rest have actually grown as the non-Orthodox move further away from their religious roots.
Despite various efforts to mitigate the consequences of the growing estrangement of the secular sector from traditional values and Jewish culture, we are in the midst of a Kulturkampf, which has the potential for developing into an unbridgeable rift.
However, this situation does not differ greatly from the affliction of the politics of identity that other western societies undergo. Moreover, a great number of Israelis identify themselves as traditionalists, in the middle of the Orthodox-secular continuum.
Precisely because there are Jews with different degrees of observance and knowledge, the conflict is not between two clearly defined camps. That leaves room for mediation and for a modicum of understanding.
So far, the political system has been successful in cushioning the pressures. But there are no assurances that it will continue to do so, particularly when Israel faces the possibility of even more fragmentation as a result of ill-designed electoral reform.
The image of a deeply torn-apart Israel is exaggerated. Moreover, on a number of previously divisive issues, we have seen a coalescence of views. All of this is good news for the ability of Israeli society to withstand future tests.