Think Again: Israel

Six decades after its founding, the Jewish state is neither as vulnerable as its supporters claim nor as callous and calculating as its critics imagine. But if it is to continue defying all expectations, Israel must first confront its own mythology.

BY GERSHOM GORENBERG | APRIL 10, 2008

"Israel Is a Successful Democracy"

Sort of. From what began as an impoverished and war-ravaged country flooded with Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world, Israel has grown into a regional military power with a per capita GDP that exceeds all its neighbors. Unusual among post-World War II states, it has also managed to maintain an uninterrupted parliamentary regime for 60 years. Israel's status as the Middle East's only credible democracy plays a major role in its close alliance with the United States and its generally warm relations with Europe.

But how well is that democracy working? Israel elects its leaders, and its vigorous free press sometimes publishes criticism that might be considered anti-Israel elsewhere. Much of that criticism is aimed at the undemocratic regime in the West Bank: Jewish settlers enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizens, while Palestinian self-rule is limited to enclaves.

Within Israel proper, democracy is functioning but fragile. The lack of a written constitution has left the creation of civil rights to an activist Supreme Court -- from a landmark 1953 decision that kept the government from closing newspapers, to last year's ruling that enshrines the right of same-sex couples to adopt children. But the court's position is tenuous. Some in Israel want the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to restrict its powers to overturn laws, rule on security matters, or accept human rights cases.

Another critical weakness is the status of the Arab minority, one fifth of the population. Officially, Arabs have equal rights. But they're scarce in the civil service. Arab towns and cities get less funding from the central government than Jewish municipalities. Roughly an eighth of the country's land is owned by the Jewish National Fund, whose policy of leasing land only to Jews is at the center of a long legal battle.

Arab parties, which hold only 10 out of the Knesset's 120 seats, have been consistently left out of government coalitions. Not only does that exclude Arabs from power but it also makes forming a majority coalition much more difficult -- a central, and rarely noticed, reason for the chronic instability of Israeli governments.

The crumbling of the major parties that once dominated Israeli politics has made coalition government a shaky proposition. Labor, Likud, and Kadima -- a centrist breakaway from the Likud -- now hold only 60 Knesset seats between them. Labor leader Ehud Barak and Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu are both ex-prime ministers who lost their jobs in landslides, reflecting their parties' failure to attract new leadership and the public's disgust with politics. Solving the diplomatic impasse with the Palestinians -- the country's key challenge -- is made much more difficult as a result. Israeli democracy is alive, but it needs an infusion of new blood.

 

Gershom Gorenberg is author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006) and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He blogs at southjerusalem.com.