Despite criticism from abroad, Israelis united over annexation
The Palestinian rejection of partition proposals (from Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007 and US President Barack Obama in 2014) strengthens the Israeli feeling of having no choice. So far, the criticism from the far left in Israel and abroad has hardly touched the Israeli consensus and solidarity. The parties associated with the failed Oslo peace process have paid dearly in electoral terms.
The bridging of many of Israel’s social rifts has created a stronger society able to withstand the inevitable tests of protracted conflict in the future.
Debates over Israel’s optimal economic system have long disappeared. Nearly all Israelis agree that capitalism is the best way to create wealth. Government policies along such lines are widely supported. The Likud, and primarily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been advocating a market economy while in power for most of the last two decades. Most Israeli parties adhere to a free market ideology while Labor, which criticizes the country’s capitalist orientation, has done poorly in recent elections.
Another social rift, the Ashkenazi-Sephardi cleavage, has also become much less divisive. The number of intermarriages is on the rise (over 20%) and is more socially acceptable, obfuscating ethnic differences. The erosion of socialist practices and the privatization of a centralized economy in the post-1977 period contributed to the growth of a non-Ashkenazi middle class. The number of Sephardi politicians at the local and national levels has increased significantly alongside a similar growth in the senior ranks of the IDF.
Social mobility has also been enhanced by greater access to higher learning. The opening of numerous colleges in the last three decades brought a dramatic increase in the proportion of university students of Sephardi origin. The Israel Statistical Bureau has stopped counting them because young people below 40 are categorized not as Sephardi but of Israeli origin, as they were born in the country.
The predictable tensions between newcomers and established members of society in an immigrant-absorbing country such as Israel have not persisted. Most of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, despite some difficulties, are highly integrated. Ethiopian Jews, from a very different background, have also faced difficulties but are gradually integrating, as seen by rising numbers among junior officers in combat units, university students, Knesset members and ministers in the new national unity government.
Arguably the only rift within Israeli society still of social, cultural and political importance is the religious-secular divide. Yet the conflict is not between two clearly defined camps between which a reasonable modus vivendi might be found. The proportion of Orthodox Jews within society is growing (about 32%), while secularism is losing ground (the number of self-defined secular Jews is about 40%). A large number of Israelis also identify as traditionalist, in the center of the Orthodox-secular continuum. Precisely because there are Jews of different degrees of observance and knowledge means there is room for mediation and understanding. A Van Leer study from 2019 suggests that the discourse on secular-religious polarization in Israel is shallow and does not reflect the complex reality.
Not everything is perfect in Israeli society or the country’s economy. Nevertheless, the standard of living is increasing continuously. As the coronavirus crisis spread in Israel, the annual UN World Happiness Report for 2020 (published in March) reported that Israel ranked 14th in the world. The country slipped one spot from last year’s survey and three spots from its 11th-place finish in 2018. The Israeli Voice Index published in May 2019 showed that 82% of Israelis are proud of their country’s achievements.
Such data refutes the common image of a deeply torn Israeli society and indicates strong social cohesion able to withstand outside pressures against a popular decision.