I have to start this out by mentioning “populism,” a word I am getting to despise. I hate hearing it because what is called populism today is not well defined and it can mean too many different things or at least refer to too many shades of opinion. But I’ll mostly put that off for now because I want to address Israel and its problems. Populism is a part of it, so we’ll start there.

Since it achieved independence in 1949, Israel has been our number one Mideastern ally and we have been just about its only really reliable ally anywhere. This has not yet changed but changes could be imminent for a couple of reasons.

There has been considerable change in Israeli opinions and politics over the last decade or so and it is sometimes described as “populism.” As many have noted this seems to be close to a worldwide movement, seen in places as diverse and distant from each other as Hungary, India, and Brazil. Not to be too cynical, I hope, it frequently seems to be related to a strong leader trying to be stronger by exploiting some of the worst sides of human nature, particularly hatred of foreigners and strangers and anyone different. This of course, is not new–it has been practiced by some leaders through most of history and particularly was exploited by fascist dictatorships of the earlier 20th century.

Now “populism”(and I’m going to stop using the quotation marks) has showed up in Israel. For a long time, Israel was considered the most advanced country in the Mideast, particularly in technological and economic issues, but also in (and possible being connected to) politics. It was the truest democracy in the region, sometimes about the only country there that could claim to be really democratic.

Israel is still a true democracy, by which I mean it has universal suffrage and a citizen’s vote actually counts for something. It has a slew of parties, coalitions, etc, the number and complexity of which is too much for a thorough explanation here. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of different opinions and with almost no exceptions those opinions have all been welcomed or at least tolerated by the society,

Israeli politics has always been divided in several ways, the most obvious split being between the religious and secularist parties. Its overall politics have been I would say, slightly to the left of the American track, but by no means a break with it. Particularly, it appears to me, that there have been three different overall opinions covering several different parties and coalitions. The majority opinion, or at least the leading one, has been mild and moderate liberalism or even socialism (mostly of a moderate type) and Israeli socialists had some success for the first generation or so. They largely respected ownership rights and freedom of expression enough not to scare off a few more conservative supporters or to offend the US. Israeli socialists, have been moderate enough, in fact, to irritate some of the world’s leading socialist parties and there have often been quarrels, sometimes with Israeli socialists asked not to attend worldwide socialist gatherings.

To the best of my knowledge most of the secularist parties have taken a serious view of the citizen’s right to religious opinions and have not worried much about it; perhaps many of them have not been that interested in religious-secularist issues. On the right, there have been some differences. Some parties are called Orthodox, others rightist.

The Orthodox parties are dedicated to the Orthodox view of Judaism and there appear to be several of them supporting Orthodoxy as a serious part of Israeli life with varying degrees of conviction. Their interests seem to be mostly religious and some of them appear not that interested in politics as such unless it involves religious matters. But like many Evangelicals in the US, they have been inclined to support rightist candidates, religious or not, regardless of whether they agree on all religious matters. It does appear that the more conservative the Orthodoxy the more religious they wish the party’s intentions to be. The rightist parties seem to be semi-secularist in some cases, but with a strong devotion to national defense and security and a tolerance for Orthodox parties even if they(the conservative leaders) are not believers themselves. Several coalitions have been made up of two or more groups from these two conservative strains.

By the way, it would be well to add that the Israeli government is officially non-sectarian in religion, but the state has always been overwhelmingly Jewish as was intended. I am reminded of a colleague of mine who once told me that being Jewish did not mean sharing religious beliefs. “It’s like belonging to a family,” he said. This is well kept in mind in this case, I think.

Now these differences have always led to some quarrels and the occasional gridlock in Israeli politics. But in the past decade or so the differences seem to have become more extreme and disagreements more bitter. The split between the rightist and vaguely leftist or liberal branch of Israeli politics has often been debated and usually the left had a slight plurality, but not a heavy one. In recent years this seems to have gone the opposite direction It’s still a very close call but the center of power seems to have shifted slightly into the conservative groupings.

This shift, and the increasing anger and bitterness have changed Israeli politics, seemingly making it more vicious, nastier and more vengeful. In other words, it has made just about the same changes as the American system has and at about the same times–to some extent even for very similar reasons. Also, for the first time, the attitude toward the US has gotten to be a part of the political discourse. This all has made Israeli society a slightly less stable place than it was. Don’t get me wrong, now, I think it’s still very stable, but some of the stability has shifted a bit. And more extreme opinions on both sides have appeared which make compromise, always difficult, harder than ever.

As a result, at least in part, of these Israel, from 2015-2022 had five different governments. No one could develop a solid majority not even with the wheeling and dealing involved in building coalitions. At the same time, the primary figure in Israeli politics for the last generation, Benyamin Netanyahu was, presumably unintentionally, imitating the behavior of his apparent favorite US President, by being involved in political fights and corruption charges at the same time. This seems to have worked to bring a further destabilizing effect on the nation’s once orderly political system.

Israel’s Knesset(legislature)has 120 seats and uses proportional representation. At the beginning in 1949 a party had to get only 1% of the total vote to be allowed a place in the Knesset. This has been raised several times, but still is only 3.5%. As a result, there are 12 parties represented in the current Knesset, the leading one being Netanyahu’s Likud party, a rightist conservative party with many Orthodox members and many Orthodox allies, which controls just over 1/4 or the assembly–32 seats.

This means that they have to go to extremes and extremists to get a majoirty(61)and form a government. This has proved more or less impossible without going further right than Likud has usually done in the past. This had led them to make alliances with some radically conservative people including at least two leaders whose public pronouncements suggest an almost total refusal to deal with Palestinians or make any concessions or even to discuss seriously the West Bank Issue.

Now, regarding the West Bank–I am not going to give a history of it now, but suffice it to say that this area, on or near the West Bank of the Jordan River, was not part of the original(1949)Israel. It was taken(including the city of Jerusalem)by the Israelis in the 6-Day War of 1967. Since then there have been many changes and many outbreaks of violence. The Palestinian Authority has control of some of the local government functions in some areas, but Israel still asserts suzerainty over all of it and usually has the power to enforce its will.

This has led to some truly nasty confrontations and to ongoing threats of terrorism by the more radical Palestinian Arabs. At the same time, Israeli rightists have hardened their viewpoints and become more and more reluctant to deal with any kind of negotiations. The Israeli military and intelligence services appear to have a more balanced view, regarding the far right opinion with, I would say, somewhat the same disdain I thought the senior officer corps of the US services had for the Trump administration.

The big issue on the West Bank is something usually called the Two State solution. This is the idea of cutting loose much of this territory and allowing the Arabs who are a clear majority there, to run their own government of their own nation. This would involve Israel giving up some land that some would consider critical from a security point of view–also, some of the Orthodox, many of whom insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, claim the land involved was given to Jews by God and cannot be given back. Obviously, just considering Israeli politics, there is a large problem to be solved here.

The advantage for Israel(and maybe the rest of the world)would be that this ought to reduce the chances of an all-out, all-Mideast war. perhaps directed mostly at them. The Arabs would have their own state and could not claim that Israeli oppression is at any given time an issue, though they might claim, not without some justice, that it created a situation , over many years, whose problems remain. But at least, there would be less chance of direct confrontation between Palestinians in the street with Molotov cocktails and the Israeli army and local police..

The second serious option(although there are some others)is the one state solution. The title pretty much says it–Israel remains one nation with a large Arab population who usually have had and presumably would continue to have, full political rights.

Israeli political opinion is all over the place on this. There are, as noted, some solutions other than 1-state or 2-state,. some trying to combine the two, sort of, and some more, well, imaginative. I am not going into any of these. But I will note that the straight out 1-state and 2-state solutions, with few if any complications, are the most popular. But polls show the 1 state solution gets only about 20% of the public, the 2-state a bit over 30%.

I personally favor the 2 state solution and have trouble understanding why most Israelis fail to support it. It would give up some land, certainly, but in return Israel remains a solidly Jewish state and the headaches of the West Bank would be largely left to the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians. The one state solution would keep the land and all the people and would also keep some of the problems plus adding what looks to be a big one.

Because Israel is a true democracy(the votes really mean something), and because the Palestinian birth rate is higher than the Israelis, a few decades down the line Israel would have an Arab majority and nearly all of them would be Muslims. Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. At present this question may be being ignored as Israelis worry about PM Netanyahu’s possible legal troubles and, particularly now, his attempt to change the law so that a 1-vote majority in the Knesset could over-rule the Israeli Supreme Court.

This all may create serious issues for the Biden Administration. We are, as noted, Israel’s oldest more or less permanent ally. We have nearly always stood together in international disputes. The Netanyahu government, however, has pursued policies far enough to the right that it has aleinated a fairly sizeable amount of American Jewish opinion, which tends to be liberal, though to a lesser extent that a generation or two ago.

In addition, for the first time Israel shows signs of something like political instability, though as noted above it’s still one of the more stable democracies in the Mideast. But this has got to be a worry to the Administration, particularly when it is trying to sort out the other big Middle East issue, SA and Iran, as mentioned in my very recent posting. And there is always the question of how much could the US do? After all, it’s not a situation to be handled just by more money or more flattery from Washington. But it does present another situation in which the US foreign policy people have to take an interest.

And what if the unrest/instability in Israel should get worse? I don’t anticipate this, but it’s not impossible. This would possibly tempt Israel’s hostile near neighbors, the anti-Israel party in Lebanon and the violently anti-Semitic Hamas rulers of the Gaza to make trouble as much as possible. This is precedented, it has happened before.

For Biden, Blinken and the rest of the US foreign policy team this all contains more than one threat and at least one opportunity which I can imagine. If Israel actually begins to look seriously like abandoning real democracy for populism, the US will still have to remain an ally. For reasons both strategic and moral we could not do otherwise. But the warmth of the relationship, already cooling, will drop even further and so will the willingness to take chances for each other. This could have serious consequences in the Mideast, Ukraine and elsewhere, particularly the Far East if trouble should erupt there.

If the two sides(or however many there are)in the Israeil court-power dispute deadlock and this become a peaceful version of a stalemated war, the issues might be similar. Certainly it would be less easy for the US to count on quick cooperation from the Israelis. If the Netanyahu side wins the struggle and actually reduces the Supreme Court there could be real trouble. Imagine, for example, if the US Supreme Court could be reversed by one vote in one(or even both)Houses of Congress.

This might have serious impact upon individual rights which have always been one of Israel’s best points, and the first people to feel this effect would likely be Israeli Arabs, particularly Palestinians. This possibly could be regarded as an invitation by a hostile Arab power to intervene, particularly with Israel’s heretofore unshakeable national unity on the line, and I leave to your imagination what could result. Most Arab states have enough issues of their own to make this seem unlikely right now, but the possibility should not be dismissed.

One big opportunity occurs to me. If cooler heads prevail in Israel, and if there could be some kind of civilized negotiations with the Palestinians, some good could result. Times of crisis can sometimes be times of good change.. As I recall JFK was fond of pointing out that there are two Chinese words meaning “crisis.” One should be translated as “threat” and one as “opportunity.” If the US and other nations and people of good will could intervene at the right time, without dictatorial behavior, but with just enough pressure, maybe–maybe–both sides could be made to settle down and work seriously on the Palestinian issue, an issue which cares a serious threat for the Israeli future and the world’s. Maybe their own flirtation with disorder and disunity would be a motivation.

The situation does not look particularly hopeful at present. But perhaps a chance will be found to turn this apparent crisis to at least one advantage, one that may effect favorably the whole Middle East and the whole world.