Assuming that the Israeli-Arab conflict is coming to an end, this article spells out the main problem areas in Israeli society and makes projections for the coming 5-15 years. Israel will become a nonwarfare society, less mobilized and nationalistic, and more individualistic and conflict-ridden. More specifically, national security will continue to loom large because conflicts in the Middle East will not recede. Israel's orientation toward the West will increase, making integration into the region unlikely. The state will remain Jewish-Zionist despite the strengthening of certain civic elements. Democratization will accelerate, and continued globalization and economic growth will enable Israel to join the capitalist core. Peace will have mixed effects for internal cleavages: political divisions will decline, tensions between religious and secular Jews will escalate, class disparities will be exacerbated, the situation of non-European Jews will worsen, Arab citizens will improve their status, and women will make headway. It is concluded that while Israel will become more Western, the impediments for its full westernization will remain substantial. Certain policy implications are suggested.
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References
1.
1. For a presentation of the mainstream perspective by its leading exponent and an attack against critical scholars, see Moshe Lissak, “ `Critical' Sociology and `Establishment' Sociology in the Israeli Academic Community: Ideological Struggles or Academic Discourse?”Israel Studies, 1(2):247-294 (Spring 1996).
2.
Yoav Peled , “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The War of Liberation of Israeli Sociology” (in Hebrew), Teoria Vevikoret, 8:239-246 (Summer 1996).
3.
3. As such, Jewish settlement and Israeli society differ markedly from other settler societies. These striking differences are evident, for instance, in the comparison with South Africa. See Ran Greenstein, Genealogies of Conflict: Class, Identity and State in Palestine/Israel and South Africa (London: Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, 1995).
4.
4. Sammy Smooha, “Israel's Options in Handling the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” in State Violence and Ethnicity, ed. Pierre van den Berghe (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1990), pp. 143-185.
5.
5. There are only several general scholarly discussions of this subject: Rahel Pasternak and Shlomo Tzidkiahu, eds., A New Era or a Loss of Way: Israelis Speak of Peace (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Eitab, 1994); Nurit Girtz and Benjamin Neuberger, eds., War and Peace (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Open University Press, 1996); Yoav Peled and Adi Ophir, eds., Israel: From a Mobilized to Civil Society (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, forthcoming).
6.
6. This is repeatedly found in the ongoing public opinion surveys of the Israeli population by the Steinmetz Center for the Study of Peace at Tel Aviv University and of the Palestinian population by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus (West Bank).
7.
7. This vision has vigorously been propagated in Shimon Peres, The New Middle East (New York: Holt, 1993).
8.
8. These figures are taken from representative interview surveys of the Jewish and Arab populations conducted by the author in Sept.-Oct. 1995.
9.
9. Brinker believes that the present peace initiative is acceptable because the two sides not only have become sick of the conflict but also can make compromises without renouncing their negative and accusatory “narrative” of the conflict. Menachem Brinker, “Peace and a Culture of Peace” (in Hebrew), in War and Peace, ed. Girtz and Neuberger, pp. 43-48.
10.
10. This critique is made by some Palestinians; see Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Self-Determination 1969-1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994). Similarly, some Jewish radicals in the Left oppose the current peace move because they see it as a capitulation of the Palestinians and as such it is sewn with the seeds of an imminent war and turmoil.
11.
11. Israeli Arabs expectedly prefer integration into the Middle East to integration into Europe-America in a ratio of 57.6 to 33.7 percent with respect to political matters and in a ratio of 54.2 to 37.5 percent with respect to business and economic matters. With regard to culture and lifestyle, they are evenly divided: 46.5 percent prefer Europe-America while 42.7 percent prefer the Middle East. Survey of the Tami Steinmetz Center, 1995.
12.
12. For a review of the legal and institutional underpinnings of Israel's Jewish-Zionist character, see David Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990).
13.
13. The post-Zionist position is associated with Baruch Kimmerling, Ilan Pappe, and Uri Ram, among others. See Lissak, “ `Critical' Sociology and `Establishment' Sociology.”
14.
14. According to the author's 1995 public opinion survey, the proportion of Jews endorsing post-Zionism is insignificant, even among its supposed supporters. For instance, only 3.6 percent of the Jews in the sample, 2.9 percent of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 4.9 percent of the most liberal Jews (young, secular, highly educated, leftist, of European origin, sabra) agreed that Israel should not keep a Jewish majority.
15.
15. Menahem Hofnung, Democracy, Law, and National Security in Israel (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996).
16.
For the mainstream view, see Dan Horowitz, “Is Israel a Garrison State?”Jerusalem Quarterly, 4:58-75 (Summer 1977); Moshe Lissak, “Paradoxes of Israel's Civil Military Relations: An Introduction,”Journal of Strategic Studies, 6(3):1-12 (Sept. 1983); Gabriel Sheffer, “Has Israel Really Been a Garrison Democracy? Sources of Change in Israel's Democracy,”Israel Affairs, 3(1):13-38 (Autumn 1996).
17.
17. Sammy Smooha, “Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: The Status of the Arab Minority in Israel,”Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13(3):389-413 (July 1990); Oren Yiftachel, “The Concept of `Ethnic Democracy' and Its Application to the Case of Israel,” ibid., 15(1):125-136 (Jan. 1993); Yoav Peled, “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: The Citizens of the Jewish State,”American Political Science Review, 86(2):432-443 (June 1992).
18.
18. In contrast, Israeli social and political scientists as a whole portray Israel as an exceptional case or as a Western democracy. Sheffer argues, for instance, that democratization and liberalization occurred in Israel as a result of internal forces and were hardly affected by the Israeli-Arab conflict and global democratization. In this connection, he writes, “The current trends towards reforms have been propelled by the transition of Israeli society and politics from arrangements that strongly resembled consensual and consociational democratic models to private liberal democracy.” Sheffer, “Has Israel Really Been a Garrison Democracy?” p. 30.
19.
19. World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
20.
20. For analyses of the Israeli economy, see Yakir Plesner, The Political Economy of Israel: From Ideology to Stagnation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Ira Sharkansky, “Israel's Political Economy,” in Israeli Democracy Under Stress, ed. Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp. 153-170.
21.
21. Ben-Zion Zilberfarb, “The Israeli Economy in the 1990s: Immigration, the Peace Process, and the Medium-Term Prospects for Growth,”Israel Affairs, 3(1):1-12 (Autumn 1996).
22.
22. For a critical review of these cleavages and how they have affected the drive for peace, see Yoav Peled and Gershon Shafir, “The Roots of Peacemaking: The Dynamics of Citizenship in Israel, 1948-93,”International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28:391-413 (1996).
23.
Yochanan Peres and Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, Trends in Israeli Democracy; The Public's View (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992); Asher Arian, Security Threatened: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
24.
24. For a review of the issues in Israeli politics, see Asher Arian, Politics in Israel: The Second Generation, rev. ed. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1989).
25.
25. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Religion and Politics in Israel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Ira Sharkansky, Rituals of Conflict: Religion, Politics, and Public Policy in Israel (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996).
26.
26. Lilly Weissbrod, “Gush Emunim and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Modern Religious Fundamentalism in Crisis,”Israel Affairs, 3(1):86-103 (Autumn 1996).
27.
27. Leah Ahdutet al., “Measures of Poverty and Inequality in the Distribution of Incomes in Israel,” in Annual Review 1993-94 (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: National Insurance Institute, 1994), pp. 39-96.
28.
28. The proportion of foreign workers (estimated at 100,000 from the Palestinian Authority, southern Lebanon, and Jordan and 250,000 from overseas) reached a record high of close to 15 percent of Israel's civilian labor force in 1996.
29.
29. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, The Emergence of Ethnicity: Cultural Groups and Social Conflict in Israel (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Stephen Sharot, Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
30.
30. Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The Oriental Majority (London: Zed Books, 1989); Sammy Smooha, “Jewish Ethnicity in Israel,” in Whither Israel? The Domestic Challenges, ed. Keith Kyle and Joel Peters (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), pp. 161-176.
31.
31. Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), vol. 2.
32.
32. Sammy Smooha, “Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel in the Peace Era,”Israel Affairs, 2(1):51-66 (1994).
33.
Uri Ram , “Emerging Modalities of Feminist Sociology in Israel,”Israel Social Science Research, 8(2):51-76 (1993).
34.
34. Ilan Pappe, “Education for Peace Towards the Two Thousands” (in Hebrew), in War and Peace, ed. Girtz and Neuberger, pp. 21-32.
