What ‘right’ and ‘left’ mean in Israel today
In Israel, the left-right divide is shaped less by economics than by positions on Palestinian statehood and occupation.
For readers outside Israel, the words “right” and “left” can be misleading when applied to Israeli politics. In Europe or the United States, those labels are usually organised around taxation, welfare, labour, immigration, race, religion and the size of government. Israel has versions of these debates, but they do not structure its party system in the same way.
For decades, the Israeli divide has centred on a different set of questions: the Palestinians, territory, security, settlements, the meaning of Zionism and the tension between the Jewish character of the state and its democratic institutions. Economic and social policy still matter, but they often cut across the camps rather than defining them. A politician can favour state intervention in the economy and still be treated as firmly right-wing; another can be socially liberal and remain inside the nationalist camp.
Historically, the divide had a stronger economic and institutional dimension. The Israeli left was identified with Labor Zionism and the bodies that built the state: the Histadrut, the kibbutz movement, state-led development and a relatively collectivist model of growth. The right, rooted in the Revisionist tradition and later organised around Likud, challenged Labor’s long dominance and placed greater emphasis on Jewish historical claims to the land, a more nationalist idea of sovereignty and, over time, a more market-friendly economic outlook. That divide did not disappear, but it ceased to be the defining one.
Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot and other former senior officers can support major military operations and still present themselves as guardians of institutions and advocates of a more cautious approach to annexation or permanent rule. In today’s Israel, the gap between centre and right is often less about whether force should be used and more about what that force is supposed to produce, how much institutional restraint should survive, and whether a future political arrangement with the Palestinians should remain possible.