In December, I was one of a handful of foreigners at a gathering of the Israel's leading political scientists at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). This wasn't a group of left-wingers; indeed, some of the most senior had served in cabinets of right-wing governments. Yet many were arguing that, 60 years after its bloody foundation, the state of Israel was no longer politically viable.
Yehuda ben Meir, a security hawk and a deputy foreign minister in the Begin and Shamir governments of the early 1980s, spoke of a "grave crisis of confidence which… extends to almost all major national institutions and organs of the state." Exacerbated by second Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, the crisis had now reached "dangerous and almost catastrophic proportions."
Arye Carmon, director of the IDI, agreed that "the public is turning its back on politics. There is a serious deterioration of the public's trust in the pillars of democracy—in the supreme court, in government, in politicians." And Daniel ben-Simon, a journalist for Ha'aretz and a prospective Knesset deputy for the Labour party spoke in apocalyptic terms about the corruption in Israeli politics: the blatant trading of favours for votes, the huge and unsustainable concessions made to the smaller parties for their support in the governing coalition, even—he claimed, to some scepticism—open bribery and offers of prostitutes' favours.
One genuine and growing concern was that the ultra orthodox sects, a rising proportion of the Israeli population, are becoming increasingly detached from Israeli society. One evening, we were given a kind of "religious guided tour" through one of the main ultra-orthodox areas of Jerusalem, Mea Shearim, an area in which men and boys in 18th century shtetl dress strode about the streets or spoke animatedly with each other, and women were rarely visible. Most of these people play little role in Israeli life: their children are exempt from military service; they live, in part, on state handouts and they often have contempt for Israeli society. On the tour, our guide pointed to their expansion into the neighbouring districts.
The ultra-orthodox Jews, along with the Israeli Arabs (of whom Adam LeBor writes about in this month's Prospect), are the fastest growing parts of Israel's population. The first wish to play little part in the society; the second are increasingly hostile to it.
And there are many other "tribes" in this fractured state; not least the settlers, whose tenacious grip on parts of the West Bank presents a continuing headache for the Israeli government. Only a few days before the seminar there had been violent riots in Hebron, where settlers had attacked both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, calling the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] Nazis, and shouting that "the morals of the state of Israel are no different from those of gentiles of western culture."
Speaking about the incident, David Ohana, a Moroccan-Jewish professor at the University of the Negev, said; "This is the politics of political despair, of breaking away from the Israeli project."
Yet another tribe viewed by many attendees as socially destructive—if less apocalyptically so—was my own: the media. Yossi Shain, who teaches at Tel Aviv and Georgetown universities, said, to much agreement, that "this is the epoch of sensationalism in Israel. The media have developed a language of hyperbole. The indictment of political figures by the media on corruption allegations has become so pronounced that it may be that this is more dangerous to politics than actual corruption."
One of the latest victims of corruption allegations was the former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who in September 2008 gave an extraordinary interview to Yediot Aharonot, the biggest circulation Israeli paper. Beginning with the portentous: "What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me," he went on to admit that the country's defence strategists were stuck in 1948. "With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless. Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred metres, that this is what will make the difference for the state of Israel's basic security?"
As he had before, he criticised himself for past uncompromising views: "I am the first who wanted to enforce Israeli sovereignty on the entire city (of Jerusalem). I admit it. I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth."
"A decision has to be made. This decision is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years…[Yet] we have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories… without that there will be no peace."
On Syria, Olmert said that Israel had to give up the Golan Heights, if Damascus would end its support for Hezbollah and distance itself from Iran. On Iran, he said that "part of our megalomania and our loss of proportions is the things that are said here about Iran. We are a country that has lost a sense of proportion about itself."
Yet Olmert was only able to say these things because he knew he had lost his job; they were truths he could never have admitted when he had real power. The central question posed at the IDI conference –"why can't we do anything together?"– has in fact already been answered by Olmert: because the politicians, as well as the generals, remain fixed in old attitudes.
Israel may have won the Gaza conflict, and may secure an agreement that will weaken Hamas. But the real enemies to its continued existence are within. It needs a political renewal, and many of its scholars fear it simply cannot find it.
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