Conservatism in Israel

Territory and security have generally distinguished Israel’s political right from its left more decisively than disagreements over the size of government.[6] Since the 1967 war, a central dividing question has been whether Israel should yield territory to Arab counterparts, initially in arguments concerning the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Jordan, and subsequently concerning the Palestinians.[6] Consequently, Israeli right-wing identification does not necessarily imply opposition to welfare provision, just as religious observance does not automatically determine a voter’s position on security or foreign policy.[7][8]

Likud represents a secular, center-right tradition historically grounded in Revisionist Zionism, associated with military strength, Jewish settlement rights, a capitalist economic agenda, and a traditional and nationalist approach to culture.[3][9] Religious-nationalist parties attach religious significance to the state and, particularly in their settlement-oriented constituencies, to control of Judea and Samaria.[4] Haredi parties have different historical relationships with Zionism and place considerable emphasis on maintaining religious communities and traditional lifestyles.[4] These traditions can cooperate electorally without sharing a uniform position on economics, religion and state, or territorial policy.[4][10]

Conservatism also has a philosophical meaning distinct from membership in the political right: an outlook favoring gradual change and valuing family, tradition, property, religion, national symbols, and established institutions.[11] The contemporary Israeli intellectual movement has developed publications, educational programs, and conferences that seek to apply conservative ideas to economics, law, identity, and community life.[5] Its relationship with older Revisionist politics is therefore not simply one of identical programs or uninterrupted terminology.[12][5]

Political divisions in the pre-state Yishuv included workers’ parties on the left, a civic center, Revisionists on the right, and religious parties.[13] Their differences concerned the territory of the future state, the relationship between Zionism and social equality, the authority of elected institutions, and relations with the Arab population.[13] These divisions gave Zionist politics a distinctive structure that cannot be fully captured by familiar Western left–right categories.[13]

Ze’ev Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist stream and Betar, opposed the socialist orientation dominant within the Zionist movement, and became an ideological father of Israel’s right-wing camp.[14] Revisionism treated Zionism principally as a national political movement, seeking a Jewish-majority state on both sides of the Jordan River.[14] Its early program called for Jewish military units and pressure on Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration; subsequent proposals promoted immigration, settlement, private initiative, and investment.[14] The movement’s stated 1935 program combined its territorial aspirations with civil liberty, social justice, and Jewish tradition.[14]

Jabotinsky’s 1923 essay “The Iron Wall” argued that Jewish state-building could not then depend on voluntary Arab consent and required a barrier of force making the Zionist presence irreversible.[15] He anticipated that negotiations and mutual concessions could become possible after that position was established.[15] The essay rejected expulsion and affirmed equal rights while advocating immigration and a Jewish majority, declaring: “There will always be two nations in Palestine — which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority.”[15] Jabotinsky and Begin both supported full civil liberties for Arab citizens, although Begin placed greater emphasis on the sanctity of Israel’s biblical patrimony.[6]

Revisionist organizations established the Irgun, which conducted military and terrorist activity against Arabs and the British.[13] After statehood, Revisionism had to adapt its ideas and organization to sovereign political institutions rather than continue unchanged from the pre-state period.[14] Herut, founded in 1948 under Menachem Begin, drew on Irgun veterans and Revisionist Zionism and became the movement’s central Israeli successor.[14][16] Its early program advocated the biblical borders of the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan, opposed socialism, encouraged private enterprise, and opposed the reparations agreement with Germany in the 1950s.[17]

Herut gradually broadened its support beyond an earlier East European base to immigrants from Asian and African countries, manual workers, and white-collar workers.[14] Its activist nationalism and political culture appealed to voters experiencing deprivation or alienation.[14] Movement toward more moderate liberal-national positions helped facilitate Herut’s partnership with the Liberal Party in Gahal in 1965.[18] La’am joined the broader alignment in 1969, while Herut remained its major component.[19] In autumn 1973, Gahal and smaller center-right groups formed Likud to establish a governing alternative to Labor.[18]

The 1967 and 1973 wars weakened Labor’s dominance and made the future of territories captured in 1967 a central social and political division.[20] Within the right, the Yom Kippur War also encouraged discussion of peace and territorial compromise.[18] Herut activists and Liberal politicians pressed Begin to present a peace policy in response to the war’s human cost and fears of renewed conflict.[18] His increasingly pragmatic statements in 1975–1977 reflected the shock of the war, pressure within his political network, and the electoral need to reassure centrist voters.[18]

The 1977 election, remembered as the mahapach, or “upset,” ended Labor’s continuous hold on government.[16] Likud won 33.4 percent of the vote and 43 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, while Labor fell to 32 seats and entered opposition for the first time.[19][16] Begin formed a government with the National Religious Party, the Democratic Movement for Change, and Shlomzion.[16] The result permanently altered the distribution of political power, although Labor remained a major force and competition between the two principal camps continued.[6][19]

Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews who felt marginalized and underrepresented by the Labor establishment were important supporters of Likud’s rise.[16] Mizrahim were then underrepresented in leadership and, collectively, poorer than Ashkenazim; Black Panther protests helped bring discrimination into public debate.[21] Although Begin himself was Ashkenazi, his campaign presented him as humble and pious, socially conservative and economically liberal, and willing to challenge the established socialist elite.[21] Religious voters and voters favoring a harder negotiating line also contributed to the realignment.[19]

Begin’s 1977 platform distinguished between willingness to consider withdrawal from Sinai and the Golan Heights in a peace agreement and opposition to withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.[18] In September 1978, Begin, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and United States president Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David framework agreements.[18] The subsequent 1979 Israel–Egypt peace treaty, the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country, involved Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and evacuation of its settlements.[18][22] Some Likud stalwarts opposed returning territory, demonstrating the internal limits and tensions of the party’s pragmatism.[23]

Religious Zionism followed a related but distinct trajectory: the National Religious Party moved rightward after the Six-Day War and more strongly after the Yom Kippur War, adopting a more messianic outlook and harder territorial positions.[24] Its entry into Begin’s government in 1977 followed a long alliance with Labor.[24] In subsequent decades, both National Religious and Haredi constituencies moved politically rightward.[4] Later developments strengthening right-of-center politicians included the collapse of initial peace-process negotiations in 2000, the second intifada, and conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas after Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza.[6]

Likud’s economic tradition emphasizes private enterprise, privatization of state-owned companies, lower taxes, and free trade.[22] Revisionist and Herut thought likewise placed the private sector at the center of economic life and favored limiting government involvement, but also developed support for a minimum wage and national health insurance.[14] This combination reflected the movement’s expanding appeal among workers and voters seeking recognition of economic grievances.[14] Begin’s Project Renewal provided tens of thousands of housing units for lower-income Israelis and upgraded infrastructure.[25]

Economic positions across the wider right remain diverse: parties strongly committed to retaining all of Eretz Israel west of the Jordan can support social-democratic or welfare-state policies.[7] Shas and United Torah Judaism combine conservative civic and religious positions with support for government benefits and services.[10] Likud’s socioeconomic record has ranged between market-oriented policies and populism, rather than following one unchanging economic platform.[9] Its officially free-market orientation has not invariably determined its practical policy choices.[10]

Security policy likewise encompasses both firmness and negotiated compromise.[22][9] Likud has supported military strength and settlements while opposing major territorial transfers to Palestinian control, yet its governments have also pursued agreements.[22][9] Begin proposed Palestinian autonomy, and Netanyahu governments signed agreements implementing further stages of the Oslo process.[9] The 1997 Hebron Agreement, the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, and the 2005 Gaza disengagement were among initiatives led or supported by Likud that departed from its stated ideological positions.[9] Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state alongside Israel in his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, while later Likud positions on Palestinian statehood remained contested and changed across leaders and periods.[9][3]

Religion-and-state policy involves another set of priorities.[4] Likud’s secular identity has coexisted with support for preserving the religious status quo and a more traditional national culture.[9] Haredi parties have sought subsidies and military-service exemptions supporting traditional lifestyles, while secular and religious Jewish Israelis have disagreed about the application of Jewish religious law in public life.[4] Israel’s proportional electoral system makes coalition bargaining essential and gives smaller parties opportunities to secure policies important to their constituencies.[4] National Religious settlement constituencies have sought a more influential national leadership role, expressed in the metaphor: “We are no longer just riders of the nation’s train, but already occupy the locomotive driver’s seat.”[4]

Beyond elections, Tikvah has supported an institutional network of publications and education.[5] Founded in 1998 by American philanthropist Zalman Bernstein, the fund supported or established initiatives including the Shalem Center, Hashiloach, Mida, pre-military academies, and the Kohelet Forum; reported estimates placed its accumulated investment in Israel at approximately $80 million.[5] Its activities include seminars, translations of conservative thinkers, and publication of Hashiloach.[26] Its stated project links national identity, free-market economics, family and community, and questions of law, education, morality, and military strategy.[5]

The first Israeli Conservatism conference, organized in Jerusalem in May 2019, drew more than 800 participants.[5] Sessions examined the Supreme Court, government policy, immigration, Jewish and national tradition, and free-market ideas; abortion and evolution received little attention compared with their prominence in American conservative debates.[5] Amiad Cohen presented the project as a long-term effort addressing individuals and the state, national identity, family, and community across economics, education, law, morality, and military strategy.[5] He described conservatism not as preserving everything already in existence, but as improving reality through discussion and processes rather than imposing abstract ideas.[5]

The 2022 Jerusalem conference, sponsored by Tikvah and the Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength, attracted 1,200 people and addressed energy, sovereignty, and the judiciary.[26] Gadi Taub advocated free markets, individualism, and personal responsibility against what he characterized as extensive bureaucracy, high taxes, strong unions, and entrenched socialist ideas.[26] Cohen’s advocacy also linked economic and social right-wing positions with continued Israeli control of Judea and Samaria.[27]

In a 2020 essay, Moshe Koppel argued that Israeli debate had long concentrated on security and religion and state, while broadly accepting welfare-state economics and heavy regulation.[28] He maintained that the limitations of the regulatory state and the definition of Israel’s Jewish national character were becoming more prominent, alongside more explicit conservative and classical-liberal advocacy.[28] He also pointed to the 2018 Nation-State Law as an important development in this changing intellectual setting.[28]

Israeli thinkers have also participated in international national conservatism.[29] Yoram Hazony and historian Ofir Haivry organized a New York conference in December 2016 that preceded the Edmund Burke Foundation’s national-conservatism conferences, which began in 2019 and reached Washington, London, Rome, and Brussels.[29] Hazony interprets nationalism as a response to liberalism and globalization, emphasizing national independence, national interests, religious traditions, and people’s membership in families, communities, and historical nations.[29] He has presented Israel’s families, traditions, military service, and independence as sources of international national-conservative admiration rather than portraying Israel principally as a liberal society.[29]

Judicial authority has become a major practical focus.[30] At the 2019 conference, many attendees supported an override clause allowing the Knesset to block or reverse certain High Court decisions, alongside changes to judicial appointments and the selection of ministerial legal advisers.[30] Koppel described Kohelet’s agenda as encompassing economic freedom, Jewish nationhood, and governance, whereas Simcha Rothman’s organization confined its stated remit to judicial oversight and declared itself apolitical on economics and national character.[30] In its 2026 election list, Likud’s stated priorities included shifting authority toward the government and Knesset through judicial overhaul, strengthening foreign relations, confronting enemies, pursuing normalization with Arab and Muslim states while sidelining the Palestinian issue, and preventing a Palestinian state.[3]

Likud’s 1977 victory transformed a previously opposition-based political tradition into a governing force and increased the influence of Mizrahi Jews, including immigrants from Arab countries and Iran.[16] Its political importance extended beyond replacing Labor in office: the right developed constituencies among workers, religious communities, and voters seeking greater cultural and political recognition.[14][19] Populist identity-building became an important feature of right-wing politics, encompassing Likud’s centrality, Shas’s political force, and the growing influence of individual leaders.[31]

Survey evidence illustrates the breadth of right-wing identification while also showing the importance of definitions and dates.[2][32] The 2019 analysis reporting 63 percent of Israeli Jews on the right nevertheless emphasized the continuing significance of the center and described debate as extending beyond territory to the character of Israeli democracy.[2] Figures from the 2021 Israeli Democracy Index found that 75.9 percent of Jewish Israelis aged 18–34 identified as moderate right or right, compared with 56.6 percent of those aged 55 and older.[32] A 2022 analysis also tracked a far-right, religious, ultra-nationalist bloc from failure to clear the electoral threshold in three elections in 2019–2020 to six seats in March 2021 and fourteen in November 2022, distinguishing it from Likud’s established conservative tradition.[32]

A separate assessment placed more than half of Jewish Israelis broadly in the political center and estimated that the hard-core extreme right and extreme left each constituted no more than 10 percent.[33] That classification is not directly interchangeable with surveys asking people to identify themselves as right, center, or left.[33] Public opinion can also be flexible, responding to charismatic leadership and dramatic events.[33] Conference attendance similarly documents organizational activity rather than establishing the size or electoral influence of conservatism as a doctrine.[5]

Religious identity and political ideology overlap without coinciding: Haredi, Dati, Masorti, and Hiloni categories describe religious identification, not fixed positions across every political question.[8] In 2024, 75 percent of Israelis identifying with the right trusted the national government to do what was right for Israel, compared with 19 percent on the left.[8] The share perceiving very strong left–right conflicts declined from 32 percent in 2023 to 24 percent in 2024, figures measuring political attitudes and perceived divisions rather than commitment to conservative philosophy.[8]

The relationship between conservative principles and judicial overhaul is a major dispute.[30][34] Supporters have sought to curb unelected institutions and restore balance among branches, although Taub also expressed concern that an override clause could become tied to immunity for Netanyahu.[30] A 2023 academic article argues that the overhaul diverged sharply from Likud’s historical path and contradicted Begin’s worldview and policies; it also argues that the proposal’s core principles are not intrinsic to right-wing ideology.[34] A Jerusalem Post opinion essay argues that sweeping institutional change conflicts with conservatism’s caution toward unpredictable change, while another critique emphasizes gradualism, dispersed authority, continuity, and minority protection.[35][36]

The application of imported terminology is also disputed.[12] Ayelet Shaked presented judicial conservatism as not necessarily right-wing or religious, while analysis of the debate questioned how American ideas of individual liberty fit Israeli traditions of equality, mutual aid, public services, and state involvement in religion.[12] The debate therefore turns not only on party labels but on whether conservatism is defined as institutional caution, judicial restraint, economic liberty, or religious and national tradition.[12][35] These dimensions are often better treated separately — security and foreign policy, socioeconomic outlook, and religious or secular orientation — than collapsed into a single ideological scale.[6][12]

Economic and religious alliances create additional tensions.[37][38] A 2007 study connects Likud’s 2006 electoral collapse partly to difficulties combining hawkish foreign policy with neoliberal economics: security-oriented voters might prefer welfare provision, while market-oriented voters might favor diplomatic moderation.[37] A 2024 study interprets cooperation between contemporary Israeli Conservatism and Rabbi Zvi Thau’s Hardal followers through a perceived spiritual emergency and lessons religious Zionists drew from the 2005 Gaza disengagement.[38] These debates concern particular historical interpretations and alliances, not a uniform definition shared by every conservative party or voter.[37][38]