Liberalism in Israel

Political liberalism places the individual, rather than the governing majority alone, at the center of public authority: it emphasizes rights and freedoms, equality, opposition to discrimination, and protection against the oppression of minorities by elected officials.[1] In Israeli debate, this distinguishes liberalism from an understanding of democracy limited to elections and majority rule, although the boundary between liberalism and substantive democracy is not clear-cut.[1] A broader understanding of democracy includes human and minority rights, freedom of expression, equality, and checks and balances alongside electoral legitimacy.[5]

Economic liberalism concerns a different, though sometimes overlapping, set of commitments: private enterprise, a strong private sector, market competition, and reduced government interference.[2] Israeli parties have combined these emphases in different ways, with some linking secularism and civil freedom to privatization, and others joining opposition to religious coercion with support for a welfare state.[2][6] Consequently, the presence of “liberal” in a party’s name does not identify a uniform position on every civil, national, religious, or economic question.[2][6]

Jewish national self-determination and individual equality were joined in Israel’s founding declaration, which also guaranteed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.[3] These commitments provide a foundation for liberal arguments within a state whose national purpose is Jewish, rather than requiring liberalism to be understood as detached from Jewish collective life.[1][3]

Israel’s parliamentary institutions developed from political traditions in the Jewish Diaspora and the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine.[7] Proportional representation, party lists, a nationwide electoral district, and multiparty coalition government became defining features of the political system.[7] Within this institutional setting, several distinct liberal traditions developed, including national liberalism, bourgeois and market-oriented centrism, and movements concerned primarily with civil rights and religious freedom.[2][4]

A liberal strand of Revisionist Zionism was associated with Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin.[4] A historical account of the two leaders identifies support for full civil liberties for Arab citizens as an element shared by both.[4] In that account, Jabotinsky favored military deterrence sufficient to remove neighboring Arabs’ expectation that a Jewish state could be destroyed, after which accommodation could become possible; Begin shared this position while attaching greater sacred significance to Israel’s biblical heritage.[4] Begin was also among the first Israeli politicians to call for lifting martial law on Arab communities in the early 1960s.[4]

Herut’s 1949 election material combined opposition to British Emergency Regulations and economic monopolies with the slogans “For the Freedom of the Individual” and “For Social Justice.”[8] Its opposition to socialism and support for private enterprise linked individual freedom to an economic program distinct from that of the Labor movement.[8] These positions illustrate how national and liberal commitments could coexist within the Israeli right rather than belonging exclusively to parties identified with the Left.[4][8]

The Declaration of Independence, issued on May 14, 1948, established Jewish national self-determination while promising complete equality of social and political rights regardless of religion, race, or sex.[3] It appealed to Arab inhabitants to participate in the state’s development through full and equal citizenship and representation.[3] The declaration also joined Jewish history, immigration, and national aspirations to universal language concerning liberty and equality.[3] Although it did not use the word “liberalism,” its promises expressed liberal principles at the declaratory level rather than demonstrating that those principles had always been fully implemented.[1]

The founding constitutional debate concerned how such commitments would restrain governing power.[9] David Ben-Gurion opposed adopting a written constitution shortly after independence, while Mapam, the General Zionists, Herut, and the Communist Party supported one.[9] Advocates argued that constitutional civil rights could protect minorities and limit the governing Mapai party; opposition reflected, in part, the difficulty of obtaining religious-party support for a secular constitution and concerns about restricting governmental freedom of action during state-building.[9]

In 1950, the Knesset decided that its Constitution, Law and Justice Committee should prepare a constitution through Basic Laws, without fixing a completion date.[10] The Harari Resolution provided for chapters to be enacted separately as Basic Laws, and subsequent enactments addressed both governing institutions and individual rights.[10] Israel therefore developed its constitutional framework without adopting a single written constitution.[10]

The General Zionists represented another important strand of liberal politics, associated with urban bourgeois culture, capitalism, free enterprise, and separation of religion and state.[11] They opposed Labor’s economic socialism, Revisionist political militancy, and Orthodox coercion; together with the Progressives, they held one-tenth of the first Knesset’s seats.[11] Their 1951 slogan, “Let us live in this country,” expressed opposition to rationing and restrictions on economic freedom, appealing to secular urban voters seeking personal freedom and material prosperity.[11] They later entered a Ben-Gurion coalition and helped bring about a retreat from rationing.[11]

The General Zionists won 20 seats in 1951, while the Progressives, whose constituency included liberal immigrants from Germany and moderate social liberals from Eastern Europe, had won six seats in an earlier election.[12] Their merger in 1961 created the Israel Liberal Party, a centrist party seeking a strong private sector and minimal governmental interference.[2] The united party won 17 seats that year, matching Herut as a leading opposition force.[12] The components nevertheless differed: former Progressives placed greater emphasis on social and human-rights liberalism, while the General Zionists were more nationalist and liberal in the free-market sense.[2]

In 1965, the Liberal Party joined Herut in the Gahal electoral bloc, while former Progressives broke away to form the Independent Liberal Party.[2] Gahal competed against Mapai-led alignments, entered a national unity government with Labor in 1967, and became part of Likud in 1973.[2] Likud’s election victory in 1977 brought Begin to the premiership, while the Liberal Party’s distinct identity within the bloc diminished over time.[8][11]

The Independent Liberals combined demands for a constitution, opposition to religious coercion, and separation of religion and state with support for a stronger welfare state, cooperation among economic sectors, and national health insurance.[6] They were represented in the Sixth through Ninth Knessets, later participated in the Alignment in the Eleventh Knesset, and ceased to exist toward the end of the 1980s.[6] This combination differed from the assumption that civil liberalism necessarily entails a minimal welfare state.[6]

Other parties developed explicitly civil-rights and secular agendas.[2] Shulamit Aloni founded the Citizens’ Rights Movement in 1973 with commitments to religious and cultural freedom, equality regardless of religion, nationality, race, or gender, and opposition to religious coercion.[2] It also supported negotiations with Palestinian representatives and recognition of Palestinian self-determination.[2] Shinui combined secular Zionism, separation of religion and state, electoral and constitutional reform, and support for a free-market economy and privatization.[2]

A sociological account identifies a liberal, also termed post-Zionist, ethos emerging during the 1980s alongside earlier pioneering and state-centered traditions and a developing Jewish ethno-religious ethos.[13] In a separate interpretation, Polly Bronstein describes the 1980s and 1990s as a period when human- and civil-rights organizations brought previously marginalized questions—including women’s, LGBTQ+, and minority rights—greater prominence, followed by right-wing grassroots challenges to initiatives associated with the Left.[14]

Economic liberalization followed its own institutional trajectory.[15] Avi Kay traces an organized market-oriented current to the Liberal Party’s formation in 1961 and its opposition to constraints imposed by the Labor-led socialist government; he argues that its control of the Finance Ministry after 1977 initially produced piecemeal, inconsistent measures rather than a comprehensive free-market transformation.[15]

The 1985 Economic Stabilization Plan marked a major policy turn. Kay describes measures including reduced public expenditure and government control of capital markets, currency devaluation, and reduced taxation; he reports that average annual inflation fell from 385 percent in 1983–1985 to 20 percent in 1986–1990.[15] He argues that successive Labor- and Likud-led governments pursued increasingly pro-market policies, while privatization remained incomplete and asset sales raised concerns about concentrated economic power.[15]

Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, enacted in 1992, explicitly seeks to protect human dignity and liberty and embed Israel’s values as a Jewish and democratic state.[16] It protects life, the body, dignity, property, personal liberty, privacy, and freedom to leave Israel, limits permissible infringements, and obligates governmental authorities to respect the protected rights.[16] Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation was also enacted in 1992.[9]

The Supreme Court’s 1995 Bank Mizrahi decision established the supremacy of Basic Laws over ordinary legislation and judicial review of statutes, a development known as the “constitutional revolution.”[10] In this framework, Basic Laws function as guiding constitutional principles and have been treated as superior to ordinary legislation.[10]

Equal citizenship is another central field of liberal application.[1] Arab citizens’ demands for equality and representation have unfolded against historical restrictions, communal disparities, and disputes over collective recognition.[17] Liberal approaches seek reduced discrimination and, in some versions, collective protections for language, culture, and religion.[1]

Debates about equality extend beyond formal citizenship to representation, historical restrictions, communal disparities, and the relationship between individual and collective recognition.[17] A liberal approach can treat Jewish national identity and equal treatment of Arab citizens as compatible commitments rather than mutually exclusive alternatives.[1] The founding declaration’s appeal for full and equal citizenship supplies an explicit basis for this approach within Israel’s own national founding document.[3]

On the Palestinian question, a rights-centered liberal position seeks to avoid indefinite rule over Palestinians without equal rights and supports separation or another arrangement enabling them to exercise their rights.[1] This differs from positions prioritizing retention of the whole Land of Israel, while security conditions and the feasibility of agreements also shape the available choices.[1] A 2019 account describes the political center as favoring steps toward separation because of concern that the status quo could endanger Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, while describing Likud as believing Israel could continue resisting pressure toward a one-state outcome.[4]

Security policy brings liberal commitments into decisions about human rights, freedom of expression, restraint in the use of force, and protection of civilians.[1] The Elor Azaria case became an example of disagreement over whether restraints on force preserve ethical principles or expose soldiers and the public to danger.[1] Within a liberal framework, the issue is how to reconcile security and rights rather than treating either as categorically irrelevant.[1]

Religion and state create another set of applications involving both freedom of religion and freedom from religious coercion.[1] Israel does not proclaim Judaism its official religion, but governmental and religious institutions are interconnected through public funding of religious services and religious-court jurisdiction over specified personal-status matters.[18] Religious practice and worship receive protection, although religious freedom is balanced against other rights and interests rather than being absolute.[18]

Arrangements established around independence, commonly called the religious “status quo,” retained religious authority in areas including marriage, conversion, and burial, while public institutions observed kashrut and the Sabbath.[17] Later secular-liberal demands included civil marriage and burial and recognition of Reform and Conservative Judaism.[17] Religious courts continue to exercise jurisdiction over specified personal-status matters.[18]

Religious authority in personal status raises questions about individual choice, while women’s equality and LGBT rights form additional points of contact between liberal principles and religious public life.[1] Jewish religious participation also intersects with changing social practices: a 2017 account reported a 250 percent increase over six years in religiously observant women serving in the IDF, and stated that 30 percent of observant young women reaching recruitment age were serving.[1] Jewish sources themselves contain principles of human dignity, equality before the law, and concern for vulnerable people that can support democratic and liberal commitments.[1]

The Nation-State Basic Law, passed on July 19, 2018, gave constitutional expression to Jewish national self-determination, declaring that this right in Israel is unique to the Jewish people.[19] It designated Hebrew as the state language, gave Arabic special status, and identified the development of Jewish settlement as a national value.[19] Earlier debate in 2017 had concerned a proposed law addressing symbols, language, the Law of Return, Jewish settlement, and ties to the Diaspora; those proposals belong to the bill’s pre-enactment history rather than a complete description of the enacted text.[1]

On July 8, 2021, an 11-justice High Court of Justice rejected 15 joint petitions challenging the Nation-State Basic Law or particular provisions.[19] Court president Esther Hayut held that the Knesset could not use a Basic Law to eliminate Israel’s core identity as a Jewish and democratic state, but concluded that the challenged law did not do so.[19] She recognized equality as a fundamental constitutional principle and called for “synthesis and harmony” between Jewish and democratic components; Justice George Karra dissented.[19]

The court interpreted language and settlement provisions alongside other Basic Laws and existing protections for equality and minority culture and language.[19] It did not decide whether it possessed authority to review the constitutionality of Basic Laws, although Hayut reasoned that the Knesset’s constituent authority was not unlimited.[19] The judgment thus addressed national identity through interpretation within an ongoing, incomplete constitutional framework.[19]

Judicial policy again became a central arena in 2023, when government proposals sought to reduce the judiciary’s capacity to check government action.[20] Proposals included a 61-vote Knesset override of Supreme Court decisions and increased political influence over judicial appointments.[10] In July 2023, the Knesset passed legislation preventing judges from overturning administrative decisions on the ground that they were “unreasonable in the extreme.”[20] Beginning in January, hundreds of thousands of opponents participated in regular nonviolent protests, while thousands of supporters joined counter-protests.[20] These descriptions reflect the proposals and institutional position reported during 2023, not a statement of their subsequent legal fate.[20]

The Declaration of Independence remains a shared point of reference because it combines Jewish national aspirations with liberty, equality, and citizens’ rights.[3] Its language permits liberal arguments to be made through Israel’s founding commitments and Jewish collective history, rather than solely through an imported political vocabulary.[3][3] The constitutional purpose stated in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty similarly places rights protection within the values of a Jewish and democratic state.[16]

Israel’s liberal history also crosses conventional party boundaries.[2][4] The Independent Liberals linked civil freedom with social welfare; Shinui linked secularism with market economics; and Herut’s early program joined individual freedom, social justice, and opposition to monopolies.[2][6] The Liberal Party’s role in Gahal and Likud demonstrates the institutional contribution of organized liberal centrism to the development of the right-of-center bloc, without making every later Likud position an expression of liberal political philosophy.[8]

The historical appeal of national liberalism remained visible during the 2023 judicial protests.[21] At an opposition rally, former Likud minister Limor Livnat described Herut as a “liberal nationalist movement” and invoked Begin’s support for a strong, responsible judiciary protecting minority and individual rights.[21] She also quoted his warning that a parliamentary majority could become a cover for rulers’ tyranny, illustrating the use of the movement’s own intellectual inheritance in contemporary political argument.[21]

Market-oriented perspectives likewise did not produce a single position on judicial reform.[22] In 2023, Kohelet Policy Forum economist Michael Sarel supported addressing what he regarded as excessive judicial activism and flaws in checks and balances, but opposed the government’s proposals as likely to subordinate the legal system to the coalition.[22] His argument connected separation of powers and human-rights protection with the preservation of representative democracy and, ultimately, economic stability.[22]

Attempts to connect Jewish tradition with liberal democracy have also produced constructive institutional proposals.[23] One proposed synthesis draws on social justice and human dignity within Jewish heritage, combines solidarity with the Jewish people and equality for Arabs and other minorities, and favors reduced religious coercion and greater political decentralization.[23] Its prospects for acceptance among religious political leaders were assessed as limited in a 2020 review, but the proposal illustrates an effort to integrate rather than simply oppose national, religious, and liberal commitments.[23]

Other interpretations emphasize the social conditions needed to sustain liberal practices.[24] Eilon Schwartz argues that Israel’s diversity requires dialogue with cultural and communal commitments rather than reliance on a single liberal framework alone.[24] Eyal Lewin interprets political change through competing civil religions, contrasting early mamlakhtiyut—responsible statism emphasizing public authority and civic duty—with a later competing civil religion.[25]

A further interpretation links Israel’s coalition-based political culture and shared Jewish-and-democratic ethos to its development within the postwar Liberal International Order.[26] This account emphasizes that democratic practices and cohesion operated despite extensive social divisions and relatively few formal constitutional safeguards.[26] It also connects the strong statist tradition to the state’s role as the source of Jewish sovereignty and protection, helping explain why suspicion of governmental power and formal restraints on it have not always occupied the same place as in other liberal or conservative traditions.[26]

Economic liberalism has continued to attract new adherents outside its historic party structures.[27] A first-person account presents the 2011 social protest as a catalyst for one participant’s movement from opposition to privatization toward support for markets, individual liberty, and economic liberalism, and describes organizations and activists spreading these ideas during the following decade.[27] This trajectory underscores the distinction between the history of market advocacy and that of political rights, even where individuals or organizations connect them.[15][27]

Disagreement centers on the relationship between majority rule and enforceable rights, and on balancing Jewish national identity with universal equality, security, religion, and Palestinian political rights.[1][5] A 2016 survey found that 76 percent of Israeli Jews considered Jewish statehood compatible with democracy, while 64 percent of Arab citizens considered the country’s Jewish character incompatible with democracy.[28] Among Israeli Jews, 62 percent favored democracy over Jewish law when the two conflicted, while 24 percent favored Jewish law, with substantial differences among religious-identity groups.[28]

The Nation-State Basic Law’s omission of an explicit equality clause prompted legal challenges and public opposition, including a Druze-led Tel Aviv demonstration attended by tens of thousands in 2018.[19][29] Supporters argued that other legislation protected equality and that national-Jewish values required constitutional recognition; critics argued that the law weakened equal citizenship.[29] Judicial disputes similarly opposed claims that courts infringed the elected government’s mandate to arguments that judicial checks protected uncodified rights and prevented corruption.[20] Confidence in the Supreme Court fell from 80 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2016, while proposals to restrict its authority were already under discussion in 2017.[1]

Scholarly classifications range from liberal, constitutional, or consensus democracy to ethnic democracy, ethnocracy, and hybrid models; conclusions depend partly on which population and territory an analysis includes.[9][30] Research also cautions that secularization does not necessarily produce liberal attitudes or religious tolerance.[31] The 2023 judicial controversy sharpened the contrast between majoritarian and liberal orientations, while leaving questions about the boundaries of the regime central to classification.[32] V-Dem’s assessment for 2023 reclassified Israel as an electoral rather than liberal democracy, attributing the change chiefly to legal predictability and attacks on the judiciary; this was an external index judgment rather than an agreed national designation.[33]