National Camp

The National Camp is best understood as a variable political label rather than a formal organization. One contemporary description called it a confederacy of right-wing Zionists and religious Jews, while election analyses show that the parties grouped under comparable right-wing or religious blocs are not politically homogeneous.[1][3] In practice, the label has often centered on Likud while encompassing religious-Zionist, Haredi, and other nationalist parties whose positions differ on territorial compromise, religious law, welfare, and military conscription.[6] Its precise boundaries therefore depend on the election, coalition negotiations, and the political actor using the term.

The modern political lineage associated with the National Camp begins with the Revisionist Zionism of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky's teachings provided the foundation for Menachem Begin's Herut movement; Herut later joined forces with the Liberal movement and, in 1973, with the Free Centre, National List, and Movement for Greater Israel to form Likud.[5] Shlomo Avineri describes Jabotinsky as the most nationalist of the major Zionist leaders and identifies a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan as his movement's central aim. Avineri also notes that Jabotinsky proposed equal individual and collective rights for the future state's Arab population, illustrating the combination of nationalism and civic guarantees within his political thought.[7]

Jabotinsky's organizational legacy passed most directly to Begin and Herut. Avineri describes Herut as the heir of Jabotinsky's movement and the predecessor of today's Likud, while noting that before 1967 it did not actively campaign to capture the Old City of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, or Hebron. In his account, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty and the ingathering of exiles were already regarded as extraordinary achievements.[7] The episode illustrates how the Revisionist tradition could retain expansive territorial ideals without making each of them an immediate political objective.

Likud, which became the principal governing party associated with the National Camp, was formed in 1973. Herut had previously joined forces with the Liberal movement, and the new alignment added the Free Centre, the National List, and the Movement for Greater Israel under the Likud name.[5]

Israeli governments from the state's establishment in 1948 until the May 1977 election were led by the Labor alignment or its constituent parties.[8] Likud won 45 Knesset seats in 1977 and rose to power for the first time.[5] The result became known as the Ma'apach, or “upheaval”; one broader historical account describes it as ending five and a half decades of Labor-movement dominance and beginning 24 years of competition between right- and left-of-center coalitions, including national-unity governments shared by the rival blocs.[9] After the election, Likud formed a coalition with the National Religious Party, Agudat Israel, and other parties.[8]

A Ynet opinion essay presents Begin as broadening the camp's political and social base by integrating liberal-bourgeois elements, strengthening ties with Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, persuading ultra-Orthodox parties to join a government for the first time since 1952, and forging an alliance with Religious Zionism.[2] Nissim Mizrachi similarly argues that Mizrahi Jews became a driving force in the realignment that brought Begin and Likud to power after Israel's first 29 years of Ashkenazi-dominated, socialist Mapai governance.[10] Begin signed the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, and a Likud-led government initiated the Lebanon War in 1982, after which he resigned and left public life.[5]

Since the 1967 war, the primary dividing line between Israel's right and left has been their positions on yielding territory to Arabs.[11] The dispute over territory became a central feature of Israeli political life, alongside debates about Israel's democratic character.[11] The Six-Day War transformed this dynamic by bringing sites including the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron under Israeli control, making their relinquishment a different political question from whether Israel should have initiated a war to capture them.[7]

Avineri argues that Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel strengthened the Israeli right and that evacuating settlers from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — came to seem increasingly difficult over time.[7] He also contends that a new generation transformed the National Religious Party after 1967 into a political voice for settlers and messianic Zionism, making it a natural partner for Likud. This marked a shift from the party's earlier role as a pragmatic coalition partner for Labor-led governments.[7] The rise of Gush Emunim was similarly rooted in religious-Zionist responses to the 1967 war and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[12]

The broad “national camp” should be distinguished from the more specific “national religious camp,” which denotes the religious-Zionist community rather than serving as an interchangeable name for the wider right-wing bloc.[12] The broader camp also includes secular nationalist and ultra-Orthodox components whose priorities differ substantially on territorial compromise, religious law, welfare, and Haredi military conscription.[6]

The National Camp has never been a single party but rather a shifting constellation of parties grouped together for electoral and coalition purposes. An Institute for National Security Studies analysis of the 2015 election counted 57 seats in the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc — down from 61 in the previous Knesset — distributed among Likud with 30 seats, Habayit Hayehudi with 8, Israel Beitenu with 6, Shas with 7, and United Torah Judaism with 6.[3] The analysis cautioned that the usual division into a right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc and a left-center/Arab bloc is “far from accurate,” because neither bloc is homogeneous and the parties differ on fundamental matters as well as on nuance.[3]

The same analysis distinguished electoral blocs from governing coalitions. A center-left grouping won 63 seats in 2015, but the Joint List was not a potential coalition partner; without it, the left and center held only 50 seats. Coalition formation therefore depended on which parties were willing and able to govern together, not simply on the total assigned to each analytical bloc.[3]

Contemporary reporting has not always grouped the same parties together. In 1999, a narrower “nationalistic right-wing bloc” consisting of Likud, the National Religious Party, and Moledet fell from 43 to 27 Knesset members, while Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties were counted separately and rose from 14 to 22.[13] In 1996, the label appeared when Gesher — a breakaway from Likud founded by David Levy in protest at Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to integrate Sephardim into Likud's upper ranks — joined the Likud “national camp” list with Tzomet.[14]

In 2021, a pro-Netanyahu bloc of Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, and Religious Zionism won 52 seats. An anti-Netanyahu grouping of seven parties won 57, short of the 61 required for a government, while Yamina and Ra'am remained outside both groupings.[15] In the November 2022 election, Netanyahu brokered an arrangement joining Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism Party with Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit; parties supporting Netanyahu ultimately won 64 of the Knesset's 120 seats.[16][6] The Congressional Research Service identified these parties as Likud, the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism slate, Shas, and United Torah Judaism, while emphasizing their distinct positions on territorial compromise, religious law, welfare, and Haredi conscription.[6]

Politicians and commentators have regularly invoked the “national camp” label to define, broaden, or contest the boundaries of the Israeli right. One description called it “that confederacy of right-wing Zionists and religious Jews,” while also discussing tensions between voters concerned about legal proceedings against Netanyahu and voters who did not identify with figures the article described as far right.[1]

In December 2014, Avigdor Liberman described the election as a three-way contest between “the utopian Left,” “the pragmatic national camp,” and an “extreme fanatical national camp that ignores reality.” He claimed the pragmatic position for himself and linked it to maintaining Israel's economic and diplomatic ties with the European Union and the United States.[17] His formulation illustrates how multiple actors could claim the label while disputing who best represented it.

In a 2021 interview, Naftali Bennett was described as “a man of ‘the national camp’” and “a firm and proud right-winger.”[18] The positions associated with the label included opposition to Palestinian statehood and a plan to extend Israeli sovereignty over Area C of Judea and Samaria while Palestinians retained autonomy in Areas A and B. Bennett also presented Yamina as seeking a broad alliance of secular and Orthodox Israelis on the right.[18]

When Bennett announced a new party in 2012, he called it a “young national-Zionist movement” seeking to bring secular and religious Israelis together and unite the National Camp's parties under one umbrella as a counterweight in the next administration.[19] A later Ynet opinion article disputed Bennett's claim to lead the historical camp, arguing that it was tied to an idea and political path — running from Jabotinsky and Begin through Herut to Likud — rather than to any particular leader. The author characterized Bennett's coalition as united mainly by opposition to Netanyahu.[2]

On election night in November 2022, Netanyahu announced his intention to form a coalition of the “national camp” and said that his bloc had received a vote of confidence.[20] A 2019 report captured another use of the term: a Likud gathering in Eilat was branded as an event for the “national camp” rather than explicitly for Likud after a State Comptroller fine over the use of the party's name. Other parties that identified with the broader camp, including Yisrael Beytenu and the New Right, were absent.[21]

The settler movement has at times sought to consolidate the National Camp around its priorities. In 2005, Yesha Council leaders sought to bring together National Union, the National Religious Party, and Avigdor Lieberman's party under the banner of a “national camp that represents the settler public,” and they also contacted Shas. A Likud faction led by Uzi Landau was considered a possible participant if Likud split.[4] Yesha Council head Bentzi Lieberman argued that uniting the national forces would create a body capable of influencing the next prime minister.[4] Projected support ranged from at least 17 to an optimistic estimate of 24 Knesset seats, although National Religious Party chairman Zevulun Orlev warned that a joint list might diminish Religious Zionism's independent power.[4]

A 2026 Sapir Journal article offers a contemporary coalition framework, describing Likud, the National Religious grouping, and the Haredim as three components of Netanyahu's governing coalition that share a commitment to preserving Israel's Jewish character.[10] Nissim Mizrachi argues that these groups share an outlook shaped by Jewish history, tradition, and Israel's place as the home of the Jewish people, even as their political agendas diverge.[10]

A Washington Institute analysis reported that 62 percent of Israeli Jewish voters identified with the right in 2022. It distinguished the Religious Zionist Party, which it described as representing the extreme right, from the broader religious-Zionist sector evoked by its name.[22] Religious Zionism subsequently won 14 seats, while the parties supporting Netanyahu won 64 seats overall, illustrating how support could move within the broader right while strengthening the Likud-led alignment.[16]

The term “national camp” is not used uniformly across Israeli political discourse, and sources contest its scope. A Jerusalem Post opinion article used the distinct phrase “New National Camp” for a faction it said emerged as right-wing parties split from their previous alignment. The author traced this development to Yisrael Beytenu ending its commitment to Likud in 2019, Yamina's separation in 2021, and Gideon Sa'ar and Ze'ev Elkin leaving Likud to form New Hope. The article argued that these parties joined the center and left in 2021 to form a government headed by Naftali Bennett.[23] This authorial framing should not be conflated with the broader conventional label.

Micha Goodman argues that Israel cannot be adequately described as divided simply between a National Camp and a Liberal Camp. He proposes three broad currents: Israelis who are national but not liberal, those who are liberal but not national, and a larger national-liberal mainstream.[24] Goodman associates the Revisionist tradition of Jabotinsky and Begin with a synthesis of collective national freedom and individual liberal freedom, presenting this as his interpretation of Israeli political history.[24] He also argues that before October 7, 2023, disputes over territorial withdrawal divided national-liberal Israelis between a Greater Land of Israel camp and a peace camp, and that the aftermath of October 7 could reshape these divisions, particularly over ultra-Orthodox military-service exemptions.[24]

The INSS has cautioned more broadly that bloc labels should be treated as approximations rather than precise descriptions. Neither the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox grouping nor the left-center/Arab grouping is internally homogeneous, and the parties within each differ on fundamental policy questions as well as matters of nuance.[3] Coalition formation ultimately depends on which parties are willing and able to govern together, making the practical meaning of any bloc label contingent on the political moment.[3]