What ‘right’ and ‘left’ mean in Israel today

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...