Foreign Affairs: A Grim Future Awaits Israel After the Gaza War

A report published by the American magazine Foreign Affairs on Monday, August 12, 2024, predicts a bleak future for Israel following the end of the Gaza war. According to the report, Israel is on a path toward becoming increasingly authoritarian and could find itself isolated on the international stage, losing many of its allies. There are also fears that the country might face a civil war, eventually leading to its collapse as a failed state.

Authored by Ilan Zaid Baron, a Professor of International Politics and Political Theory at Durham University, and Eli Zaid Saltzman, an Associate Professor of Israeli Studies at the University of Maryland, the report argues that the vision upon which Israel was founded in May 1948, as articulated in its Declaration of Independence, has not been realized. The Declaration promised “complete equality of social and political rights for all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex,” but this vision remains unfulfilled.

For nearly two decades after its founding, Palestinians in Israel lived under martial law. Israel has been unable to reconcile the universal principle in its founding declaration with the narrow objective of establishing Israel as a Jewish state solely to protect Jews. Over the decades, this fundamental contradiction has repeatedly surfaced, leading to political upheaval that has shaped and reshaped Israeli society and politics without ever resolving the contradiction. However, following the Gaza war and the judicial reform crisis that preceded it, it has become more difficult than ever to maintain this status quo, pushing Israel toward the brink.

Loss of Allies

The report anticipates that Israel will become more authoritarian, not only towards Palestinians but also towards its own citizens. Israel may quickly lose many of its friends and become a pariah state. Isolated from the world, the country could be consumed by internal unrest, with widening cracks threatening to tear it apart.

The report notes that the October 7, 2023, attacks came at a time when Israel was already facing significant internal instability. The country’s electoral system, which relies on proportional representation, has allowed more extremist political parties to enter the Knesset in recent decades. Since 1996, Israel has had 11 different governments, averaging a new government every two and a half years—six of them led by the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Between 2019 and 2022, Israel was forced to hold five general elections. Small political parties played key roles in forming and toppling governments, wielding disproportionate influence. After the last election in November 2022, Netanyahu formed a government with the support of far-right political parties and leaders.

In 2023, Netanyahu and his far-right allies pushed for judicial reform legislation aimed at significantly limiting the Supreme Court’s oversight of the government. Netanyahu hoped that the proposed reform would shield him from an ongoing criminal case against him. His ultra-Orthodox allies also wanted the reform to prevent the conscription of thousands of yeshiva students who have long been exempt from military service.

The proposed judicial reform sparked massive protests across the country, revealing a deeply divided society between those who want Israel to remain a democratic state with an independent judiciary and those who want a government with near-unlimited power. The current ruling coalition is attempting to revive some elements of the judicial reform, which was passed by the Knesset in July 2023 before being overturned by the Supreme Court earlier this year, as the Gaza war continues.

The report states that the judicial reform protests exposed concerns within Israel about the nature of democracy in the country but did not raise questions about Israel’s responsibility towards Palestinians living under occupation.

Many Israelis view their country’s treatment of Palestinians as separate from its actions as a democracy. Israelis have long tolerated, if not endorsed, the violence perpetrated by Jewish settlers against Palestinians. In violation of international law, Israel imposes something akin to martial law on Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Successive Israeli governments have overseen the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, jeopardizing the future creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

A Failing State

The report asserts that the Gaza war, where Israeli forces killed approximately 40,000 people according to conservative estimates, has revealed a state that appears either incapable or unwilling to support the ambitious vision outlined in its Declaration of Independence.

The report argues that Israel is veering toward a highly illiberal trajectory. The current far-right shift, embraced by politicians and many of their voters, could transform Israel into a kind of ethno-nationalist religious state, governed by a Jewish legislative and judicial council dominated by religious extremists from the right.

The report highlighted several hardline nationalist politicians who openly advocate for a state where religion plays a major role, including Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Avi Maoz, all of whom are key players in Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The report described these figures as representing a relatively new but increasingly influential faction.

The report notes that an Israel dominated by the far-right has already become increasingly isolated on the international stage, with many international organizations seeking to impose punitive legal and diplomatic measures against it.

The genocide case at the International Court of Justice, its recent opinion on the illegality of the occupation, and the International Criminal Court’s requests to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with numerous credible allegations of war crimes and human rights violations, have severely damaged Israel’s global standing.

Even with support from key allies, the cumulative effect of negative public opinion, legal challenges, and diplomatic censure is likely to increasingly marginalize Israel on the global stage.

Although the report predicts that illiberal Israel will continue to receive economic support from a few countries, including the United States, it suggests that Israel will be politically and diplomatically isolated from most of the rest of the global community, including most G7 countries. These countries will likely cease coordinating with Israel on security matters, halt the progression of trade agreements with Israel, and stop purchasing weapons from Israel.

Israel is likely to end up entirely reliant on the United States and vulnerable to shifts in the American political landscape, at a time when a growing number of Americans are questioning their country’s unconditional support for the Jewish state.

Civil War

If Netanyahu and his allies achieve their goals, Israeli democracy will become hollow and procedural, with liberal checks and balances eroding rapidly. This would set the country on an unsustainable path that could lead to capital flight, brain drain, and deepening internal tensions.

As Israel becomes more authoritarian, this illiberal shift will not conceal the growing divisions within Israeli society. The state will increasingly lose its monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and the divisions could escalate into a civil war, according to the report.

The report painted a grim picture of what Israel might look like if it transforms into a kind of fragmented entity, where right-wing religious and nationalist elements build their own de facto state, likely in the West Bank settlements. Alternatively, it could witness an insurgency by religious extremists and far-right nationalists that would divide Israel in a violent civil war between the armed religious right and the existing state apparatus.

Even without a civil war, the situation would remain unstable, the economy would collapse, and Israel would become a failed state.