Israel: The Crumbling Fortress

How religion, resentment, and identity politics are eroding the foundations of the state

The Gaza war has transformed Israeli society in ways no previous war has done.

For most of its history, Israel imagined itself as a fortress surrounded by enemies. Today, that fortress is cracking from within. The deepest threat to Israel’s stability now comes not from Iran or Hamas but from the fractures running through its own society. The word “civil war,” once dismissed as hyperbole, now circulates freely among the public. What was once unthinkable has become an acceptable shorthand for the anxiety pervading Israeli life.

Comparative political science cannot predict wars with precision, but it can identify the warning signs of state fracture. Decades of research on internal conflict suggest that civil wars tend to emerge where three conditions converge: deep social cleavages, polarization among elites, and a weakening of the state’s monopoly over coercion. Civil wars rarely erupt overnight; they begin as slow erosions that, when combined, make the unthinkable possible.

Israel today displays all three tendencies in some measure. Social cleavages are widening, political elites are locked in mortal combat, and the moral authority of the state’s institutions—the army, the courts, and the police—is being corroded by mistrust. To understand how a country that once prided itself on unity is edging toward internal disunion, one must look at the overlapping fault lines that now define its politics and culture.

The Religious–Secular Divide

The first and most visible divide runs along the religious–secular axis. Since the founding of the state, ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as Haredim, have been exempted from military service to pursue religious study. What began as a narrow accommodation has become a gaping fissure. The Haredim now constitute a rapidly growing share of Israel’s population, projected to reach over one-quarter of the population within a generation. They are politically powerful and economically distinct, often dependent on state subsidies while remaining outside both the labor force and the army.

For secular Israelis, this arrangement feels intolerable: they serve in the military, pay taxes, and risk their lives while others are absolved of civic duty. For the ultra-Orthodox, conscription is seen as a spiritual assault, a demand that they abandon the Torah world for a secular national project. The Gaza war, with its acute manpower shortage, has made this conflict impossible to ignore.

The economic implications are no less severe. Haredi poverty rates hover around 40 percent, compared to roughly 15–20 percent among other Jewish Israelis, and less than half of Haredi men work full-time. These disparities deepen resentment among secular and non-Haredi citizens who feel they shoulder both the economic and military burden of the state.

The result is more than a policy dispute; it is a confrontation over identity and belonging. The Israel Defense Forces have long been the most respected institution in the country, a rare site of integration across class and ethnicity. If one large community refuses to serve, and another begins to question why it should shoulder the burden alone, the very glue that binds Israeli society starts to dissolve. Civil-war scholars call this erosion of shared civic obligation the “hollowing of the coercive core,” when citizens no longer feel bound to defend the state, and the political community itself becomes fragile.

Ethnic and Cultural Divides

A second divide runs along ethnic and cultural lines: the long shadow cast by the Ashkenazi–Mizrahi split. Though blurred in daily life, these categories still shape political culture. The early Zionist elites, overwhelmingly of European descent, built the institutions of the state and dominated its economy and media. Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries arrived to find themselves marginalized and patronized. They became the backbone of the Likud revolution that swept Menachem Begin to power in 1977, a populist uprising against what was seen as an arrogant Ashkenazi establishment.

Even today, many Mizrahi Israelis view the liberal Ashkenazi elites, judges, journalists, and academics as alien to their experience: cosmopolitan rather than national, secular rather than traditional. Conversely, many secular Ashkenazim regard the populist right as a threat to Israel’s democratic character. While studies show some improvement, they still reveal persistent disparities in income and educational attainment between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi communities. Mizrahi representation remains lower in the most powerful institutions, including the judiciary, universities, and economic leadership. What began as a socioeconomic cleavage has hardened into a cultural and political divide. Each side now doubts not only the other’s judgment but its moral right to rule. That mutual suspicion fuels the partisan polarization that now paralyzes Israeli politics.

The Netanyahu Factor

At the center of this storm stands Benjamin Netanyahu. For nearly three decades, he has dominated Israeli political life, becoming at once a symbol of continuity and of decay. To his supporters, he embodies Jewish resilience and national pride, standing firm against external pressure and domestic weakness. To his critics, he personifies corruption, cynicism, and the erosion of democratic norms. Under Netanyahu, politics has ceased to be a contest between parties and has become a battle between two moral tribes.

His attempted judicial overhaul in 2023, widely seen as an effort to shield himself from legal accountability by weakening the judiciary, triggered the most significant protest movement in Israel’s history. Hundreds of thousands filled the streets week after week, waving flags, blocking highways, and declaring that they were fighting for democracy itself. Netanyahu’s refusal to establish a commission to investigate the failures that led to the October 7 attacks, widely interpreted as an attempt to evade blame, has further deepened public distrust. Many Israelis believe he has prolonged the Gaza war to preserve his political survival.

The pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs now operate like rival tribes. Within families, workplaces, and even military units, conversations turn into ideological minefields. Before October 7, military reservists declared they would refuse to serve if the government destroyed judicial independence, an extraordinary act in a country where the army is sacred. Netanyahu’s allies accused them of endangering the state in wartime. These reciprocal accusations of treason on one side and tyranny on the other mirror the elite polarization that scholars identify as one of the final stages before institutional breakdown.

The most immediate flashpoint is already visible. Large-scale demonstrations demanding an independent commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7 are growing in number. The families of returning hostages, bereaved soldiers’ families, and reservists who fought in Gaza are at the forefront. Netanyahu refuses to allow a fully independent inquiry, insisting his government help select its members. For much of the public, this is unacceptable; they demand a commission led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The outcome of this dangerous standoff may well determine the fate of Israel’s fragile democracy.

The Moral Schism: War, Hostages, and Redemption

Over the past two years, hostage families have demanded a deal, while others have demanded victory. A new and perhaps even more volatile cleavage has emerged: the divide between those who sought the immediate return of hostages and an end to the war, and those who insisted on prosecuting the war in Gaza until “absolute victory,” even at the hostages’ expense. The rift cuts across political lines but is most visible between the anti-war movement, led by hostage families, reservists, and ex-security officials, and the coalition of religious-nationalist and messianic groups who view the war as a sacred struggle.

This schism is not simply about tactics; it reflects two incompatible moral universes. The liberal, anti-war camp frames its appeal in civic and humanist language: the sanctity of life, the duty of the state to protect its citizens, and the moral cost of endless violence. The hardline camp couches its position in theological and nationalist terms: the land of Israel as divinely ordained, the enemy as absolute evil, the hostages as tragic but necessary sacrifices on the altar of redemption. When citizens suspect that their government values ideological purity over human life, the social contract begins to unravel.

The Arab–Palestinian Cleavage

Beyond the cleavages within the Jewish community lies another, perhaps even more fateful one: the status of Israel’s Arab-Palestinian citizens. Comprising roughly 21 percent of Israel’s population, they remain central to the question of Israel’s civic identity. They are citizens of the state yet often identify with the Palestinian national cause and face systemic discrimination.

For many Jewish Israelis, the loyalty and integration of this community are viewed with suspicion, particularly during conflict. The Gaza war has intensified that suspicion. Since October 7, the state has cracked down harshly on freedom of speech, with Arab-Palestinian citizens—including students and public figures- detained or investigated for social media posts deemed critical of the military or sympathetic to Gaza. Some Israeli officials and segments of the Jewish public have even called for revoking the citizenship of those who voiced opposition to the war or expressed solidarity with Palestinians.

For Arab-Palestinian citizens, the state’s self-definition as a “Jewish democracy” often translates into political marginalization, institutional discrimination, and lower socioeconomic indicators. This tension between national identity and civic equality is a core internal instability, especially during periods of war or unrest, as seen in the mixed-city riots in 2021. As long as one-fifth of Israel’s citizens remain politically suspect, no vision of shared civic belonging can take root.

The Global Shadow of Identity Politics

Israel’s crisis is also part of a broader phenomenon. Across the democratic world, identity politics—once a language of liberation- has hardened into a politics of belonging and exclusion. When collective identities become political weapons, compromise becomes betrayal, and empathy turns into weakness.

From Washington to Warsaw, societies are fracturing along moral, religious, and ethnic lines. Liberal democracy, which once promised to turn difference into coexistence, now amplifies division through media echo chambers and the algorithmic marketplace of outrage. Israel, long marked by existential insecurity and a fierce sense of chosen identity, has proven especially vulnerable to this transformation.

The Israeli right’s blend of nationalism, religion, and populism parallels movements elsewhere that define “the people” in ethnic rather than civic terms. The secular-liberal camp, meanwhile, increasingly speaks the language of global liberalism, aligning with Western democracies that see themselves as guardians of universal values. Each side thus draws not only on internal loyalties but on global ideological affiliations. The struggle over Israel’s future has become a node in a larger contest between illiberal nationalism and liberal universalism, a world war of identity politics fought within nations rather than between them.

In Israel, where national, religious, and ethnic identities already overlap, this global pathology is magnified. The more Israelis define themselves against one another, religious versus secular, Mizrahi versus Ashkenazi, liberal versus nationalist, Jewish versus Arab, the less space remains for the civic identity that once held the state together.

Holding the Center

And yet, despite the polarization, Israel remains far from civil war in the literal sense. The army has not split into rival camps; there are no militias controlling territory inside Israel, though Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank terrorize local Palestinian communities without official interference. The police and judiciary, though embattled, still function. What Israel is experiencing is not organized rebellion but something subtler and, in some ways, more insidious: the corrosion of solidarity. Civil wars rarely begin with the first shot; they start when citizens stop seeing one another as members of a shared political community.

Political science offers sobering lessons. When identity-based cleavages overlap — religious, ethnic, ideological, national, and now moral — they reinforce one another. When elites manipulate those identities for political survival, trust collapses. And when institutions lose legitimacy, violence becomes thinkable. Israel is not Yugoslavia in 1991 or Lebanon in 1975, but it is no longer the unified society it once imagined itself to be. Its divisions are not abstract; they are personal, visible, and increasingly unbridgeable.

Avoiding catastrophe will require an act of political imagination: a renewal of civic solidarity that transcends tribe, class, and faith. That would mean, among other things, a fair resolution of the draft issue that distributes the burden of defense equally; a genuine effort to close the socioeconomic gaps between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi communities; a commitment to complete equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens; and an end to rhetoric that casts political opponents as traitors. Above all, it requires leadership that values the preservation of society over the perpetuation of conflict.

Israel’s enemies have failed to destroy it from without. But nations also perish from within, when fear replaces empathy, when ideology overwhelms decency, and when politics becomes a contest of vengeance rather than a search for justice. If Israel cannot rediscover a civic center strong enough to hold, it may learn that fortresses fall not only to bombardment but to collapse from within.

The Occupation: Israel’s Unspoken Fracture

Yet one fracture underlies all others and remains largely absent from Israel’s self-examination: the occupation. Since 1967, Israel has ruled over millions of Palestinians without granting them political rights. This system of control, military law, segregated roads, and expanding settlements has long been normalized as a temporary necessity, yet it has become the defining feature of Israeli governance.

While global attention has focused on Gaza, the West Bank has descended into deeper violence. Armed settlers, often acting with impunity, have attacked Palestinian villages, burned fields, and forced communities from their land. The Israeli military, formally tasked with maintaining order, increasingly functions as a shield for settler militias rather than as an arbiter of law. With more than half a million settlers now living beyond the Green Line, the separation between state and occupation has effectively vanished.

Most Israelis prefer to treat this as a security question rather than a moral or political one. Yet the occupation corrodes from within. It has accustomed Israeli society to the permanent subjugation of another people, to the normalization of emergency powers, and to the erosion of democratic norms in the name of national defense. The habits of domination cultivated in the territories have inevitably migrated home: policing becomes militarized, dissent equated with disloyalty, and law subordinated to ideology.

Israel cannot remain both a democracy and an occupier. The same forces that sustain control over Palestinians, religious nationalism, contempt for liberal constraints, and the politics of fear, are now turning inward. The frontier of domination no longer stops at the separation barrier; it runs through Israeli society itself. Unless Israelis confront the reality that the occupation is not an external problem but the organizing principle of their state, the internal fractures tearing the country apart will only deepen and tear the country further apart.

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