The Israeli center cannot hold unless it learns how to fight

For years, Israeli centrism offered a sort of political shelter for those who believed in Zionism without nationalism. Leaders like Ariel Sharon, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, and Benny Gantz embodied the idea that we could live together — secular and religious, Arab and Jew — without imploding altogether.

That vision, though, is now faltering. The center’s decline did not, of course, begin with the war against Hamas in Gaza, but we see that the fighting has made its weakness simply impossible to ignore. Israel today is not simply fighting a military campaign; it is navigating a political identity crisis on top of that. Trust in the country’s leadership has eroded. National unity is strained. And the political center, long the balancing point since the disappearance of any significant left-wing force in the Knesset, increasingly lacks definition or direction.

Benny Gantz remains one of the most popular politicians in the country, but his appeal, while wide, appears built more on restraint than on vision. His centrism, while a stabilizing force in the emergency war cabinet that undoubtedly projects calm, is reactive — not proactive. He speaks the language of responsibility, not of reform. And at a time when the rest of Israel cries out for clarity, one might argue that such “restraint” feels like an abdication of leadership.

This, though, is a broader problem. The center, once rooted in a practical, sensible Zionism that believed in two peaceful states and the rule of law over lawlessness, now offers little more than a vague hope that things simply will not get worse. The right is louder, more ruthless; and, having been outflanked by the more conservative members of the Knesset, it has now been abandoned in turn by parts of the left, the progressives having collapsed under the weight of repeated disappointments.

This leaves the center as some sort of political ghost: it remains present in the polls, spoken of in vague terms, but increasingly difficult to define. Many Israelis still, of course, describe themselves as “centrist,” but such a label now means little beyond what they are not: not Haredi, not radical, not far-right. It is, therefore, less of a political movement, and more of a negative identity.

Meanwhile, though, the far-right has filled the vacuum. Figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir — a man who returned to the government a month ago despite clear objections from the attorney general, with a record of combining politics with policing in his role as national security minister — and Bezalel Smotrich — the lifelong settler who pushed for the judicial reform, cofounded an influential organization in 2006 called Regavim (“Plots of Land”) that monitors and takes legal action against Palestinian land use, for “the protection of Israel’s national lands and resources,” and who has used his assignment to limit the flow of essential funds, services, and goods to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — were once dismissed as fringe, but now set policy. Their vision of an Israel that is more religious, more authoritarian, and indefinitely entangled in just about every controversial movement that Israel makes – that is to say, virtually every single one – has somehow been upgraded from the margins of Israeli right-wing politics to the mainstream. They, though, remain in place, being protected by political deals and an utterly fragmented opposition.

MKs Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich at a rally of their pre-election Religious Zionism alliance in the southern city of Sderot on October 26, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen / AFP)

The center, by contrast, still seems to hope that if it keeps quiet long enough, sanity will return. This is a dangerous illusion: a vacuum is not stability, it is the lack thereof.

Nor is the left providing much of a lifeline. For years, center-left Zionists believed that peace was inevitable, and arguably, this was their very undoing. The collapse of Oslo, the rise of Hamas and their October 7 massacres, and the paralysis of the Palestinian Authority have shattered their optimism and therefore the public’s trust in them.

What is needed now is not nostalgia, but active reconstruction. The center and the left must be rebuilt; not around vague slogans or personality politics, but around ideas: a belief in democracy that includes the judiciary and minority rights; a recognition and commitment to a civil state that values both its Jewish character and its democratic soul; and, yes, a security policy that is firm but not blind.

This also means hard conversations: how Israel must integrate Haredim into national service and the workforce, for one. The temptation in such times is to retreat, to hope that the next election will solve it in a puff of smoke — but political change does not come from resignation, it comes from engagement.

The center cannot hold unless it learns to stand for something concrete again, because the alternative isn’t more of the same. It’s worse.