Decoding the Shift: What 'Right' and 'Left' Truly Mean in Modern Israeli Politics

For readers outside Israel, the labels “right” and “left” can often prove misleading when applied to Israeli politics. While these terms in Europe or the United States typically revolve around taxation, welfare, labour, immigration, race, religion, and the size of government, Israel operates differently. Although Israel has versions of these debates, they do not structure its party system in the same way. For decades, the Israeli divide has centred on a distinct set of questions: the Palestinians, territory, security, settlements, the meaning of Zionism, and the ongoing tension between the Jewish character of the state and its democratic institutions.

Economic and social policy still matter, but they frequently cut across political camps rather than defining them. A politician might favour state intervention in the economy and still be treated as firmly right-wing, while another can remain socially liberal and stay inside the nationalist camp. Historically, the divide possessed a stronger economic and institutional dimension. The Israeli left was identified with Labor Zionism and the foundational bodies that built the state, including the Histadrut, the kibbutz movement, state-led development, and a relatively collectivist model of growth. Conversely, the right—rooted in the Revisionist tradition and later organised around Likud—challenged Labor’s long-standing dominance. It placed greater emphasis on Jewish historical claims to the land, a more nationalist idea of sovereignty, and eventually a more market-friendly economic outlook.

That traditional divide did not entirely disappear, but it ceased to be the defining characteristic of Israeli politics. Following 1967, and even more clearly after the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Israeli politics increasingly centred on the territories and the Palestinians living within them. The left became associated with territorial compromise, negotiations, and the argument that some form of separation from the Palestinians was essential if Israel intended to remain both Jewish and democratic. Meanwhile, the right became associated with opposition to a Palestinian state, support for settlements, and the claim that withdrawal would generate new security threats rather than resolve the conflict.

The second Intifada did more than any single economic debate to weaken the left among Jewish voters. For many, the violence of the early 2000s served as proof that the Oslo Accords had failed, or at the very least, that concessions did not reliably produce peace. The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, followed by Hamas’s takeover and subsequent rounds of fighting, only hardened that perspective. The October 7, 2023 attacks did not initiate this shift; rather, they accelerated a movement already under way, making security and Jewish identity even more central than they had been in the years following Oslo.

Today, being “right-wing” in Israel primarily means taking a harder line on Palestinian national claims, security, and territorial control. This stance can encompass rejecting a Palestinian state altogether or accepting only a heavily reduced form of self-rule that falls far short of sovereign independence. Illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are no longer treated across this camp as temporary bargaining chips that can be easily traded away. For parts of the right, they represent a security asset, while for others, they form a national and religious project, with the Jewish nation-state serving as the ultimate frame.

This right-wing movement is not automatically a US-style conservative bloc regarding the economy. While Likud still presents itself as relatively market-oriented, Israeli right-wing politics comfortably accommodates subsidies, public employment, housing support, and large financial transfers when they serve coalition needs or specific constituencies. The right remains far more unified around security, sovereignty, and the Jewish character of the state than around a singular theory of markets. Likud continues to be the main vehicle of this camp, mixing nationalism, scepticism towards Palestinian statehood, and a robust security posture while drawing support from secular voters, traditional Jews, religious Jews, and individuals whose primary identity is nationalist rather than theological.

To the right of Likud sit parties such as Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, where nationalism merges with an explicitly religious interpretation of the land. For these political currents, settlement is not merely a strategy, but the fulfilment of a historical and religious claim, making territorial compromise much harder to treat as a technical matter. These same currents have proven more willing than the older Likud establishment to confront the Supreme Court, the attorney general, and parts of the security elite whenever those institutions are perceived as blocking an elected right-wing majority. The fight over judicial reform prior to October 7 stemmed from this suspicion, with supporters arguing that elected politicians should reclaim power and opponents warning that the reform would erode one of the few remaining checks on government. The argument persisted even after the war, returning amid a crowded field of security and identity questions.

The Zionist centre and the remnants of the Zionist left occupy a different position within this political landscape, though not as distinct as some outside observers might expect. Generally speaking, they remain more open to a political settlement, or at least some form of separation from the Palestinians, and they defend the courts, the professional civil service, and civil liberties more vigorously than the current right. They also express greater unease about transforming temporary military control into a permanent political order. However, the vocabulary of the old peace camp has thinned considerably. Figures like Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot can support major military operations while still presenting themselves as guardians of state institutions and advocates for a more cautious approach to annexation or permanent rule.

In contemporary Israel, the gap between the centre and the right is frequently less about whether force should be deployed and more about what that force is meant to achieve, how much institutional restraint should survive, and whether a future political arrangement with the Palestinians should remain possible. The Zionist left is much smaller than it was during the Labor years. Parties linked to the peace camp have struggled to convince voters that negotiations or withdrawal can still deliver security. Although there are still Jewish Israelis who desire an end to the occupation, a Palestinian state, stronger civil rights protections, and a more egalitarian economic policy, they are electorally weaker. They operate within a political climate where several assumptions once belonging to the respectable centre-left have lost standing among large segments of the Jewish public.

Indeed, the word “left” itself has become, in much Israeli Jewish discourse, nearly a stain rather than a standard political label. Following the second Intifada, it carried suggestions of naivety regarding security; after October 7, that charge grew even heavier. The term “leftist” is frequently used not to describe a position on taxes or welfare, but to imply softness towards Palestinian claims, distance from mainstream Jewish nationalism, or a tendency to prioritise institutional and universal principles over the immediate demands of security.

Nevertheless, a social and economic left persists in Israel, arguing for housing, labour protections, public services, and a less unequal society without necessarily endorsing the territorial formulas of the 1990s. There is also a left defined primarily by the Palestinian question: opposition to the occupation, support for a Palestinian state, equality between Jewish and Arab citizens, and a more civic reading of the state. These two factions are not identical, and treating them as such is one reason the label has become so easily weaponised. Imported political vocabulary fails to capture these nuances easily, and Israeli political discourse has rarely tried very hard to keep the two meanings distinct.

The Haredi parties illustrate how rapidly the conventional left-right axis begins to wobble. Shas and United Torah Judaism are conservative on matters of religion, family, gender roles, and the public role of Judaism, yet their economic positions are not simply right-wing in the Western sense. They push for public funding of religious institutions, welfare for large families, and state support for their communities. Their coalition choices are driven less by a fixed position on the Palestinians and more by budgets, education, religious autonomy, and military exemptions. In recent years, they have typically aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, placing them politically alongside the right, though this alignment does not render them nationalist-right parties in the mould of Likud or Religious Zionism.

Parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel reside even further outside the traditional Zionist right-left map. Hadash has long combined a socialist economic language with Jewish-Arab partnership and opposition to the occupation. Ra’am is socially conservative and Islamist in origin, yet it has also pursued a pragmatic path into coalition politics centred on civic and economic demands. Balad places Palestinian national identity at the centre, calling for a fundamental redefinition of Israel as a state for all its citizens. Labelling all of them as part of the “left” simply because they oppose the occupation or support Palestinian rights obscures their differences. They do not constitute a wing of the Zionist left; rather, they form a separate political field that fails to fit neatly within the Jewish majority’s political spectrum, even when some of their social attitudes appear conservative or parts of their economic language sound left-wing.

Upcoming elections will continue to be described, both in Israel and abroad, as a contest between right and left. While that description is not entirely empty, a more useful question is whether the Israeli political centre of gravity has shifted far enough to the right that many of the most consequential arguments now unfold entirely within a broadly right-leaning field. On security and the Palestinians, a vast portion of Jewish Israeli politics already operates from assumptions that would have been considered right-wing a generation ago: deep suspicion of a sovereign Palestinian state, a high tolerance for prolonged military control, and a robust insistence on Jewish sovereignty as the primary starting point.

The remaining disputes frequently focus on the extent of that shift: whether military control is merely temporary management or a path to permanence, whether settlements constitute a strategic fact or a national-religious mission, whether the courts should continue to restrain an elected majority, and whether Palestinians are primarily a population to be managed or a political community with national rights. These disagreements can still dictate the formation of coalitions, rulings of courts, allocation of budgets, and the fundamental character of the state. Crucially, however, they are disagreements that increasingly occur after the older centre has already moved. The Israeli left and right still exist, but the terms no longer describe two mirror camps competing over the identical list of questions; instead, they describe differing answers to a more specific Israeli argument concerning territory, power, security, and institutional restraint.