The curse of the eighth decade: Is Israel 'fated' for civil war?
As the Israeli army carries out one of the century’s worst atrocities in Gaza, Israel is fighting a battle against itself, within itself.
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was the most recent official to accuse Netanyahu of "declaring war on Israel." Another former premier, Ehud Olmert, delivered a stark warning, suggesting the country is on the brink of civil war. Similar alarms were raised by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, former Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak. Meanwhile, Yair Golan, a former Israeli army commander and Member of the Knesset, went further, saying that Israel is "killing babies as a hobby in Gaza."
The internal fracture is real and the ‘Jew on Jew’ animosity is growing ever more pronounced. But does this mean that Israel is on a path to civil war?
Opinions vary largely between those who would not mind seeing the world’s most war-mongering, genocidal state implode, and Israelis (and their allies) who would verbalise existential scenarios as a wake-up call to their countrymen. Between the two camps, there are plenty of those who prefer to stay on the fence.
What most sides agree on, however, is that Israel is at a crossroad leading to several scenarios that will impact its very structure, character, and sense of collective identity. All is an accumulation of decades of enforced cohesion among diverse Jewish groups with varying opinions on the nature of the Jewish state.
Reasons for fractures in Israel
Netanyahu has been on a mission well before October 7 to reduce the judiciary’s ability to block government’s actions and legislations.
Israel has no constitution and its core legal infrastructure is modelled on the British and Ottoman systems that governed Palestine, before Palestine became Israel in 1948. The Israeli Supreme Court had acted as a balancing force barring political institutions from altering the nature of the state.
With the judiciary weakened, and certainly with a weak opposition, the political balance is now in the wind.
As time goes by, Netanyahu barricades himself further within and behind a cabinet of ultranationalist extremists, some of whom are convicted/suspected terrorists. He is particularly strengthened by crises that he personally engineered or resulted from his cabinets’ policies.
Every attempt to resolve the Gaza war is blocked by him and his cabinet ministers. And to keep the status quo to his benefit, Netanyahu has imprinted upon the Israeli mainstream a belief that the ‘war is necessary’. He’s never out of reasons as to why.
Israel’s security has become more precarious since the Gaza war, an opposite outcome to Netanyahu’s ‘declared war objectives’. Yet, deteriorated security empowers Netanyahu, a man labelled Mr. Security for his ability to capitalise on Israelis’ fears.
On this trajectory, many Israelis believe, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister could find a way to thwart the general election at the end of 2026. Their final hope to oust him.
And if he does, can a weakened Supreme Court rule him out? Who is going to enforce that, Ben-Gvir’s police? Or the angry Israelis?
Ben-Gvir has moulded the police as his ideological extension, and the cabinet is yet to be deterred by the protestors. And with every protest ignored, Israelis are faced with further government measures which they think undermine worldviews they had taken for granted, including what it means to be a loyal citizen.
Netanyahu changed loyalty to the state to mean ‘loyalty to Bibi’, and on such grounds he and his cabinet managed to oust whoever stood between them and their goal to centralise power.
The head of Shabak, Ronen Bar, was ousted for ‘Bibi couldn’t trust him’, despite Bar’s ‘exemplary performance’ facilitating the Gaza genocide and hundreds of assassinations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. He became the fist internal security leader to be sacked since Israel’s inception.
Like ousted Defence Minister Gallant and Army Chief Halevi, one of Bar’s sins was perhaps hindering the ultranationalists’ transition from routinised war crimes to complete lunacy. And from the rule of law internally to the beginning of autocratic totalitarianism.
Jewish history and civil wars
With Israeli internal divide deepening, some scholars look at the structure of Israeli society and Jewish history and see a pattern that may well suggest that Israel on a path to internal implosion.
The Israeli state is an immigration-based society, envisioned by Ben Gurion as a ‘melting pot’ of diverse Jewish populations. Cohesion was maintained through legal democratic infusion of these groups.
The first two decades of the state, Ashkenazim — by virtue of being the bearers of Zionism — controlled most aspects of society. That started to shift slightly after 1967 and the rise of the settler movement and religious Zionism.
With Menachem Begin’s election victory in 1977, and especially after 1981 election in which the Likud under Begin won majority against the Ashkenazi-dominant Labour, Israeli Ashkenazi-Sephardic division started to define Israeli society. A CIA report at the time, released in 2007, saw seeds of a possible confrontation between the two groups.
Ashkenazi Jews have since lost a significant portion of their control over the army and the government institutions to religious/ultranationalist Zionism. But Ashkenazim still hold the economic card, and can and are using it disrupt Netanyahu’s ‘new order'.
What we have now is a section of society that’s losing influence but sees itself as liberally and progressively Zionist versus a Zionist religious autocracy that’s rising in power. Both not on very friendly terms with a third camp dominated by ultra-orthodox Haredi Jews. All three Jewish groups, to varying degrees, are colliding with a far less privileged fourth camp: Palestinian citizens of Israel.
This is effectively a divide over the state identity and its nature, but is not a unique occurrence in Jewish history, which runs counter to the belief about a cohesive Jewish experience.
What Israel is experiencing today, goes the argument, is simply repeating the historical pattern under different circumstances and with different tools, but for similar core reasons.
American Rabbi and historian Lance Sussman notes that destructive conflict, not communal unity, is what characterises much of the Jewish experience. And Jewish disunity is blamed historically for Jewish disintegration and dispersion, the galut, and eventually the Shoah.
It is perhaps what Ehud Barak calls the “curse of the eighth decade,” referencing the demise of the ancient Israelite state which existed for eighty years in Palestine.
Potential Scenarios
An ethnically diverse society, Israel is engulfed with discrepancies in values, needs, and interests. All lead to a discrepancy in goals. The more emotionally a group is attached to its goals, the higher the chances of internal conflict. And, the more the goals are translucent, and they are, the more zero-sum the values attached to them grow.
This makes the odds of a civil war high, but it is one scenario among two others.
The first is for the Netanyahu government to escalate against Iran, thus resolving or at least easing the internal tension with an external military action. After all, one aspect that kept Israel’s internal fractures at bay has been the notion of Israel as ‘the people dwelling alone’ surrounded by enemies.
But engaging Iran has unguaranteed results, especially with Trump’s apparent desire to reach a deal with Tehran. As such, externalising Israel’s internal cracks could make them bigger. It is merely a sedative that will eventually wear off for the core issues to resurface.
The other scenario is general election to restore the balance in power and stability. Yet with Netanyahu’s growing grip on power, and the restructuring of what he calls ‘the deep state’, there are no guarantees the electoral option will work, if it at all happens.
Whichever scenario that may transpire, even if the Gaza war ended, what is certain is that today’s Israel will not exist in the future in its current shape. For better or, more likely, for worse.
Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.
Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa
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