Nationalism and Religion -- Take 2

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H-Nationalism Nationalism and Religion -- Take 2

Blog Post published by Yoav Peled on Monday, May 24, 2021

In this post Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University, discusses the relations between nationalism and religion among Muslims and Jews in Israel.

In March 2021 Israel held its fourth general election in two years, which resulted in the same deadlock between Benjamin Netanyahu’s populist supporters and his opponents as the previous three campaigns. (This is not an issue of left and right, as the anti-Netanyahu bloc includes several right- wing parties.) Right before the elections, the United Arab List (UAL), an Islamist political party which represents one of two affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel (the other affiliate has been outlawed), split from the United List, a coalition of four Arab political parties espousing different shades of Palestinian nationalism. Upon leaving the United List, UAL’s leader, Mansour Abbas, a dentist by profession, declared that his party would be open to negotiate with either side of the political map, including Netanyahu’s bloc, the most nationalist, i.e., anti-Palestinian, political formation in Israel’s history.

As it turned out, after the elections Netanyahu and his bloc were short two Knesset seats (out of 120) to form a governing coalition, and the UAL had four seats, which could have carried Netanyahu over the top. However, Religious Zionism, the most right-wing party in Netanyahu’s bloc, which gained six seats, refused to participate in a coalition that would depend on an Arab party, even if that party’s support will be only in the form of abstaining in the crucial vote in the Knesset.1

Religious Zionism

Religious Zionism is a tendency within the Zionist movement, established in 1902. Until 1967 it was a moderating force in Israeli politics vis-à-vis the Israeli-Arab conflict. Since 1967, however, religious Zionists spearheaded the efforts to settle Jews in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to keep them in Israel’s possession. 2 The movement is now split between two right-wing political parties: a more mainstream party called Yamina (Rightward), and a more extreme party, religiously and nationalistically, that took the name Religious Zionism. The latter is widely considered to be heir to Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party, which was outlawed and declared a terror organization in 1994 for being racist and anti-democratic.

So what does this tell us about the dynamics of nationalism and religion in Israel? An anti-Zionist Islamist political party was willing to forsake the cause of Palestinian nationalism, at least for the moment, in return for various material concessions from a right-wing Israeli government, while an ultra-nationalist, religious Jewish political party was willing to sabotage the attempt to form the most extremely Jewish nationalist government in Israel’s history by refusing to cooperate with an Arab party even in the most minimal way.

Saved by Hamas

Luckily for Netanyahu and his bloc, as their rivals were about to form a government with UAL support, another affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas in Gaza, launched a rocket attack on

Citation: Yoav Peled. Nationalism and Religion -- Take 2. H-Nationalism. 05-24-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/blog/vistas/7762053/nationalism-and-religion-take-2 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Nationalism

Israel in response to altercations between Palestinians and the state in occupied East Jerusalem, including in the holy Al-Aqsa compound. The purpose of that intervention was to establish Hamas as defender of Palestinian interests in Jerusalem, in the face of the inaction of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) led by the officially secular Fatah nationalist movement. Moreover, the PNA recently “postponed” indefinitely parliamentary elections that were supposed to be held in May 2021 and in which Hamas was going to be the clear winner, giving Hamas an added incentive to display its might.

Hamas’s attack unleashed a major campaign of shock and awe against Gaza, with Hamas responding in kind, but with vastly inferior capabilities. This exchange of fire lasted eleven days. In addition, a series of mutual lynchings and pogroms between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel ensued in mixed cities inside the country. Under these circumstances, Yamina, the more mainstream religious Zionist party, which has seven seats in the Knesset, could not be part of a coalition that included an Arab party either, and deserted the anti-Netanyahu bloc, dooming its chances to form a government. This will lead, most probably, to another round of general elections next fall. Thus, Hamas, in effect, gave the Netanyahu regime a renewed lease on life.3

Insights

A number of insights may be drawn from this episode, at least provisionally, relating to the nature of Islam and Judaism and their inter-relations in the Israeli/Palestinian context, and maybe beyond:

 Since Islam, unlike Judaism, is a multi-national religion, in a formally democratic context a moderately religious Islamist party can pragmatically suspend its (unrealistic) nationalist aspirations in favor of real-life deals with a ruling party that is diametrically opposed to it ideologically. Non- religious nationalist Palestinian parties would find it much more difficult to engage in bargaining of this kind.

 While in the case of the UAL religion moderated its nationalism, since Israeli Judaism is identical with Jewish nationalism, in the case of Religious Zionism its religiosity hardened its nationalism to the point of almost enabling a rival political bloc to come to power.

 The dynamics of nationalism and religion depend, among other factors, on the religious group’s status as majority or minority in the society. A minority nationalist-religious group, struggling for equal rights, will tend to be more pragmatic than a majority group enjoying the privileges of power.

 The differences between Hamas and Fatah may indicate that in the context of anticolonial struggle religion will reinforce nationalism, while in other situations it may moderate it.

Notes

1. Before the elections Religious Zionism had even sought to bar the UAL from running altogether, but its appeal was turned down by the Central Elections Commission. Bezalel Smotrich, head of Religious Zionism, recently declared that the Palestinian citizens of Israel are citizens “for now.”

2. For the history of religious Zionism see Yoav Peled, Horit Herman Peled,The Religionization of Israeli Society, Routledge 2019.

3. For a similar, but more outspoken, analysis see Thomas L. Friedman, “For Trump, Hamas and Bibi, It Is Always Jan. 6,” The New York Times, May 16, 2021.

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