Israel at a crossroads between civic democracy and Jewish zealotocracy

Abstract

Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Article DOI: 10.2307/2676454 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2676454. ©2000 by The Regents of the University of California. Copying and permissions notice: Authorisation to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by [the Regents of the University of California for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® on [JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/r/ucal)] or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center, http://www.copyright.comMainstream Zionism (now comprising both Labor and Likud) is in- creasingly being challenged by the Right and Left. Post-Zionism has exposed the intellectualfallacies underlying traditional Zionism's at- tempt to combine ethnic segregation with an open society, but it is the moral and ideological substitute offered by neo-Zionism, opting for ethnic segregation as an ultimate goal, that is mounting the realpolit- ical challenge. This article argues that while mainstream Zionists will delineate the space of a future Israel (by drawing the borders in a settlement with the Palestinians), the neo-Zionists will cast the ideolog- ical content into this space (by defining the identity and orientation of Israeli society)