Clashing visions of Israel’s future

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

TEL AVIV — Going against the grain requires nerve. Left-wing Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy knows all about that — as well as the intellectual loneliness that can accompany it.

In his 20s, Levy was a Zionist, serving a stint as an aide and spokesman for then Israeli Labor leader Shimon Peres. But slowly, he grew to become a controversial critic of his Jewish homeland, calling out — as he sees it — Israel’s moral blindness to the impact of military action and occupation on Palestinians. 

The shift wasn’t abrupt — it started when “I traveled as a journalist to the occupied territories,” he said. “A friend called me up 32 years ago. He was a member of parliament, and he told me that settlers were uprooting some olive trees belonging to an old lady in the West Bank. And then, you know, a few weeks later, [there was] another story. And then another. And I realized that we knew nothing.”

A veteran of brushes with angry opponents and baying crowds, Levy’s been receiving death threats for his writing for years now. And it all reached a fever pitch during the 2014 Gaza war, after he accused Israeli fighter pilots of war crimes in their bombings. The reaction was “hysteria,” he said. Hundreds canceled their subscriptions, companies pulled adverts, the newspaper lost 3 million shekels in revenue, and Likud party lawmakers demanded he be prosecuted for treason. He was also assigned bodyguards, as “it was dangerous to venture on to the streets.”

“Now, would I write that today, using the same tone? I am not sure,” he said.

Along with his regular column for the Haaretz newspaper — which Israel’s communications minister accused of publishing “lying, defeatist propaganda” — the 70-year-old Levy also had a slot on television until recently, but it’s been dropped for the duration of the war. “I didn’t make a song and dance about it,” the veteran journalist said.

However, the current conflict has brought about a new reaction to his work. “After October 7, there weren’t the death threats but something more disconcerting. Some of my best friends turned their back on me because so many leftists have changed their views,” he said.

And according to Levy, “being shunned is somehow more painful.” “I’ve lost my small support system, and that’s really not easy because you start questioning yourself, ‘Can it be you’re the only one who sees things differently? Maybe something is wrong with you?’ But I don’t think so,” he told POLITICO.

Levy said he’s being “more careful” with his wording now. “I mean, not careful, but I think more,” he explained. However, his critics don’t see it that way, and sitting with him on a wet evening in his modest Tel Aviv apartment stashed with books, it doesn’t strike me that he’s lost any of his bite or capacity to shock mainstream Israel.

“Israel is in denial,” he said. “That is the only way it’s been able to maintain so many years of occupation — and even creating the state in 1948.”

“I was maybe 20 years-old when I first heard the word Nakba,” Levy recounted, referring to the flight of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. “Israelis live in denial and the outcome is blindness. And thanks to those walls protecting you, you don’t see what you’re doing,” he added.

His argument is jolting when you consider he’s the son of an immigrant from the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia who endured a harrowing trip to reach Palestine in 1939. What would his father say to him now? “He wouldn’t be happy,” Levy conceded.

Most Israelis aren’t happy with him either, as Levy argues that the only way out of the intractable conflict is one-state-for-all, Jews and Palestinians alike, with equal rights. He says a two-state solution is no longer possible — though in that regard most Israelis do agree with him, as opinion polls show a hardening skepticism toward the whole notion of a fully independent Palestinian state.

The idea that Israel’s Jews would ever agree to a change in the state’s Jewish character, however, seems utterly improbable and far-fetched.

According to a 2016 survey from the Pew Research Center, Israeli Jews across the religious spectrum showed they strongly ascribed to the idea of Israel remaining a Jewish state and a homeland for Jewish people from around the world. A majority of participants said Israel was given to the Jews by God and that a Jewish state is necessary for the long-term survival of the Jewish people. And most agreed Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel.

And for them, the rise of antisemitism in Europe and America is just a reminder of their vulnerability.

Later, I spoke with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on the matter — a politician who stands poles apart from Levy on nearly everything, except the infeasibility of a two-state solution. Though, unsurprisingly, their reasoning is vastly different.

While Levy sees the two-state solution’s impossibility resting with Jewish intransigence, Bennett faults Palestinians. “We tried it twice, and it blew up in our faces both times,” he told POLITICO, drinking black tea while waiting for the youngest of his four children to return from school.

“The first time was the Oslo Accords, where we effectively created a fully self-governing Palestinian state, barring a full-blown army. We pulled out of 40 percent of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank in 1995. And five years later, we woke up to a second Intifada and terrorism, which killed over 1,000 Israelis in coffee shops and buses,” he said.

“Then, in 2005, we pulled out of Gaza and handed over the keys. There was no siege, no blockade, nothing. At the beginning, they had their chance to turn it into a Singapore, and they immediately started shooting rockets at us. We contained it for years, and then it blew up on October 7. So, not many Israelis, including centrists, believe the two-state solution is the right approach,” Bennett added.

Palestinians would have a different take, of course. They argue the Palestinian Authority was never allowed by Israel to grow into an independent state, and has additionally has squeezed by encroaching settlements.

But what about the future?

According to Bennett, there are two principles that should guide Israeli policy moving forward: “One is Israel’s security, and the second is [that] we don’t want to govern the Palestinians,” he explained. “The two-state solution doesn’t satisfy the first, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s that we can’t trust the Palestinians. We’re not in the business of national suicide.”

Bennett had announced his retirement from politics in 2022, but he’s now clearly poised to reenter the arena. “When I finished in government, my wife and I planned I would stay out of politics for about a decade … But Israel is in another huge crisis and that’s a different situation, and I will always come to Israel’s aid … I’ll do whatever is necessary to get us out of this hole,” he said.

And according to a recent poll by Israel’s Channel 13, a Bennett-led right-wing party could do very well, winning as many as 19 seats in an upcoming election. It would dramatically recast the political map, placing him in a good position to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The poll also found the centrist National Unity Party of former Defense Minister Benny Gantz would likely secure 22 seats — up from 12 in 2022 — while both Netanyahu’s Likud and Yair Lapid’s centrist-liberal Yesh Atid party would flounder.

Interestingly, Bennett has labeled himself as “more right-wing than Netanyahu,” but he also has a pragmatic streak. And along with Gantz and former army commander Gadi Eisenkot, he’s among the most mentioned names in behind-the-scenes conversations about replacing Netanyahu.

“Eisenkot is a good man, but he’s very quiet. He’s not a talker; he’s an operator,” said Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Israeli security agency Shin Bet. “But to be a prime minister, you must speak, you must talk, you must socialize. Gantz could do the job, but he’s not strong enough. Bennett could be perfect,” he said.

And that, of course, would not please Gideon Levy.