AbstractsPolitical Science

Zionism after 100 years The State of Israel after 50 years. A Survey of the Zionist Debate in Israel in the Nineties Since its inception, the State of Israel has had to face a series of difficult questions and dilemmas concerning its relation to Judaism, the Jewish Diaspora and its immediate neighbors - the Palestinians, both inside and outside its borders. Today, one hundred years after the opening of the first Zionist Congress by Theodor Herzl and fifty years after the creation of the Zionist State of Israel, a series of factors - the peace process and the demographic evolution within Israel being the most important - have reinforced those dilemmas and are about to impose some very difficult choices on the Israelis concerning the meaning of a Jewish state and its future demographic and constitutional character. These difficult questions require answers. Because they concern the very nature of the State of Israel they have given birth to an important, vivid and controversial debate usually referred to as the Zionist debate - a debate as old as the State of Israel itself but whose intensity has increased in the past years. This dissertation is a case study whose basic aim is to explore, describe and explain the nature of the political system of the State of Israel and its relation to the Zionist ideology. The main focus is on the relationship between the particularist concept of a Jewish state and the universal principles of democracy. In the first two chapters I discuss the relation between the Israeli state idea - its normative foundation - and its political regime - the organization of power within Israel - and argue that Zionism and democracy are incompatible. Furthermore, I argue that the tension between the particularist concept of a Jewish state and the universal principles of democracy is inherent to the special character of the Israeli political regime which, using Nils A. Butenschøn's terminology, I describe as an ethnocracy: A political regime which, in contrast to democracies, is instituted on the basis of qualified rights to citizenship and with ethnic affiliation as the distinguishing principle, downgrading the Israeli Arabs to the status of second-class citizens. I also explain why, fifty years after its creation, Israel more than ever is facing difficult political and ideological challenges that are directly or indirectly connected to Palestinian demographic trends and argue that one of the major challenges facing the Zionist State of Israel today is the determination of the status and rights of a growing number of non-Jews in a state that first and foremost was established to serve the interests of one particular collective - the Jews - and which therefore claims itself to be Jewish. In the framework of this dissertation I use the Zionist debate in order to throw light on the special character of the Israeli political regime. By putting under scrutiny the views, currents and trends expressed in the debate I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the Israeli ethnocracy, its relation to…