Is Israel’s current path setting it on course for collapse?

“When we say that the Israeli state will stop existing, it’s more of a starting point,” political economist Shir Hever explained. “What we’re really talking about is whether it will continue as the same entity as it is now. For instance, the way apartheid South Africa was no longer the same entity after 1994, or that East Germany was the same entity after unification [in 1990].”

The argument is that Israel, as it stands now, is unsustainable. And it is not so much about the way Israel treats Palestinians, but about division within Israel. Many secular Israelis are leaving the country – including entrepreneurs who have made Israel’s tech industry one of the best in the world. At the same time, the religious Zionist and ultra-Orthodox segment of society is growing rapidly, even as it comparatively brings in less money to the economy.

The loss of Israelis leaving the country will therefore potentially take much of the revenue and investment needed to sustain the expansionist aims of a hard-right government, while subsidising a benefits-reliant community of ultra-Orthodox adherents.

One of the major push factors for secular Israelis is the country’s deep political polarisation, exacerbated by war, the attempted weakening of the judiciary, and the endless machinations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hever isn’t alone in his diagnosis. Perhaps most notable was the 2024 pronouncement from Eugene Kandel, the former head of Israel’s National Economic Council and an ally of Netanyahu, and Ron Tzur, the director of Israel’s Strategic Futures Institute, that Israel was unlikely to reach the centenary of its 1948 establishment if it continues on the same path.

The two based their conclusion on the divisions within Israeli society, outlining three groupings: a liberal Jewish secular group, a group that wants a religious Jewish state, and a group that advocates for a state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians.

Kandel and Tzur see the main divide as being between the first two groups. “A war over the home, over everyone’s identity and values against everyone else, creates an existential threat to the country, because such a war cannot be stopped without a dramatic change in the feelings of all parties,” the two wrote.