At the mass rally in Tel Aviv marking thirty years since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, leaders of Israel’s liberal opposition—Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, and Yair Golan—took the stage. In a surprising turn, much of Lapid’s address focused on defining what Judaism is—and what it is not. “Itamar Ben Gvir’s racism is not Judaism,” he declared. “Yigal Amir (Rabin’s assassin) is not Judaism.” Responding to claims that “when Judaism and democracy collide, Judaism comes first.”

It seems that Israel’s liberal bloc—protesting for three years against Netanyahu’s government, first over the judicial overhaul and later the Gaza war—is now launching its election campaign with a new mission: to reclaim Judaism. Having already adopted the national flag as a symbol of democratic resistance, the movement now seeks to define its own version of Jewish identity.

If “Jewish” has become contested, “Israeli” once referred to all citizens of the state—even if Arab citizens rarely felt part of that identity. “Israeliness” was shaped by the ruling Mapai party, which settled the land, founded the state, and built its institutions. It deliberately distanced itself from exilic Judaism, turning Hebrew from an ancient sacred language into a national spoken one, while cutting ties with both European and Mizrahi Jewish pasts. For decades, no one questioned anyone’s Judaism; to say “Israeli” was to say “Jewish.” That held until 1977, when Menachem Begin’s rise brought not just political upset, but a social revolution.

The old elite—the kibbutzim, the Histadrut, the universities, the judiciary—all symbols of the “old Israel”—became the enemy. In the 1981 election, Begin branded these “bleeding hearts” as adversaries and tore open the ethnic divide when he replied to entertainer Dudu Topaz’s “Chachchachim” (riffraff) speech with: “Our Mizrahi brothers were brave warriors.” Thus, he drew a sharp line between the religious, right-leaning Mizrahim and the Ashkenazi “high minded” waving red flags.

More than forty years later, Israel’s liberal camp still struggles to shed its image of elitism, condescension, and detachment from Jewish tradition. Netanyahu has done everything possible to inflame those divides. In 1997, he was caught whispering to Shas’s Rabbi Kaduri: “The left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” In today’s political shorthand, “left” means Israeli, while “right” means Jewish. Those who see themselves as Jews vote right; those who see themselves as Israelis vote left.

Lapid is wrong to think the fight with the right is over who is “more Jewish.” The battle is existential—about democracy itself—just as the struggle against Iran or Hamas is existential.

To erase the stigma, the left has tried everything. In 2017, hoping to win over traditional Mizrahi voters, Labor chose Avi Gabbay—a Mizrahi politician—as leader. Soon after, Gabbay too, told young party members: “The left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” Two years later he quit, and lately Labor merged into a new bloc, The Democrats, led by former general Yair Golan.

The “Jewish camp’s” victory in the last elections paved the way for a genuine constitutional revolution: an effort to redefine Israel not as a democracy, but rather as a religious state with democratic trimmings. The first step came with the 2018 Nation-State Law, which enshrined the country’s Jewish character at the expense of its democratic one. The current government has since launched open war on the Supreme Court—the only real check on discriminatory laws in a state without a constitution.

In practice, every institution is under siege. The army is labeled liberal, prosecutors are accused of persecuting the right and ultra-Orthodox, the media branded “the enemy of the people,” universities deemed elitist, the arts subversive, and the Shin Bet part of a “deep state.” The government insists these pillars of democracy are biased and block its “governability.” Though the right has ruled for decades, it still claims it isn’t truly in power.

Under the “Jewish” worldview, every arm of the state must serve the sovereign—the people—embodied by the coalition and its eternal leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. The right’s immediate goal is to cement control by silencing all criticism—from courts, media, and within. Its ideology rests on three pillars: Jewish settlement across the West Bank, the supremacy of religious values, and the right of ultra-Orthodox Jews to study Torah without serving in the army—on the public dime.

This is the Israel that has rules over five million Palestinians for decades, dreaming of their eventual expulsion. It is an Israel where citizens can no longer live—nor wish to—because equality, democracy, and liberty are trampled daily. Against this rupture between two irreconcilable visions, one wonders why Lapid, of all topics, chose to focus in his speech on Judaism. A secular man known for his disdain for the ultra-Orthodox, contempt for settlers, and view of Ben Gvir as a racist, Lapid sees in Netanyahu a liar, manipulator, and the spiritual instigator of Rabin’s murder.

This government has brought upon Israel its gravest disaster since founding. Yet it continues to rule, deflecting blame for the October 7 massacre onto everyone else: Rabin and Oslo, the Supreme Court, the attorney general, the IDF, the Shin Bet, protest groups, the media—everyone but itself. Lapid is wrong to think the fight with the right is over who is “more Jewish.” The battle is existential—about democracy itself—just as the struggle against Iran or Hamas is existential.

Israel’s current government has turned the country into a global pariah. Netanyahu faces potential prosecution in The Hague; Smotrich and Ben Gvir have become synonymous with ethnic cleansing; and Israelis everywhere feel the sting of isolation. And this is when Lapid chooses to lecture on Judaism? History shows such debates always serve the right. Even if Lapid wore a kippah, wrapped in tefillin, and observed all 613 commandments, his Jewishness would still be doubted.

The coming elections are a historic test. Israel needs leaders who grasp the magnitude of this moment. The ceasefire with Hamas—opposed by Ben Gvir and Smotrich—has shattered the illusion of a “Greater Israel” and the dream of annexing the West Bank. October 7 has reignited the debate over ultra-Orthodox conscription: the public now demands democracy and equality and refuses to trade them for a coalition that has brought ruin.

A vast majority of Israelis now call for an official state inquiry to expose Netanyahu’s lies and his evasion of responsibility for the massacre. What matters to those who filled the streets to defend democracy is not who is “more Jewish,” but something simpler: will Israel live by democratic principles—or sink into an empty debate over Jewishness? The opposition to Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu is not because they are Jews, but because they are fascists, racists, and corrupt.

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David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister who declared the establishment of the State, took four steps that shaped the nature of Israel’s regime and thus laid the foundation for the current constitutional crisis, the most serious the country has ever known.

Ben-Gurion deleted the word “democracy” from a concluding draft of the Declaration of Independence; postponed establishment of the Constituent Assembly; did not separate religion from state, and refused to determine the new state’s borders. Israel has since then been a crippled democracy, as former Attorney General Dr. Avichai Mandelblit ruled: “The country’s founding fathers understood that the state structure was that of a weak democracy.” So weak, in fact, that recently, in the concluding session of the high court appealing against the abolishing of the “grounds of reasonableness”, attorney Ilan Bombach, representing the government argued that “The Declaration of Independence cannot be used as a constitutional basis.” With this, he astonished all Israelis who believe that Israel is not only the sole democracy in the Middle East, but that its democratic foundations are firmly anchored in the Declaration of Independence.

The question is why did Ben-Gurion decide to delete the word “democracy” from the declaration, why did he not convene the Constituent Assembly for writing a constitution as the Declaration of Independence demanded, and why did he easily agree to a status quo that gives the ultra-orthodox minority enormous power over the secular majority. The answer to these questions is simple. He did it because he could, meaning he built a country according to his whims as the all-powerful ruler. Ben-Gurion was not interested in strict separation of powers and did not want a regime of checks and balances, especially at a time when the country was in the making. Although the state adopted a democratic system, it was a democracy that adapted itself to the all-powerful needs of the Mapai party (later known as the Labor party). The government, army, economy and Israel’s General Union the Histadrut, were all under the absolute control of Mapai, as was the Knesset.

Mapai’s rule survived 30 of Israel’s 75 years of existence, ending in the 1977 dramatic change when the Likud came to power. Since then, Israel has been completely transformed: the economy was privatized, the Histadrut passed into the hands of the Likud, the kibbutzim were privatized, the Likud itself underwent a metamorphosis, the religious Mafdal party morphed from a moderate ally of Mapai into a messianic-nationalist-activist movement and the ultra-orthodox Agudat Israel party participates in the government and dominates the Knesset’s Finance Committee. This group, does not participate in the workforce or in the army, but fill up the inflated “yeshivot” where they study the Torah all day, living on government budgets.

The Declaration of Independence is currently unable to settle the dispute between two camps which do not agree on the most fundamental principles of democracy. For the ruling camp, democracy is the rule of the majority as established through Knesset elections. For the opposition camp, democracy is first and foremost the protection of human and minority rights. The phrase “Jewish and democratic,” which ostensibly expresses the Zionist consensus, does not appear in the Declaration of Independence and has become the focus of debate between the opposing camps.

These camps disagree not only on what democracy is, but also on the definition of Judaism. In the absolute “rule of the majority” interpreted by the right, the Knesset can enact any law based on the “will of the people.” And regarding the state’s Jewish character, the religious argue it is expressed in powers derived from religious law (The Halacha), including Sabbath observance, kosher laws, gender separation, nature of the traditional family, privileges for men, the denial of LGBTQ rights, marriage through the rabbinical courts, etc.

While the liberal camp defines the Supreme Court as the authority that determines which law is constitutional and which law does not conform to the fundamental principles of the state as Jewish and democratic, the religious-national camp does not see the Supreme Court as an impartial judge. In his appearance in front of the High Court, Simcha Rothman, chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, made it abundantly clear what the ruling camp thinks about the Supreme Court justices, when he called them, in their face an “oligarchic elite”. It could be understood that in the new mood, expressed by Rothman and gang, the Supreme Court and all the gatekeepers of democracy, the Attorney General, the Israel Security Agency, the Mossad and the military, are nothing more than remnants of the Mapai rule that passed away over 40 years ago.

In an opinion piece published in Israel Hayom on September 15, 2023, Yaakov Berdugo, a Netanyahu devotee writes that the goal of the High Court of Justice is to “bypass the choices and desires of the people at any cost and march Israel along the judges’ desired paths on the most sensitive issues.” The High Court of Justice is summed up by Berdugo as possessing three aspirations: “Engineering of relations with the Palestinians, transforming Israel into a state of all its citizens, and having the upper hand in the identity of elected officials.” In other words, the High Court of Justice is a left-wing body that works against the will of “the people” on the Palestinian issue, gnaws away at the Jewish nature of the state and works to topple Netanyahu from power against the “will of the people.” Hence, anyone who sides with the High Court or undertakes to carry out its rulings against the government’s decisions is displayed as a rebel against the “will of the people”. The gatekeepers and Supreme Court justices represent the deep state through which the Mapai rule, although long gone, continues to exist through its central institutions.

Relying on the Declaration of Independence as a founding document, and interpreting its spirit, instead of relying on clear, written clauses built on a broad consensus, is what enabled the fundamentalist right’s attempt to carry out an attempted regime coup, to transform Israel into a Jewish state according to religious law and to establish an apartheid regime in perpetuity over the Palestinians. Years of neglecting both points, whitewashing the settlements, legitimizing settlers, granting concessions and money to the ultra-Orthodox, excluding and discriminating against Arab citizens, and the unwillingness to decide on the plight of 5 million Palestinians all of these weakened the democratic foundations of the country, and created a distortion that created fertile ground for the rise of Israeli fascism

Hundreds of thousands are marching in the streets, among them the writer of these lines, loudly shouting “democracy” against these attempts to abolish the powers of the High Court. Clinging to the Declaration of Independence is not a proper answer for attorney Ilan Bombach, who claims it is not a founding document. The Declaration of Independence was intended to serve a one-party, centralized regime which responded to a historical need: to build a state from nothing, to give it a language, institutions, to wage war against the indigenous Palestinian population, to take in a million Jews to establish a Jewish majority and provide them with housing, education, health, and employment.

Since then, reality has changed. The startup nation cannot be satisfied with a sparse document that does not provide answers to all the problems in the current crisis. When a majority replaces “the people” with all its diverse components, and imposes its will on the minority, the road to fascism is paved. It is impossible to hide behind “Jewish and democratic” to cover up the system’s failings. We must enact a constitution that enshrines the rights of all residents living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The former head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo, made it clear in no uncertain terms that what Israel maintains in the West Bank and Gaza is an apartheid regime.

The call for “democracy,” correct in itself, cannot mask this truth. Those who truly want democracy, and to ensure its existence for generations, should apply it to all residents living today on that piece of land under Israeli control. Democracy for everyone between the Jordan and the sea.

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The most urgent item on the protest movement’s agenda is halting the legislative blitz, which resumed in full force after the government blew up talks with the opposition by violating understandings reached regarding last month’s Bar Association elections. If the reasonableness standard is indeed revoked, that is, denying the legislative powers from banning un-reasonable government decisions, but mainly appointments, a legislative tsunami will wash away the democratic regime in Israel, leaving not a trace.

The chaotic reality dictated by ministers Yariv Levin, Betzalel Smotrich, and Moshe Gafni wakened all the couch potatoes, and coffee shop lovers who rallied as one to defend the remaining liberal space they have hitherto enjoyed. Many of them hold foreign passports. Some already deciding that if the anti-democratic coup d’état succeeds and Israel becomes Hungary or Poland, they will emigrate. For them, this would mark the end of the Zionist enterprise. For the sake of halting the fascist coup they are prepared to take extreme measures, including causing disruptions and even refusing to serve in the military.

There is no doubt that the mass waving of Israeli flags, and singing the national anthem in rallies reveal a nostalgia for Israel in its early days, when the Declaration of Independence indicated a desire to establish a democratic and secular state supported by the family of nations. The current symbols of the state, however, are very far from what they previously symbolized, and embracing their values is incompatible with the “Bibism” that has emerged. The 2023 protest undoubtedly created an entire new camp while setting firm boundaries between it and the opposite camp. The liberal democratic camp is being formed on the fly, annulling the former consensus of Jewish brotherhood dissociating itself from the autocratic right and theocratic-messianic camp.

No more the internal deliberations and soul seeking that followed the 1995 murder of Prime Minister Rabin after the Oslo agreement. Today, members of the liberal camp view the opposing side as the embodiment of evil with whom one must not cooperate, negotiate, and certainly not compromise. In the eyes of the pro-autocratic camp such liberal radicalization poses a danger to the very existence of the Jewish state. MK Yitzhak Pindrus (United Torah) stated that the LGBTQ rights movement is more dangerous to Israel than Hezbollah, and Oved Hogi, an assistant to former Minister Katz laments: “Hitler, you killed 6 million instead of killing (former Supreme Court President) Aharon Barak.” The lines of separation have been drawn and there is no choice but to enter the frontlines of battle.

The advantages of Bibi’s coalition are clear. It controls the government; it is ideologically cohesive; relies on an articulated ideology imported directly from American conservative circles and disseminated by the many-armed octopus the Kohelet Forum think tank. It strives to establish official apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory; actively works to control the gatekeepers and justice system; and strives to control the media, education system and academia to instill its nationalist and fascist values. While the liberal camp was living well in La La land, the aggressive right diligently enacted the “Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People basic law”. Compared to the fans of dictatorship composing the coalition, liberal democrats are in the opposition and divided among themselves. Some strive for a compromise with the dictator, while others now realize that the past decades’ compromises served only to strengthen the fascists, encouraging them to act with all their might to establish a messianic dictatorship in Israel and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory.

And yet, the liberal democrats radiate admirable strength, determination, and perseverance, expressed in weekly mass demonstrations and other disobedience actions for the past six months. The protest, has so far blocked the proposed fascist legislation. Its members represent the productive, economic and security echelons, without which Israel cannot exist. The protest’s entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity are expressed in a variety of measures and actions that succeed in arousing public opinion, thus undermining the coalition and its governance capacity while even rousing astonishment around the world.

This is the driving force of the liberal democratic camp. It is not a passing electoral phenomenon, but a movement based on grass roots activists rooted deeply within their communities, and they work within them with endless dedication. This camp has the support of the Biden administration, which refused to invite Netanyahu to Washington as long as he continues his attempts to transform Israel into Hungary. The position of the White House is a decisive and beneficial factor in the protest movement’s success.

Yet stopping the coup d’état is not a one-time act. To truly win, the liberal democratic camp must establish a regime that guarantees the rules of the democratic political game for many years to come. It can only do this by establishing a constitution or sustainable basic laws. The latter need to guarantee separation of powers on the one hand, and equality of all citizens irrespective of religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation, while abolishing the nation state law that enshrines Jewish supremacy.

To establish democracy, the protest movement must reach precisely the same public that the Israeli neoliberal economy has rendered impoverished, marginalized, and resentful. The assumption that the Israeli economy can prosper with a locomotor of 300,000 high-tech workers, while the fundamentalist right establishes its rule and influence on those who have been pushed to the margins and annexes the West Bank, is wrong. The “deal” that allowed economic prosperity for those with privileges, in exchange for their tacit consent to a dark and undemocratic regime, collapsed in the November 2022 elections.

A liberal democracy cannot exist without economic equality. This is also the lesson learned by the American Democratic Party, which since the 2020 election of Biden has led a radical deep social and economic transformation, from a market economy to a welfare economy oriented towards work and production. This is how the Democratic Party managed to beat Trump in both the presidential and midterm elections. The value of equality in Israel must also include civil equality for Arab citizens, who make up 20% of the country’s population. The problem facing the liberal democratic camp is how to “balance” its appeal to right-wing supporters of the government, who have been delegated to the margins, and the appeal to Arab citizens.

Israeli flags, the national anthem and Zionist rhetoric clearly do not welcome the Arab population, which suffers from neglect and institutionalized racism to join the fight for democracy. But that’s not the entire story since the Arab population its institutions and representatives also do not advocate for democratic and liberal values. This is clearly seen in many aspects: the strength of the Islamic movement; the structure of local governments elected according to clan calculations rather than programs; the Arab parties’ narrow nationalism and their support for dictators like Putin and Assad as well as society as a whole that refuses to condemn homophobia.

The values of liberal democracy and equality cannot exist in the long term if they are not accompanied by the value of peace. The right-wing fascist position is clear: peace with the Palestinians is impossible, so they must be defeated time and again, and an apartheid regime must be established in the occupied territories. Conversely, the democratic camp strongly opposes pogroms and the burning of Palestinian villages carried out by hilltop settler youth yet it refuses to touch the issue of peace. Liberal democrats are horrified at the thought of fascists imposing a binational state on them, vow not to send their grandchildren to guard “middle of nowhere holes” like the settlements of Kiryat Arba or Yitzhar, yet ultimately accept the thesis that currently there are no Palestinians with whom they can negotiate.

Even in this claim, admittedly, there is a hint of truth. The Palestinian society controlled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is very far from liberal democratic principles. The advantage of fascists is that they offer a simple, decisive idea in the form of apartheid. In contrast, the liberal democratic camp knows what it does not want but is unable to define what it does want.

When it comes to the 2 million Arab citizens of Israel the liberal democratic camp advocates full civil equality, even while Arab society and its institutions remain outside the protest. So it should when referring to the Palestinians living under occupation.  The sole answer to apartheid is democracy for all between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It can be said this is currently unrealistic, but there are also those who will say that the drafting of a constitution and enactment of basic laws ensuring Israel’s democratic and egalitarian nature are also unrealistic at the moment.

That is why the liberal camp, which rightly presents a future vision of democracy and equality, must also add to it a vision of peace. Not a peace based on separation according to nationality and race, but one of sharing and inclusion. A peace based on a constitution ensuring the rights of all citizens, Israelis and Palestinians. A peace grounded in an egalitarian economy, which works for the well-being of all citizens between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This is the only way to inscribe democracy.

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The January 27 attack in Neve Ya’akov, which caused the death of 7 civilians, did not prevent the Israeli protest organizers from taking to the streets and shouting slogans for democracy and against dictatorship. Brigadier General David Agmon, who previously served as director of Netanyahu’s office, blamed the government and its leader for all ills of Israeli society. “We are becoming a dictatorship”, “Hungary” and “the end of democracy” were just some of the slogans chanted. The division in the nation has never been deeper.

Thousands of Israeli blue and white flags in the protest demonstration could not hide the fact that the country is divided into the settlers’ “Yehuda” and the “Israel” of the liberals.  Threats of ‘civil war’ and ‘civil uprising’ were also thrown about, so much so that President Herzog publicly called for a cooling of the heated public discourse. Then, on Monday, three days after this impressive display of internal division and irreparable rift, the rivals united in the Knesset, in an impressive display of patriotism, to vote together on a law which would strip citizenship or residency status from terrorists.

Among initiators of the law were Knesset members from the Right coalition (64), and an overwhelming majority of 89 MKs from all the Zionist factions. Among them were Naama Lazimi, Gilad Kariv and Efrat Reiten from the Labor Party while the faction’s leader, Merav Michaeli, was absent. Reiten told Haaretz that “when the legal advisors from the government, the Knesset and Defense Ministry attested that the bill meets the legal examinations of the State of Israel and international law, and is an ‘effective tool to fight terrorism’ according to the Ministry of Defense committee representatives, Labor decided to back the law in its first reading”.

“The legal tests of the State of Israel,” according to Efrat Reiten, were determined by the High Court of Justice. Court President Esther Hayut, the main victim of the coup d’état led by Netanyahu, stated that: “There is no constitutional impediment to denying citizenship to those convicted of crimes that violate the trust of the state.” This decision, established already in 2008, was accepted by an expanded panel of seven judges – headed by Hayut herself. The panel determined that the denial of citizenship is permitted, among other things, for crimes of treason, terrorism or espionage (“Haaretz” July 25, 2022).

In other words, this law has been around for years, and was re-enacted during the days of the “government for “change”, whose members and supporters are today taking to the streets to defend the Supreme Court. The High Court of Justice does not bother with rulings and legal quibbles when approving bills that satisfy the feelings of revenge and hysteria of Israel’s fascist right. Yet with food comes an appetite, and the racist legislation towards Arabs – the scarlet letter of which is the Nation State Law – provides legitimacy to continue enacting more and more laws and reforms that will determine the Jewish nature of the country at the expense of its democratic one.

It is clear that the law negating citizenship of an Arab on the basis of disloyalty to the state is the beginning of a small-scale ethnic cleansing. Yet future steps will not stop there. They will expand to include anyone who protects the human rights of “those Arabs,” and will eventually harm those who “betray the Jewish religion and tradition.”

The difference between the fascist right and the liberal opposition is obvious. The right is militant, advocates for a clear agenda, works consistently to achieve its goals, and knows how to put the opposing camp in a state of constant defensiveness. In the year and a half of the “government for change”, Netanyahu sat on the opposition bench and worked tirelessly to thwart any legislation, no matter what its nature: from legislation designed to eliminate the need for an American visa to the extension of a regulation concerning the legal status of settlers.

In contrast, today’s opposition lacks any agenda, has no position regarding solution of the Palestinian question and the desired economic and social regime. In fact, it accepts the foundational assumptions of the right, that there is no partner and no solution to the Palestinian question, that the neo-liberal economy is a doctrine from heaven, and that social gaps are an acceptable phenomenon. It knows what it doesn’t want, but has no vision for the future. It aspires to return to the good old Israel, to the Jewish and democratic Israel that lives in peace with the occupation and with the denial of the most basic rights of five million Palestinians.

Thus, with their own hands, those parties which voted together with the fascists in favor of the law denying citizenship to Arabs have reduced the democratic space that allows them to live their lives, and which is disappearing under the right’s coup. Israeli fascism reveals the terrible distortion in which Israeli society lives. This is a false democracy based on the rulings of the High Court, which indeed favored LGBTQ and ultra-Orthodox, and sometimes also Arab citizens, yet created the legal basis for the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It was the High Court of Justice that approved the daily injustices against the Palestinians (home demolitions, land expropriation, whitewashing of settlements) and thus destroyed the grounds for democracy, equality, and the basic right of a person to her body, dignity and property.

The tragedy is that the coup d’état intended to harm everyone who advocates democracy and a liberal society, along with the rise to power of messianic forces such as Smotrich and Kahanists like Ben Gabir, did not encourage the opposition to rethink and ask itself – how did we get here? The vote of liberals from the former Government for Change  in favor of the constitutionally dubious law, together with the fascists, points to the moral and ideological shallowness of the opposition. The latter refuses to recognize that over the years the hatred of Arabs turned into hatred of Ashkenazis, LGBTQ, liberals and secularists, and that this eventually translates into fascism as is reflected in the current judicial “reforms”.

Democracy is undoubtedly a fundamental platform on which to build a broad political movement against fascism. Yet democracy is not a system suitable only for the Jews. It has to encompass any nation that strives for freedom and economic, social and cultural progress. This system must invite into it all those forces in Palestinian society who are tired of the dictatorship and corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and the religious extremism of Hamas.

The two-state idea faded over 50 years of occupation. Geography and economics united the destinies of Israelis and Palestinians in an unbreakable bond. The rising fascism in Israel, on the one hand, and the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority on the other, will force the democratic forces on both sides to seek a common solution.

All those who oppose the messianic extremism of the fascist right in Israel, and all those who oppose the messianic extremism of the Palestinian right, are natural candidates for cultural discourse, broad agreement and partnership for building a common future in one democratic country between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

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