SPECIAL REPORT: ISRAEL'S COMING STORM

 

Israeli soldiers restrain a crowd of Jewish men squaring off against Palestinians near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, 19 November 2022 (AFP).

 

יְמֵי-שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה

   וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה

A Miraculous Rise

The modern State of Israel rose from the ashes of the Holocaust like the rise of the golden Phoenix from the ashes of its former self. In November, 1947, less than three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the nascent United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 by a three-to-one margin, authorizing the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two, roughly equally-sized sovereign Jewish and Arab states. Six months later, the newly-formed Israeli Knesset (Jewish parliament) voted to declare the sovereign Jewish state on May 14, 1948. What followed over the course of the next seven decades was more than impressive. It was miraculous.

A map showing the area captured by Israel in red during the First Israeli-Arab War in 1948-49.

The Israeli militia, the Haganah, staved off annihilation by Arab Palestinian militias and seven combined Arab national armies after the declaration of independence, eventually developing into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and capturing more territory during the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948-49. In just nine months, the Jewish State expanded to include more than 75% of Mandate Palestine. The Knesset passed the Law of Return in 1950, allowing any citizen of any country with one or more Jewish grandparents to immigrate to Israel with their spouse and children. Over 800,000 Jewish refugees from around the Middle East were absorbed into the new state in the decade that followed. The residual Arab population of 150,000 within the borders of Israel also began to expand rapidly, having been granted full citizenship within the new state. In 1967, the forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq once again mobilized for invasion, but Israel struck preemptively, subduing all three of their Arab neighbors and capturing the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, and Golan Heights in a mere six days. The apex of the Six Day War was the IDF’s decision to capture the majority of Jerusalem under Jordanian control before a ceasefire could be declared, a surprising and successful move punctuated with the famous radio call by IDF Lt. General Mordecai Gur, “Har HaBayit B’Yadeinu!” Or in English, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” And not only the Temple Mount, but the entirety of the old British mandate was then under the control of the State of Israel.

The next twenty years of Israeli history were somewhat mixed, but still largely successful. The growing blend of Sephardic, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews continued settling in their various communities, including new “settlements” outside the internationally-recognized borders of the Jewish State in the Palestinian territories, such as the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. The addition of hundreds of thousands of bright and creative Jewish immigrants from around the world swelled the ranks of Israeli enterprise, education, agriculture, and the arts, raising the standard of living for many and contributing to the establishment and growth of vital institutions throughout Israeli society. Due to compulsory service requirements for all Israeli men and women upon reaching adulthood, the ranks of the IDF swelled as well, as military technology took leaps and bounds via internal development and partnerships with leading Western nations. In each generation, more than 3 out of 4 Israelis served in the security forces, providing a critical social glue for a very complex and diverse people who had lived scattered among various nations for almost two millennia.

After losing ground and suffering heavy casualties in a third Arab invasion on Yom Kippur, 1973, the Israelis once again managed to recover and reverse their losses with the injection of critical supplies from the United States. The rise of the Arab Fedayeen movements, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its more-violent offshoots in the late 1960s and early 1970s, led to a number of successful terrorist operations against Israelis around the world, including the infamous massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But the effectiveness of Palestinian terrorism was blunted by not only the skill and determination of Israeli intelligence agencies, but also by the disdain of Israel’s neighbor, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, who feared the PLO as a rival and expelled the organization into Southern Lebanon in 1970. The continuation of Palestinian terrorism from bases in Lebanon, including the attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat, led Israel to invade and occupy Southern Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, creating a security zone which would exist along Israel’s northern border for almost 25 years.

But perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Israel’s first generation was not in war, but peace. In the Egyptian government, the loss of three Arab-Israeli Wars and the desire to regain lost territory, especially the Sinai Peninsula, led to increasing support for a deal brokered by the administration of US President Jimmy Carter. Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, which would remain demilitarized, while Egypt would recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, normalize diplomatic relations, and observe the right of Israeli ships to operate in the Gulf of Aqaba. The deal was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in late 1979, becoming the first peace treaty between Israelis and Arabs. It would not be the last.

Glorious Peak, Glimpses of Trouble

As the Israeli military became embroiled in Southern Lebanon in the mid-1980s, Israel continued to shift politically. The secular, democratically socialist political parties that had driven the Zionist movement since its conception, and which had dominated the prime minister’s office for thirty years, were challenged by the ascendent conservative Zionists in the 1970s and 80’s. Ironically, Prime Minister Begin, who had signed the Israeli-Egyptian treaty, was the leader of a conservative Zionist party which would eventually be known as Likud. The left-wing Labor parties and right-wing Likud would take turns in leading the government through the 1980s and 90s, with the issue of security always remaining at the center of Israeli politics, and a long-term solution for the conflict with Palestinians seen as a keystone of the debate. Left-leaning parties championed a two-state solution that would effectively trade land for peace, with the Egyptian treaty as a successful precedent. Right-wing parties tended to favor the status quo, with Israel maintaining security control over Palestinian territories, but allowing various degrees of autonomy based on Palestinian cooperation.

The issue came to a head in the late 1980s after Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip, including a new entity calling itself Hamas, began a violent uprising in the Palestinian territories which would later be named the First Intifada. International pressure grew on Israel to work with Yasser Arafat and the exiled PLO to resolve the lingering issues of Arab refugees, the status of Jerusalem, and Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza. The issue swept the Labor Party’s Yitzak Rabin into office as Israeli Prime Minister in mid-1992. Coupled with the mediation of the US State Department under President Bill Clinton, representatives of the Israeli government and the PLO met in Oslo, Norway in 1993. In that meeting, they achieved a framework by which it was expected that all outstanding issues could be resolved and a peace treaty finalized for the two-state solution within five years. The signing of the Oslo Accords in Washington, DC was soon followed by a Clinton-brokered peace agreement between Israel and Jordan in 1994. After almost fifty years of conflict, it seemed that true peace might be around the corner.

But reality would soon set in. Although a semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) was established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and although the Israeli government followed through in some commitments to withdraw the army from most of Gaza and parts of the West Bank in favor of coordinating security with the new PA, the framework for a final agreement began to erode. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish zealot who opposed the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The final push for a peace deal fell apart in 2000 at the Camp David Summit, once again hosted by Clinton to bring Arafat and Rabin’s Labor Party successor, Ehud Barak, to the table. Despite being offered all of the Gaza Strip and over 90% of the West Bank (with land swaps) for a Palestinian State, the issues of the status of Arab-majority East Jerusalem and the return of the descendants of Palestinian refugees became sticking points during the talks. Ultimately, Arafat walked away from the talks when it became clear that the PLO’s goal for a return to pre-1967 borders was not going to happen. Barak was voted out of power in favor of the conservative Likud candidate, Ariel Sharon, and Arafat fomented a Second Intifada in the West Bank which would lead to a wave of shootings and suicide bombings throughout Israel between 2000-2005. The violence would claim the lives of over 1000 Israelis (mostly civilians) and around 3,000 Palestinians (mostly militants) before Israel eventually built a security fence along most of Israel’s border with the West Bank. Arafat died in 2004, and his successor, Mahmood Abbas showed more willingness to negotiate with the Israeli government. After talks in Egypt in 2005, hostilities decreased significantly. Sharon took the surprising step of ordering the unilateral disengagement of Israel from the Gaza Strip, including all Jewish settlements there, angering the same demographic of religious Zionists who had opposed the concessions of the Oslo Accords.

A map of modern Israel and Palestinian territories.

The Israeli decision to withdraw from Gaza had long-term implications. Although it reduced the threat of an Israeli military quagmire in what had become a hotbed of Palestinian militancy, it also guaranteed the ascendency of those same militant groups to power in the Strip, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, beginning a cyclical pattern of war and calm that continues to this day. Financed and armed by Israel’s archenemy, the Iranian regime, Hamas and Islamic Jihad manufacture short-range rockets in Gaza, which they launch by the hundreds against Israel when circumstances are ripe. Six rounds of open conflict have occurred between the Israeli military and Gaza militants since 2008, including three since 2021. However, as always, Israeli ingenuity allowed for adaptation, and advanced missile defense systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling have allowed Israel to neutralize over 95% of incoming rockets which threaten Israeli population centers, removing the need for costly and bloody ground operations inside Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli government has found a reluctant partner in the Palestian Authority, who fears their jihadist rivals in Hamas and Islamic Jihad after PA officials were murdered in the Gaza Strip during Hamas’ rise to power there. Although the massive missile arsenal of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s nuclear program remain the most clear and present threats to Israeli security, the Jewish State has nonetheless achieved a certain degree of tenuous stability.

Indeed, conservative politicians who favor the status quo have now come to dominate Israeli politics, especially the Likud party’s leader, long-time prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Through a complex series of alliances with conservative, ultra-Orthodox, and religious Zionist parties, Netanyahu has found the key to retaining power in Israel’s fickle political landscape, remaining in office for most of the last thirteen years. Moreover, taking a page from his Likud predecessor Menachem Begin, and with the sponsorship of his main US political ally, the Trump Administration, Netanyahu has achieved normalization with four Arab nations in the last three years. Israeli diplomatic relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco were all publicly announced without the previous Arab precondition of a ratified Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, signaling the Arab world’s tiring of the Palestinian issue, mutual concern of Iranian hegemony, and eagerness to do business with the Israeli economic and agricultural powerhouse.

Thirty years after Oslo, it would seem as if the two-state solution is not really necessary for Mideast peace, and that perhaps the status quo could be sufficient. Now sitting at the apex of her power and affluence more than 75 years after her founding, the State of Israel appears to be undefeatable. But a brief survey of Israeli history belies this appearance, as the greatest threat to the world’s only Jewish State may not come from without, but from within.

The First Sovereignty

In the 4,000-year history of the Jewish people, a truly sovereign, independent Jewish state in the Holy Land has only been achieved three times. In his documentary film Jews Third Time, Israeli writer and director Rino Zror interviews Israeli historians and politicians in order to define the conditions of Jewish sovereignty and to trace the story of its rise, decline and fall. In his research, he describes the three “sovereignties” as specific periods within history when a sovereign Jewish entity existed across a contiguous breadth of the Land of Israel, in control of its own standing army and currency, and which united the various Jewish tribes and factions under a single system of government. Shockingly, Zror asserts that, after centuries of exile and decades of conflict to achieve independence, the first two “sovereignties” were relatively short-lived, each surviving less than 80 years, before internal division broke them apart suddenly into political fragments, followed eventually by foreign occupation, invasion, destruction, and a return to exile. The implications of Zror’s thesis are obvious, as the harybonut hashlyshet, or “third sovereignty,” is now in its seventy-fifth year. But are the current warning signs present for a repeat of the historical cycle? We have to examine the first two sovereignties and consider their respective parallels to Israel’s modern context.

A map of the United Kingdom of David and Solomon.

The first Jewish sovereignty is a story that Jews, Christians, and Muslims will recognize. Seven years after David ascended to rule over the Tribe of Judah, he conquered Jerusalem and accepted kingship over all twelve tribes there. During his reign, the united House of Israel enjoyed thirty-three years of unprecedented affluence and territorial expansion. David’s army was second-to-none in the ancient Near East, and all of the surrounding nations were subdued under his sword. After his death, David’s son Solomon inherited an empire whose shadow stretched from the Euphrates River in modern Syria to the Red Sea in modern Jordan. According to 1 Kings 4:24, Solomon had “peace on every side all around him,” while 2 Chronicles 1:15 retells that Solomon made “silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedars as abundant as the sycamores.” Tens of thousands of slave laborers moved tens of thousands of tons of stone and wood from around the region to Judah in order to build the First Temple and Solomon’s palaces. For 40 years, the ancient Kingdom of Israel enjoyed its golden age. But after the king’s death, things fell apart quickly. Solomon’s heir Rehoboam travelled to Shechem to be crowned monarch over his father’s vast kingdom. However, Solomon’s former servant Jeroboam, a member of the Tribe of Ephraim, gained the popular support of the northern tribes by questioning Jerusalem’s heavy taxation and labor policies. Rather than employing the wisdom of his father’s elderly counselors, the young Rehoboam listens to the folly of his peers and tries to project strength. 1 Kings 12:13-18 reads,

The king answered the people harshly… “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions…And when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, ‘What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David.’” So Israel went to their tents. But Rehoboam reigned over the people of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah.

After 75 years of a united, prosperous, and powerful kingdom, the First Sovereignty fell apart in less than two years. Jeroboam ruled over the ten tribes in the north, while Rehoboam ruled over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south. The split was immediately followed by almost two decades of civil war, and the tribes never reunited under the banner of David’s dynasty again. The Egyptian pharaoh invaded Judah soon after, pillaging its cities and stripping the Temple before eventually withdrawing. About two hundred years later, the ascendant Assyrian Empire swept across the Land and conquered the northern kingdom, deporting most of its Jewish population into exile and resettling foreign nations in Samaria. Only 140 years later, the Babylonian Empire followed suit in Judah, sacking Jerusalem and burning the Temple while deporting most of its population east of the Euphrates River. The Jewish people had completed an entire covenantal cycle of exile, restoration, sovereignty, division, invasion, and exile. It would be over 500 years before the next sovereignty would arise.

The Second Sovereignty

Babylon was eventually overtaken by the Medo-Persian Empire, and after 70 years of exile, the Jewish people were exhorted to return to their Land and rebuild Jerusalem by decree of Cyrus the Great. A remnant of the tribes returned to Jerusalem and Judah, eventually rebuilding the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem under the auspices of Persian suzerneity. The era of the Hebrew Scriptures ended, and after a century, a young, ambitious Greek-speaking king named Alexander came to Jerusalem. The children of Israel would trade Persian rulers for Greek rulers, and at first, the transition was uneventful. But Alexander’s program of planting Greek language and culture across the Middle East (Hellenization) was at odds with the religious elements of Jewish society which had been forged in the pagan culture of Babylonian exile.

After the young Greek emperor’s sudden death, his extensive Mideast empire was split between his most capable generals. The Promised Land changed hands several times between the Greek Seleucids in modern Turkey and the Greek Ptolemies in Egypt. Greek influence gradually saturated the small province of Judea, dividing Jewish society between Hellenized parties and traditional Jewish parties such as the Pharisees. The divide continued to grow over the course of a century. After a Seleucid king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes responded to Jewish usurpers in Jerusalem by massacring tens of thousands of Jews, sacrificing a pig on the Temple altar, and outlawing all forms of Torah observance in Judea, a Levitical priest and his five sons ignited a rebellion against their Greek occupiers. Over the course of twenty-five years, Mattathias Maccabeus and his successor sons fought the Seleucid Dynasty to a stalemate, eventually gaining semi-autonomy from the Greeks. The grandson of Matthias, John Hyrcanus, became high priest and ethnarch of Judea. He raised an army of mercenaries and began a campaign of conquest which expanded Judea as an independent state northward into the Galilee and southward into the Negev Desert. He also began minting coins on behalf of the Maccabean (Hasmonean) Dynasty, thereby meeting the requirements of united government, territorial control, state military, and currency. The Second Sovereignty was established around 129 BC.

A map of the Hasmonean Israelite Kingdom.

Alexander Jannaus, the grandson of John Hyrcanus, took the Hasmonean mantle of king and high priest to expand the Maccabean Kingdom even further, conquering lands east of the Jordan, south beyond Gaza, and north into Lebanon. Jewish sovereignty had once again reached its zenith, having subdued enemies on all sides and achieved a level of economic affluence. But as before, the greatest threat to the Jewish state would come from within.

After the death of Alexander and his widow Salome Alexandra in 67 BC, his sons Hyrcanus and Aristobulus feuded for the throne. The elder Hyrcanus, the rightful claimant to the throne, garnered the support of the Pharaisee party, while his charismatic and ambitious younger brother Aristobulus was backed by the elitist, priestly Sadducee party, as well as the larger share of the Judean population. Aristobulus led a rebellion against his elder brother’s rule which soon escalated into a full-scale civil war. Eventually, both brothers appealed to the legendary Roman general Pompey, who had effectively conquered what remained of the Greek Seleucid empire and expanded the Roman Empire into the Middle East. Instead of passively arbitrating between the two brothers, Pompey seized up on the opportunity to march his army to Jerusalem and establish a Roman garrison in 63 BC. Within four years, the Second Sovereignty had collapsed after it was barely 66 years old.

Rome would later divide up the Hasmonean kingdom into different territories to be ruled by the heirs of the Hasmoneans. The Herods would rule the Land semi-autonomously, but never independently of Rome. Eventually, a collection of messianic Zealot parties which formed under Roman occupation would foment an uprising and provoke the first Jewish-Roman War, ending with the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. By AD 135, two more Jewish rebellions against Roman rule had failed, leaving over a million Jews dead and enslaved, the Temple Mount in rubble, and the majority of the Jewish people exiled from the Promised Land. The cycle of autonomy, unity, independence, prosperity, internal division, invasion, and exile has come full circle once again. It would be 1800 years before the children of Israel would have another chance to establish and build a sovereign state in their ancestral homeland.

The Third Sovereignty

Standing almost two millennia removed from the Maccabees, its difficult to discern any parallels between that ancient kingdom and the modern State of Israel. And yet, the factors of Israel’s covenantal cycle as prophesied in Scripture are timeless, transcending social and technological advancements. Now approaching the latter half of the Jewish State’s seventieth decade, are the signs of political and religious fragmentation beginning to show in Israeli society? Are we nearing the end of the Third Sovereignty? Three main factors would suggest this is in fact the case:

1.) Demographic Changes: As Yizhak Rabin was signing the Oslo treaty with Yasser Arafat, Israeli society was struggling to absorb a massive influx of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 had allowed for over one million Jewish citizens of former Soviet nations to perform Aliyah to their ancestral homeland between 1991 and 2001, by far the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the Promised Land since the beginning of the Zionist movement. Known collectively in Israel as “Russian Jews” (although many came from Ukraine and other Eastern European states), many of these “olim” only loosely fit the requirements of the Law of Return, having a Jewish grandparent on one side, but not fitting the more orthodox Jewish definition of Jewish matralineal descent (i.e. that one’s mother must be Jewish to be a Jew). Moreover, many of the so-called Russian Jews were actually Orthodox Christians or even secular atheists, leading to a heated debate in Israeli society over their legitimacy of their “Jewishness,” and adding another layer of tribalism between Ashkenazi Jews from Western Europe, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern heritage, and the newly-immigrated Russian Jews, with far-reaching political and economic implications.

However, as the immigration of less religious Jews has slowed in recent years, the growth of religious facets of Israeli society have increased. The Haredim, or Ultra-Orthodox communities of Israel, have rapidly become a larger proportion of Israel’s population. The average Israeli Haredi birthrate of 6.6 children per family far outpaces the non-Haredi birthrate of 2.47. While 1 in 10 Jewish Israelis are ultra-Orthodox today, at current trends, 1 in 3 Jewish Israelis will be Haredi in just 40 years. The Haredim are unique and highly-controversial in broader Israeli society, due to their exemption from military service and the program of social welfare benefits for Ultra-Orthodox men who study full-time in Jewish schools of religious teaching named yeshivot. A growing proportion of men who do not work while collecting welfare benefits, and who do not serve in the Israeli military, which is considered the glue of Israeli society, has obvious implications for Israel’s near-term future as a united and cohesive political entity.

Added to this are the growth of religious Zionist communities, especially in West Bank settlements, who identify with Zionism not as a movement for the independence of the Jewish people in a secular, democratic state, but as a movement of Jews tied to their ancestral homeland which was mandated to them by God. Religious Zionists tend to be highly politically motivated and militant, unlike the Haredi, serving in the military and running for political office. Through a continued stream of religiously-motivated immigration and a birthrate exceeding four children per family, religious Zionists are also becoming a more influential part of broader Israeli society.

2.) Political Changes: The undercurrent of change in Israel’s demography is manifested in Israeli politics, especially in the ascendency of the Religious Zionist Bloc to win 14 seats in the Israeli Knesset elections in November, 2022, including two members which currently serve in key positions in Benyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet over finance and security. Combined with 32 seats held by Likud and 18 held by Ultra-Orthodox parties, Israeli conservatives of both the secular and religious breed have cornered national politics in Israel for the foreseeable future, while the traditional Labor and other left-leaning blocs such as Yesh Atid and Blue and White have been effectively sidelined. The alliance between Likud and Israeli religious parties has checked the influence of secular Zionists which dominated Israeli politics for the first thirty years of the state. Beginning with the assassination of Yitzak Rabin in 1995, and continuing to the present day as almost 200,000 demonstrators flood the streets of Tel Aviv to protest the conservative government, there is a rising clash in Israeli society between religious Jews and secular Jews. The former are centered in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of Judea and Samaria; the latter, along the liberal coastline, the Galilee, and the Golan Heights.

The latest confrontation was ignited by proposed reforms by Netanyahu’s government to reform Israel’s Supreme Court, which hears around 10,000 cases between citizens every year, and which has grown over the past half-century to exercise a very robust judicial review of legislation passed by the Knesset. Chosen by a panel of representatives from different Israeli institutions, the court tends to lean more secular and liberal, while the Knesset is now comprised of the most right-wing government in the history of the Jewish State. The court’s decisions have often affirmed pro-LGBTQ policy and favored the interests of non-Jewish minorities, such as Arabs and African migrants, positions which are staunchly opposed by Haredis and Religious Zionists. The government’s proposed legislation would swing the balance of power from the Supreme Court back to the parliament by allowing the Knesset to both appoint supreme court judges and to override the court’s rulings. Supporters of Netanyahu’s government (including Ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionists) argue that the proposed reforms would restore Israeli democracy back to the nation’s duly elected representatives, while opponents (including most liberal, secular Zionists) argue that the reforms would hijack Israeli democracy in favor of a tyranny by the majority.

As the confrontation escalated earlier this year, unprecedented cracks in Israeli society began to show, including the refusal of some military reserve pilots to show for duty in protest of the government. Even Netanyahu’s Minister of Defense, who supported the proposed judicial reforms in principle, publicly expressed concern about the effect that the debate was having on the military and Israeli society at large, leading to his dismissal from Netanyahu’s cabinet and an explosive increase in street demonstrations across the country. Eventually, Netanyahu backed down, agreeing to table the proposal for the time being. But the message of the whole episode was clear: Israeli society is becoming more divided between religious and secular, conservative and liberal, Haredi and non-Haredi, and between Jew and Arab. The geographical contours of this growing division in the Third Sovereignty are eerily reminiscent of the ancient, tribal divisions between the children of Israel in the days of Solomon and the Maccabees, leading some prominent Israeli politicians, such as Ehud Barak, to suggest that civil war could literally divide the Jewish State once again.

3.) Economic Changes: As Israel has experienced rapid economic development, especially in the technological sectors over the past 30 years, and as the cost of living has risen sharply in an increasingly populated nation, economic factors such as income disparity and poverty have grown as well. According to a 2021 poll, nearly one in four Israeli households cannot pay for basic monthly expenses, with one in ten foregoing medical care to pay for housing and food. One in five Israelis are now below the poverty line, now the second-highest rate in the developed world after Costa Rica.

The rate of income disparity in Israel is also growing. The ratio of disposable income between the wealthiest 10% of Israelis and the “Middle-Middle Class” is more than 2-to-1, the highest among the economically-developed OECD nations. In addition, the richest 1% of Israelis now own 6% of the nation’s wealth. While the rate is much higher in some advanced European states, Israeli social benefits lag behind. Poverty rates among Israel’s Arab communities and Haredi communities are even more pronounced. However, the funding requirements for Israel’s expansive security infrastructure necessitate a higher rate of taxation. As Iran continues to sponsor anti-Israeli terrorism across the Middle East and develop nuclear weapons, there is little chance that trends in taxation, income inequality, and poverty will change anytime soon. These trends have pushed many Israelis to live in West Bank settlements for economic reasons, where the cost of living is lower, especially along the border with Israel proper, where they can commute to jobs, friends, and family. The growth of settlements has stoked the international flames of antisemitism, as the construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have been labeled as apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide.

As we observe the current demographic, political, and economic trends within Israeli society, we cannot help but wonder if we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Third Sovereignty. If we are, and if the current trend fits within the historical covenantal cycle, we could expect to see an internal division cause a rapid, sudden decline within Israeli society, and even a breakup of the state itself, followed by loss of sovereignty, foreign invasion, and exile. The prophet Jeremiah calls this coming time “Jacob’s Trouble.” He warned of its approaching day in verse 30:7 while also promising that “[Jacob] will be saved out of it,” providing a footing of hope as the ground gives way around the Jewish State.

And finally, as we remember the State of Israel’s recent seventy-fifth birthday, we remember the words of the Jewish lawgiver in Psalm 91:10:

The years of our life are seventy,
    or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Even so, Maranatha.

Gabriel Caligiuri