(Adobe Stock / Melinda Nagy)
For years, Israel’s religious divide has been described in familiar terms. There are the Haredim, fighting over military service, religious authority and state support. There are the settlers, increasingly identified with the politics of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. And there is the largely secular Israel that resents the growing influence of both.
That picture leaves out a community that may prove pivotal in Israel’s October election.
Religious Zionists comprise roughly 12% of Israel’s adult population. They are Orthodox, but they are not Haredim. They embrace the Jewish state, serve extensively in the military, work throughout the economy and regard Jewish sovereignty not merely as a political achievement but as something carrying religious significance.
Nor are they synonymous with the settlers. Most do not live in the West Bank. They live throughout Israel and are thoroughly integrated into its professional, military and civic life.
But they have moved sharply rightward.
Recent surveys depict a community increasingly determined that Israel remain not merely Jewish and democratic, but Jewish first when the two values collide. About a quarter favor government according to halakha. Large majorities support Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, and 57% favor annexing Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there.
That helps explain the rise of Smotrich and Ben Gvir. But here is the paradox: Religious Zionism is politically powerful even as the party bearing its name struggles to represent Religious Zionists.
Why? Because agreeing with Smotrich or Ben Gvir on parts of the ideological map does not require accepting their entire politics. Many Religious Zionists are deeply nationalist and skeptical of Palestinian statehood while also recoiling from settler violence, inflammatory rhetoric, attacks on state institutions and a politics that can seem to elevate Jewish power above Jewish responsibility. They may want a more Jewish state without wanting an intolerant one, and a stronger Israel without accepting every exercise of strength in Judaism’s name.
That distinction is important. The choice facing these voters is not simply between right and left.
Some will remain with Smotrich or Ben Gvir. Many will vote Likud. Others may be drawn to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, himself a Religious Zionist, who could offer conservative nationalism and Jewish identity without the personalities and governing style of the religious hard right. A small but increasingly vocal Religious Zionist left is challenging the dominant politics of its own community altogether. That dispersion could matter enormously.
Israel’s election will not simply determine which party finishes first. It will determine who can assemble 61 Knesset seats. Religious Zionists do not vote as a bloc. And precisely because they do not, their movement among parties could determine which bloc governs.
And there is a larger story here. The election may tell us whether the community’s rightward movement inevitably leads to the politics of Smotrich and Ben Gvir — or whether substantial numbers want a different political expression of the same religious and national convictions.
Religious Zionists are no longer a political niche. They are helping shape Israel’s identity and its understanding of the relationship between Judaism, democracy and national power.
The question in October is who gets to speak for them. The answer could determine who gets to speak for Israel.