Israel the ‘scale-up nation’

“Israel may be transitioning from a ‘start-up nation’ to a ‘scale-up nation’,” Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz told an AIJAC Live Online audience this week, detailing Israel’s astounding economic resilience despite COVID-19 and the political state of play.

Israel’s economy will be helped by the fact that the new government, perhaps the most eclectic, ideologically complex coalition in the country’s history, succeeded in passing a budget, Israel’s first in three years.

Despite the “unprecedented situation” of an Islamic Arab party being “essential to the survival of the government,” it’s too early to tell how much concrete benefit there will be for Arab Israelis, Horovitz says. Although there was a massive undercover operation that nabbed dozens of weapons and illegal arms dealers recently, many Arab communities continue to be plagued by vicious, murderous gangs.

In terms of the potential for inter-ethnic violence like that seen earlier this year, Horovitz says that unfortunately nobody would say “we know that the danger of major friction between Jews and Arabs inside Israel has passed.”

Another relatively marginalised community in Israel is the ultraorthodox, something the government’s Minister of Religious Services, Matan Kahana, is working to change, Horovitz explained. Long the purview of the ultraorthodox, religious affairs are now the responsibility of Kahana, a modern orthodox religious zionist, who is attempting to integrate the ultraorthodox through a variety of measures, including lowering the working age for those that didn’t serve in the IDF to 21 from 24. He is also attempting to revolutionise Jewish life by privatising Kashrut supervision and streamlining orthodox conversion for the hundreds of thousands of people with Jewish fathers to render them eligible for Aliyah.

In terms of foreign relations, Horovitz says he doesn’t foresee any new countries officially joining the Abraham Accords anytime soon; however, there are increasingly close relations with certain countries, including Saudi Arabia, as the region adjusts to an increasingly disengaged US and the threat of Iran.

Even as the US disengages, it continues to attempt to reenter the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, causing “major differences and disagreements between Israel and the United States… They’re playing out less bitterly and less publicly than they did [under Netanyahu]… but the stakes are if anything even higher.”

Relations with Turkey, too, are a pressing issue, Horovitz explained, particularly as it recently detained two Israeli civilians, and getting them released will be “a big test for [Israeli Prime Minister Naftali] Bennett”. On China’s rise and deepening relations with Israel, “some of the earlier naivety has probably been replaced by a greater awareness of some of the wider international forces,” Horovitz says.

Regarding the Palestinians, Israel needs to separate from them somehow and encourage them to build viable governance, Horovitz says. “When we left Gaza, that was an opportunity for the Palestinians to build something viable and thriving in an area that we had relinquished, instead of which they used it to attack us and a terrorist organisation took over. Had they maintained even a veneer of calm, we would’ve been tempted to relinquish parts of the West Bank.”

“Therefore we have this terrible dilemma,” he added.