Since 1967, politics in Israel have been primarily driven by the issue of territory. In the past, the phrases “left” and “right” had the same meaning as in Europe. The left practiced socialism and the right capitalism. 1967 saw a change. Being on the right meant keeping all the land while being on the left meant being willing to give up parts of the territories conquered during the Six-day-war

Being traumatized by the Second Intifada’s onslaught of suicide bombers and discouraged from territorial compromise by the growth of Hezbollah and Hamas terror groups in the Lebanese and Gaza territories from where it withdrew, Israel has shifted gradually to the right.

Polls show that around 40 to 45 percent of Jewish Israelis today define themselves as being broadly right-wing, and 30-35% define themselves as being in the center, center-left, and left. The remaining 20%-25%, including the median voter, see themselves as “center-right.” [1]

The majority of Zionist Israelis have rejected the land for peace concept as having been demonstrably ineffective; even the few political parties that continue to favor a two-state solution, even only in theory, have long since internalized the pointlessness of doing so.

 According to Dani Filc, a political scientist at Ben Gurion University, Today, there are three kinds of right-wing. The first is politicians like Yair Lapid, a progressive neo-liberalist with right-wing economic policies. The second kind is Likud, which is right-wing populism similar to the far-right parties in Europe,” Filc said. The third kind is more extreme — the religious Zionists, with people like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich.

[1] DAVIES, SIMON and HANTMAN, JOSHUA: “Allied with Sa’ar, Gantz sets out to crack the ‘soft right’,” “The Times of Israel,” 17 July 2022