Mainstream Zionism (now comprising both Labor and Likud) is increasingly being challenged by the Right and Left. Post-Zionism has exposed the intellectual fallacies underlying traditional Zionism's attempt to combine ethnic segregation with an open society, but it is the moral and ideological substitute offered by neo-Zionism, opting for ethnic segregation as an ultimate goal that is mounting the real political challenge. This article argues that while mainstream Zionists will delineate the space of a future Israel (by drawing the borders in a settlement with the Palestinians), the neo-Zionists will cast the ideological content into this space (by defining the identity and orientation of Israeli society).
Ilan Pappé is professor of political science at Haifa University and academic head of the Institute for Peace Research, Givat Haviva. He is the author of The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951, among other works.