Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni,
Kadima Party candidate for prime
minister, casts her ballot in a Tel Aviv
polling station in February 2009.
(Getty Images / Image Bank.)
latter, historians will probably see Kadima as an extension of Sharon's power and particular
circumstances that could not long survive his demise. Otherwise, Kadima could be the long-
term replacement for Labor in a two-party-dominated system.
Right-of-Center (Nationalist) Parties
The mainstream right in Israel is derived from Revisionist Zionism (the nationalist faction in
the Zionist Movement) and the Herut Party, although some small parties also drew members
from the Labor and National Religious Parties. Conservative nationalist ideology in Israel is
nationalism that places a premium on meeting the security threat to the country and doubts
that the Palestinians and Arabs will make and maintain peace with Israel.
From 1967 to the mid-1990s, nationalist parties generally favored holding onto all the ter-
ritories captured in the 1967 war. It was the conservative Prime Minister Menahem Begin,
however, who gave up the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with Egypt. Today the centrist
Likud Party has accepted the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and favors holding onto the
West Bank on pragmatic grounds given the absence of peace. But it has also offered to give up
almost all of that territory if there is a prospect of a real and lasting peace.
Historically, parties of the right favored a more capitalist economy based on free enterprise,
but with the general abandonment of socialism, this, too, has become a consensus issue. Much
the same can be said about the Likud's championing of Mizrahi interests in the 1970s and
1980s, which has led to social change.
