Israel at the Polls, 1996 (review)

128 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 had to be weighed against desires of Zionist ideology and civil liberties to enable the State to survive. This has, we are shown, resulted in a certain erosion ofpure ideology, as Israel's now-famous pragmatism has helped to modify ideological preferences. In the secondpart ofthe volume ProfessorDowty addresses a number ofsignificant challenges to Israeli democracy and leaves us marveling that a democratic government could have survived in Israel at all. Israel is certainly experiencing significant potential and actual lines of social cleavage, and we see here how these major cleavages developed and where the most vulnerable fault-lines are. Tradition, ideology, ethnic origin, degree ofreligious orthodoxy, and any number ofother issues could, each, serve as the basis for a major civil war in another setting. In Israel all ofthese potential faultlines are significant, and still the state survives. The gaps between the groups are real. The cleavages are, indeed, cross-cutting, so that individuals who may disagree sharply on one issue may be allies on another. Professor Dowty shows us, however, that a strong sense of common Jewishness seems to overcome subgroup identities in most contexts, and it is to this feeling, in the final analysis, that we must credit the survival of the state. Three highly controversial groups of issues-questions related to the role of religion in politics, questions related to the Arabs in Israel, and questions related to the West Bank and Gaza-are given special attenti()n here. Religious-secular tensions have increased among Israeli Jews in recent years, and the issues that are involved in these conflicts are presented here in a thorough and objective manner. Similarly, complex issues related to Israeli Arabs, including power sharing, minority rights, and legal inequality, are evaluated in the context of how a democratic state ought to treat all of its citizens. The chapter on the West Bank and Gaza allows Professor Dowty to discuss legal and political issues ofthe Occupation, as well as issues related to human rights of individuals who, while not citizens ofIsrael, are still human beings. This is an outstanding book. While not all readers will agree with all of Professor Dowty's observations and conclusions, they will not be able to fault the care with which he approaches sensitive and complex issues and the comprehensiveness with which this volume is constructed. This is a volume that all social scientists, as well as others interested in the types of questions raised here, will want to own. Gregory Mahler Provost Kalamazoo College Israel at the Polls, 1996, edited by Daniel 1. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler. Oxford: Frank Cass, 1998. 280 pp. $47.50 (c); $24.50 (p). This is the fifth Israel at the Polls volume that Daniel Elazar has edited or co-edited, and the fourth to be co-edited by Elazar and Shmuel Sandler. Each of these volumes Book Reviews 129 (Elazar alone in 1981, Elazar and Sandler in 1984, 1988, and 1992), as well as those that came before, has made a significant contribution to the literature in the field of Israeli politics by serving as an opportunity for a number of experts in Israeli politics to come together and bring us up to date on recent events in their particular areas of expertise. This volume does not deviate from the successful pattern of the earlier volumes. The three sections of this book bring together eleven scholars (in addition to the coeditors ) who offer us a wide range ofperspectives on the 1996 election. The perspectives and areas of interest of the contributors are not cut from the same cloth, so the reader has the benefit of a number of different analytical frameworks from which to choose. After a very well constructed introduction in which Elazar and Sandler present a framework ofanalysis and suggest several of the key factors that influenced the 1996 election, the initial section of the book focuses on the parties themselves and tries to explain the rise ofNetanyahu and the fall of the Left, as well as the quite remarkable increase in support ofthe-religious parties. In this section Efraim Inbar does a very good job of tracing the strategy of...