Oz Party

“Neither peace nor security will be possible as long as the Palestinian ideology, founded on the negation of Zionism, continues to exist” (From the book “October Return”).

In a speech in Parliament on February 18, 1947, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, known for his hostile attitude to Zionism and the Jewish pre-state community (Yishuv), explained his country’s failure to fulfill the terms of the Mandate to re-constitute a National Home for the Jewish People in their historic homeland: “His Majesty’s Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles … For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine”.

This is the core of the Conflict, and it has remained unchanged: The Jews want a sovereign Jewish state and the Mandate Arabs, now known as Palestinians, are determined to resist to the last the very existence of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the land. This is not a dispute over territory, but over the right of the Jewish people to exist as a sovereign people in their ancestral homeland. The violence, wars, terrorism and suffering are all the result of this denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination in even a part of the Land of Israel. Israel’s security and foreign policy challenges stem directly from this rejection.

Peace, true peace, could only be realized when the Arabs, and especially the Palestinian Arabs, will end their century plus long war against Zionism. Peace will come only when this ideology, which has brought so much suffering and destruction, and which can be described as “Palestinianism”, is replaced by a positive aspiration to live alongside a Jewish state rather than on its ruins. This requires millions of Palestinians, especially those living in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan, finally recognizing that they are home and not “Palestine refugees” and have no right to settle within the sovereign State of Israel in the name of “return”.

The vision of Oz Party is to pursue peace based on replacing “Palestinianism” with Arab Zionism, which is simply an Arab recognition of the equal right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland. This is a vision which, even if not realized soon, must serve as the organizing idea of Israel’s foreign and security policy, from which daily actions derive. After decades of attempts to achieve peace through shortcuts that have brought us no closer to genuine peace, it is precisely this long-term vision, pursued patiently, day by day, that could finally lead to real progress, perhaps even sooner than expected.

An advanced welfare state that constantly works to expand the freedom, quality of life, and well-being of its citizens, rests first and foremost on the principle of solidarity and mutual responsibility. The willingness of citizens to pay taxes that fund high-quality public services in education, health, welfare, and transportation, such that enable citizens to realize their full potential, rests on the assumption that there exists some measure of solidarity among the citizens.

In Israel, until the long-awaited peace is achieved, the highest expression of mutual responsibility and public service is defending the country. And for the sake of clarity: defense means military service. Therefore, all of Israel’s citizens – Jews and Arabs, men and women, secular, religious, and ultra-Orthodox, as they reach the age of 18 – will have to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Oz Party will work to ensure that high quality public education, healthcare, transportation, and welfare service would be provided equally to those who serve in the military and to their families. Once draft orders are issued to all citizens aged 18, thereby giving all an equal opportunity to serve, those who refuse to serve in the country’s military defense would be considered as having shirked the burden of mutual responsibility and will have no share in the provision of public services.

Over hundreds of years of exile, when the fate of Jewish communities was at the hands of others and their very presence conditional, patterns of thought and behavior were developed to enable survival under conditions of powerlessness and transience. Yet those same survival mechanisms, such as prioritizing the present over shaping the future, waiting for a Messiah instead of acting in history, and focusing on internal enemies rather than the external ones, are ill-suited to sovereign life in the Jewish state.

Many of Israel’s problems emerge from the incomplete mental transition from life in exile to sovereign existence. Therefore, addressing many of Israel’s challenges requires furthering this transition.

For example:

In constitutional and judicial matters, the solution to the struggle between the judicial and executive branches (assuming one truly seeks to resolve the issue rather than use it as a proxy struggle over ownership of the state) lies in strengthening the only elected body representing the sovereign: the Knesset. Both the judiciary and the executive must return the powers they have taken over the years, and subordinate themselves to the sovereignty of the Knesset. The Knesset, in turn, must reflect, through the quality of its members and their conduct, its role as the body representing the public as a whole.

Or, for example, in the matter of borders and settlement, the guiding principle should be that within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel, all citizens are equal, and settlement will exist only under sovereign rule. Israel should consider annexing some territories to the State of Israel, but Israeli settlements should exist only in areas that have been annexed and placed under Israel’s full sovereignty, through an official decision made in the Knesset.

Or, for example, regarding Israel as a Jewish state, the principle is likewise simple: the guiding principle should be that the sovereign, not the rabbis, shall decide. In the sovereign state of the Jewish people, rabbis may serve as teachers and community leaders, but not as a source of state authority, and certainly not as state-funded officials. As a rule, the state will not finance religious services; those would be funded by local communities, should they so choose. It must be emphasized, if this is not self-evident, that there is no connection between the state funding of religious services and the fact that the State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people.

Or, for example, in education, the existence of a sovereign state depends on a public education system conducted in a common language for all citizens—Hebrew in the case of a Jewish state. The guiding principle is that the state would fund only public Zionist education in Hebrew. State schools may include distinctive elements such as added study of Jewish texts or Arabic language, but the shared foundation for all must be public Zionist education in Hebrew.

Or, for example, in matters of public order, law, and governance, sovereign conduct means understanding that the government and the police are not foreign, and all citizens share an interest in clear laws, consistently and equally enforced throughout the entire sovereign territory of the state. The same holds true for the need for long-term national planning in all public domains, from transportation and energy, infrastructure and water management, given that Israel is only expected to grow more populous.

Finally, a central component of sovereign conduct is a high-quality civil service. For Israel, there is no scenario in which it drifts into mediocrity and dysfunction like a failing third-world state. The reason is that given that Israel is still surrounded by real enemies seeking to end its sovereign existence, any internal weakness opens the door to deadly attacks. Israel, in particular, cannot survive if the government, Knesset, and public sector are not staffed by the best people the country’s citizens and the Jewish people have to offer. The guiding principle must be to promote high-quality capable, people, especially experienced and accomplished women, to key decision-making positions.

Oz Party will act to transition Israel further along toward a sovereign mindset and complete this aspect of the Zionist revolution as described above.