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The liberal democratic nation-state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multi-culturalism and the rise of ethno-nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation-state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non-civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation. This model, `ethnic democracy', is presented; its defining features, the circumstances leading to it and the conditions for its stability are elaborated upon; and it is applied to Israel. Contrary to its self-image and inter-national reputation as a Western liberal democracy, Israel is an ethnic democracy in which the Jews appropriate the state and make it a tool for advancing their national security, demography, public space, culture and interests. At the same time, Israel is ademocracy that extends various kinds of rights to 1 million Palestinian Arab citizens (16 per cent of the population) who are perceived as a threat. The criticisms against the general model and its applicability to Israel are discussed. The model has already been applied to other countries, but more applications are needed in order to develop it further. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Assuming that the Israeli-Arab conflict is coming to an end, this article spells out the main problem areas in Israeli society and makes projections for the coming 5-15 years. Israel will become a nonwarfare society, less mobilized and nationalistic, and more individualistic and conflict-ridden. More specifically, national security will continue to loom large because conflicts in the Middle East will not recede. Israel's orientation toward the West will increase, making integration into the region unlikely. The state will remain Jewish-Zionist despite the strengthening of certain civic elements. Democratization will accelerate, and continued globalization and economic growth will enable Israel to join the capitalist core. Peace will have mixed effects for internal cleavages: political divisions will decline, tensions between religious and secular Jews will escalate, class disparities will be exacerbated, the situation of non-European Jews will worsen, Arab citizens will improve their status, and women will make headway. It is concluded that while Israel will become more Western, the impediments for its full westernization will remain substantial. Certain policy implications are suggested.

One finds a wide range of views regarding Israel's dual character. According to official ideology, Zionism and democracy are perfectly compatible, and Israel is equally committed to both. The Declaration of Independence unequivocally states the validity of both principles, promising full civil and political rights to all citizens in the Jewish state. In a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court, Justice Dov Levin opposed the participation of the Progressive List for Peace in the 1988 Knesset elections on the basis of its presumed rejection of Israel as \"the state of the Jewish people.\" However, in the same ruling, he reaffirmed the position that \"there is no contradiction whatsoever between these two things: The state is the state of the Jews, while its regime is an enlightened democratic regime that accords rights to all citizens, Jews and non-Jews.\"(31) All five justices, including those who demurred on the specific issue of the PLP's participation in the elections, supported this approach. The Supreme Court also took this view in sustaining the ban against the Kakh Party list, in those same elections because of its rejection of democracy and its incitement to racism. The argument of the Kakh Party that there is a substantive contradiction between democracy and Israel being a Jewish state was rejected: \"There is no substance to the alleged contradiction, so to speak, between the different clauses of Section 7a: the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state does not negate its democratic nature, any more than the Frenchness of France contradicts its democratic nature.\"(32) Nevertheless, at times Arab political leaders make certain qualifications that mitigate their opposition to Israel's nature. The stand of the Communist Party, which distinguishes between Jewishness and Zionism, is a case in point. According to Israeli Communist leaders, Jews have over the years developed as an Israeli nation and Israel is the country where they constitute a majority and exercise their right to self-determination. It is therefore proper for Israel to maintain the dominance of Hebrew language, Jewish culture, and Jewish institutions. But beyond their acceptance of this \"factual\" Jewishness, the Communists negate as Zionist all other ethnic properties of the state, including the Law of Return, Israel's ties with the Diaspora, and the notion that Jews all over the world constitute one nation. For them, Zionism is a colonialist, bourgeois, and racist movement responsible for the Palestinian tragedy, the institutional discrimination between Arabs and Jews, and certain other \"evil\" attributes of the state. Hence, Israel must rid itself of its Zionism, but may preserve its Jewishness. Other Israeli Arab leaders are even prepared to soften their position on Zionism, on condition that a Palestinian state be established which would restore Palestinian dignity and provide every Israeli Palestinian with a choice between Israel and Palestine. In the 1995 survey, the respondents were given a series of solutions for the status of Arabs in the state, and asked to indicate whether they accept or reject each solution. Table 1 below presents the percentage of agreement with each one of the solutions, independent of one another. A number of conclusions may be drawn from these data. First, between a quarter to two-fifths of Jews and Arabs support the most extreme solutions (transfer of the Arab population, a Herrenvolk democracy, an Islamic state in all parts of Palestine, a secular-democratic state instead of Israel). Second, the Jews reject and the Arabs by and large endorse a consociational democracy: 8.1 percent of Jews, as opposed to 81.5 percent of Arabs, accept this option. Third, there is no majority in favor of liberal democracy: only 40.5 percent of Arabs as against 4.5 percent of Jews favor it. Moreover, Arab support for this solution drops to 29.4 percent when liberal democracy is defined as requiring the forfeiting of separate Arab education with government funding, and to 24.4 percent when they become aware of the danger of intermarriage. Fourth, and this is the most important conclusion, the only point of agreement between the majority of Arabs and the majority of Jews is that in favor of a model of \"improved ethnic democracy\" This is expressed in the concurring majorities of 65.9 percent of Arabs and 71.5 percent of Jews with the sentence \"Israel will continue to be a Jewish-Zionist state and the Arabs will enjoy democratic rights, get their proportional share of the budgets, and manage their own religious, educational, and cultural institutions.\"

Four conflict-management strategies used to address deep ethnic conflicts in the West Bank & Gaza Strip, Israel proper, Lebanon, & South Africa are discussed: partition, which applies exclusively to societies in which groups are geographically separated & their nationalisms are incompatible; ethnic democracy, a kind of democracy in which the dominance of one ethnic group is institutionalized; consociational democracy, of which the underlying assumption is that deep ethnic divisions cannot be eliminated &, therefore, should be taken as givens; & liberal democracy, in which the rights of the individual take precedence over ethnic affiliations. It is concluded that historically divided societies differ in terms of which conflict-management strategy should be applied, & that the strategy chosen will depend on the society's history & specific patterns of intercommunal relations. 16 References. W. Howard