Power and changes in the balance between ideology and pragmatism in the right wing Likud Party

Abstract

When the Zionist executive abandoned Jewish rights to Trans-Jordanian Palestine, Jabotinsky established the Revisionist movement from which Etzel the Jewish right-wing underground movement in Palestine developed. This was the precursor of the Herut (Freedom) Party, from which the Likud party emerged in September 1973 to challenge the Labour Alignment (headed by the Israel Labour Party). Between the War of Independence (1948) and the signature of the Camp David accords (1978), the Government of Israel came under strong international pressure to solve the problem of the Arab refugees. During this time, dramatic changes took place in Herut's ideology and political status. In 1948, Herut was an outcast political party with a radical ideology, demanding the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth on both sides of the Jordan. It perceived the Arab refugees to be a potential fifth column and the contiguous Arab states to be inimical. It strenuously opposed the Mapai led political Establishment's willingness to sign Armistice Agreements and make compromises with regard to Arab refugees. After Levi Eshkol replaced Ben-Gurion as the head of Mapai, Herut began to become part of the Israeli consensus and a member of the political Establishment. Herut served in Levy Eshkol's National Crisis Government before and during the 1967 war, and as the major force of Gahal, after the war. Concomitant with this, there were great changes in Herut's expressed ideology, chief among these were the tacit renunciation of trans-Jordan Palestine as part of the Jewish Commonwealth and the explicit acceptance of the Arab refugees as potential citizens of the State of Israel.