Anshel Pfeffer: is religion deciding Israel’s future?

Israel has voted in its first general election since the 7th of October attacks, and the result is deadlock. Netanyahu’s bloc took 53 seats, the opposition 48 and the Arab parties a record 19. Shas, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, fell from 11 seats to six, its worst result since 1992, after insisting that haredi men should stay exempt from military service.

Damian Thompson is joined by Anshel Pfeffer, Israel correspondent for The Economist and biographer of Benjamin Netanyahu, to ask how much religion is shaping the country’s future. They discuss the ‘status quo’ deal David Ben-Gurion struck with the rabbis before the state was founded, why Israel still has no civil marriage, the three main branches of ultra-Orthodoxy, and a birth rate that has taken the haredim from 2-3% of the population to 13-14%. Could they be half of Israel within a generation or two? And with the parties promising not to sit with Netanyahu, the Arab parties or the haredim, which of those promises will be broken first?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Henry Lloyd

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