When President Barack Obama arrives in Israel this Tuesday he will come with a simple yet powerful agenda: mend a strained relationship with a major ally that has felt somewhat put-off by the 44th president.
If that wasn’t hard enough, he will also work to restore hopes for an eventual Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. No small feat.
But Obama would wise to note that he may well be entering a somewhat different Israel than the one we have known in the past. The Arab world, it would appear, is not the only part of the region undergoing an uncertain transition.
The recent Israeli parliamentary elections seem to point to a new political and social climate in the Promised Land.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party was recently forced to form a coalition with more secular and liberal voices in contrast to the more conservative and Orthodox political parties that have colored past administrations.
Israel’s newest cabinet will feature a young rising star in Israeli politics: Yair Lapid, who will serve as Finance Minister and whose Yesh Atid Party will control the Education Ministry and 19 seats in Parliament. They are more liberal and wish to focus more on domestic reforms. This is a refreshing contrast to the normal obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman attend the Likud Yisrael Beitenu party meeting in Jerusalem, on March 14, 2013. Image courtesy of the Washington Post.
But there may be something bigger at play in Israel today.
Recent findings by Sergio DellaPergolla, professor of Hebrew population studies at Hebrew University in Israel. suggests only about half of the population of Israel and the lands under its control are in fact Jewish—the rest are Arab.
By DellaPergolla’s same figures, Israel and its territories—the West Bank and Gaza—will be 45 percent Jewish and 55 percent Arab by 2048.
The Israel that Barack Obama will encounter on his travels—the Israel we are seeing today—is a nation undergoing subtle yet tremendous changes, politically and ethnically.
What’s more, it is doing so in the broader context of formidable political and social upheaval and uncertainty in the Middle East. These changes in both Israel and its neighbors may very well have reciprocal impacts upon each other.
