The Media Line: Israel’s Leaders Reignite the Fight Over Faith, Service, and Statehood as Early Elections Emerge 

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Israel’s Leaders Reignite the Fight Over Faith, Service, and Statehood as Early Elections Emerge 

One week into the Knesset’s winter session, Smotrich, Liberman, Gantz, Lapid, and Golan laid out competing visions for Israel’s future as fiscal and political strains fuel talk of elections early next year 

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line 

In the crowded hallways of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, cameras clustered outside each faction room Monday as ministers and lawmakers stepped up to the microphones. The war may have ended, but the shouting has not. 

A week into the Knesset’s winter session—and only two weeks after the formal end of the Gaza war under President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan—Israel’s political stage has once again become a battlefield of ideology. As the coalition struggles to pass a national budget, with ministries warning that a fiscal deadlock could dissolve parliament, party leaders used their weekly faction meetings to stake out early positions in what already feels like an election campaign. 

Across the political spectrum, from the ruling coalition to the liberal opposition, the debates reflected an old but sharpened question: What kind of state does Israel want to be? The central dispute over universal military service has reignited broader divisions about religion, democracy, and civic duty—issues that may soon shape the country’s next electoral map. 

Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, framed the moment as a moral reckoning. Standing before his faction, he accused the government of betraying both the army and the public. “This coalition,” he said, “is a sacred alliance between the evaders and the corrupt. They say no to drafting the ultra-Orthodox and yes to taking the public’s money.” Lapid warned that the proposed exemption law—“engineered to ensure that those who don’t serve will never fight, never stand in the line of fire, never be part of the Israeli story”—violates the foundational covenant of the state. His conclusion was blunt: “Whoever doesn’t come to the draft office won’t come to the ballot box. Whoever doesn’t serve won’t receive a single shekel from the state.” 

While Lapid spoke with moral outrage, Avigdor Liberman, leader of Yisrael Beitenu, turned the issue into an ideological crusade. “We are missing twenty thousand soldiers,” he declared. “And yet the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox establishment hold a rally for a million evaders.” Liberman cited the penal code of 1977, which states that anyone inciting against military service during wartime faces up to 15 years in prison—“a law nobody dares to enforce,” he added. For him, the issue is not only legal but existential. “Zionism begins with serving in the army,” he said. “Anyone who refuses to serve cannot claim to belong to this country.” 

He went further, promising that under his leadership “no one will be exempt—not the ultra-Orthodox, not Jews, Muslims, Christians, or Druze. Everyone must serve. And whoever refuses to serve will not vote.” 

In a typically caustic tone, Liberman accused Shas and United Torah Judaism of being “racist parties thriving on religiosity and privilege,” and mocked Likud for “selling the secular soul of Zionism for the price of coalition survival.” 

If Lapid and Liberman spoke to the civic conscience of Israel’s middle class, Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich spoke to its faith. He opened his faction’s session with a firm declaration: “The war is not over.” Although the fighting in Gaza has stopped for now under the Trump-brokered ceasefire, Smotrich insisted that the “true test” is the complete dismantling of Hamas—militarily, administratively, and ideologically. “There will be no reconstruction before full demilitarization,” he said. “We will not allow any renewed entity of terror under the banner of humanitarian aid.” 

Smotrich paired his doctrine of strength with a message of self-sufficiency. “We will not beg anyone to normalize relations with us,” he declared. “Israel is a superpower—moral, democratic, military, and economic. Whoever wants peace with us must want it on the basis of truth, not lies.” He dismissed Saudi Arabia’s recognition of a Palestinian state as “an insult to Jewish history,” saying that “Judea and Samaria are the heart of our Bible, our history, and our blood.” 

Pressed on whether his comments had harmed ties with Riyadh, Smotrich replied defiantly: “Where were all those offended on behalf of the Saudis when, for two years, they accused IDF soldiers of genocide? That is a thousand times more offensive than one clumsy remark by Israel’s finance minister.” 

The Religious Zionism leader also used the occasion to relaunch his judicial reform agenda, accusing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of “paralyzing the government.” He argued that “Israel has a justice system with one hundred percent power and zero accountability,” adding that his party would resume its legislative push to “restore balance and democratic control.” 

To Smotrich, the dominance of the legal establishment reflects moral decay, not merely a technical flaw. “We have a rotten system, one that prosecutes politicians for doing their jobs while letting crime spread unchecked,” he said. “This is what happens when the prosecutors rule the country.” 

The opposition, meanwhile, presented a mirror image. Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats party, began by invoking the two years that have passed since the October 7 massacre. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government insists on keeping Hamas alive,” he said, calling the alliance between Netanyahu and Smotrich “a political insurance policy.” In his view, “as long as Hamas rules Gaza, the Palestinian Authority will not return, the Saudis will not come to the table, and Israel will lose its chance for regional stability.” 

Golan urged rebuilding Gaza under “a Palestinian civil administration supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Emirates, under strict Israeli and international supervision.” That, he said, “is not a prize for Hamas—it is the only way to defeat it.” 

The former general also defended coordination with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. “The PA is not Zionist, but it’s the best partner we have for ensuring security,” he said. “Without it, our security only deteriorates.” Golan concluded that “to guarantee Israel’s safety, Netanyahu and Smotrich must be replaced.” 

Between Lapid’s civic nationalism, Liberman’s secular nationalism, and Smotrich’s theological sovereignty, Benny Gantz tried to claim the pragmatic center. In his Blue and White meeting, the former defense minister reminded colleagues that “before debating who will sit in the next government, Israelis deserve to know what that government will do for them.” He pledged that his party “will join only a coalition that enacts a national service framework for all.” 

“We will not again blur the outlines of that framework as we did in the previous unity government,” Gantz said. “We will not take part in any coalition that sends soldiers to the battlefield while funding evasion at home.” 

While Gantz’s tone was moderate, his message aligned with Lapid’s: Both see the draft debate as a test of fairness that defines Israel’s social contract. Yet the deeper subtext is political. All parties, including Smotrich’s own, are maneuvering amid growing speculation that the government may not survive the fiscal year. Finance officials have warned that if no budget is passed by March, the coalition could face automatic dissolution—a scenario many lawmakers now treat as inevitable. 

That possibility has already shaped the rhetoric. Lapid, Liberman, and Golan sound like they’re on the campaign trail; Smotrich defends as if already under siege. Each invokes moral language—of equality, faith, or responsibility—to define what Israel should become after the war. Behind their competing ideologies lies a shared anxiety: a sense that the machinery of governance itself is wearing thin. 

Even beyond Israel’s Jewish political spectrum, ideological lines remain sharp. Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi used his press time not to discuss the draft or the budget, but to praise Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate in New York’s mayoral race—described by The Washington Post as “the rise of an anti-Zionist mayor in the most Jewish US city.” Mamdani, now roughly 15 points ahead of his closest rival, has become for parts of Israel’s Arab leadership a symbol that the moral arena lies far beyond the Knesset. Tibi called him “a young, eloquent leader who unites Christians, Muslims, and Jews around justice and equality,” framing his campaign as one rooted in universal values rather than Israel’s internal identity debate. 

For years, Israel’s political fragmentation was measured in seats and coalitions. Now it is measured in moral vocabulary. The winter session, only a week old, has turned into a referendum on the country’s soul—a contest between those who define citizenship through service and those who define it through belief. Whether the current coalition can pass a budget or hold itself together will depend less on arithmetic than on the answer to a larger question: Can a state founded as both Jewish and democratic still agree on what either word means?