The World of the Orient

5-14

Authors: Aloshyna, O.

The election of 1977 was traditionally called the Likud “upheaval”. The delicate balance between the secular and religious political powers in the State of Israel became possible. Moreover, the role of the orthodoxies and nationalists rapidly increased. As a result of this election, a right-wing party would lead the government for the first time since the State of Israel gained independence. The return of religion to the political sphere can be estimated as the phenomenon of the new Israeli politics. The power of the religious parties consists in the formation and provides coalition governments. At the same time, the religious block was unable to maintain a central role in state policy. But it took the same important place in Knesset like from 1948 as the consistent partner in government coalitions. The religious parties have totally integrated into the political system of the state. Consequently, they achieved significant benefits for themselves. Furthermore, it was the first time in thirty years when the political parties started to represent a cultural and political variety of the entire population of the country. Thus, the state can be defined as the religion-state of the religion-nation as many of the citizens did not belong to a part of this religious community. In fact, the cultural war began between two segments of society – the secular “Israeli” and the religious “Jewish”. Both believed that they had to determine the character of the State of Israel. After all, such a political party as Likud exhaustively demonstrated that consolidation of democratic systems could not occur without the inclusion of religious parties. As the result, the political image of Likud as a “religious-oriented party” contributed to the change of political power from Labour to Likud.