Religious Extremism Is Reshaping Israel from Within

In Israel, ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and religious-nationalist forces are increasingly wielding political influence over issues far beyond their traditional constituencies: gender segregation, religious education, the authority of rabbis, the relationship between religious and civil law, and the meaning attached to settlement and territorial control.

The rise of these forces raises broader questions about religious fundamentalism and democratic power: what happens when fundamentalist forces do not need to overthrow the state but can use existing institutions to reshape it from within?

Unlike the Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan by force, religious forces in Israel operate through elections, coalition politics, and state institutions. The question is what a rising "Jewish Taliban" would look like.

Picture Tel Aviv a few years from now: coffee shops still open, women still on the streets, elections still held, the Knesset still in session, the Supreme Court still functioning, no religious militia staging a coup. But something deeper has changed: gender-segregated spaces are expanding in the name of respect for the religious public; religious schools receive more public funding while not being genuinely required to teach science, math, or English; religious demands carry greater weight in public life, and the boundaries of personal freedom are increasingly drawn according to a religious-nationalist vision of the state.

This shift is not taking place in a secular state or an egalitarian political order. Israel was established as a Jewish state, while Palestinians have never enjoyed equality within the political system it created. Religion has long shaped marriage, divorce, conversion, the Sabbath, and the recognition of Jewish identity.

What is changing is the growing power of religious and religious-nationalist forces to define the Jewish character of the state in more explicitly religious terms, both in public life and in claims over land and sovereignty.

The current Knesset includes several Haredi and religious-nationalist parties: Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam. They are not a unified bloc. The Haredi parties focus primarily on the independence of religious education, exemption from military service, budgets, and religious institutions. Religious Zionism and the Kahanist faction combine religion with nationalism, settlement, war, and land control. Despite their differences, their growing weight in coalition politics has brought many broader religious demands to the center of state policy.

For Palestinians, the religious turn does not create the inequality they face; it adds religious legitimation to an existing ethno-political order. As national claims over land and sovereignty blend with the belief that Jewish control of the land fulfills a divine promise, Palestinians are not only seen as a demographic or security issue but increasingly as an obstacle to a religious-nationalist vision of sovereignty.

Inequality already exists in the Negev, where villages and homes are demolished, Bedouin communities are forcibly displaced, and the planning system denies Arab towns the development space given to Jewish towns. In the occupied West Bank, the convergence of existing inequality and religious-nationalist power is even more pronounced. Settlement policy, settler power, and religious doctrine increasingly reinforce one another, making security-driven occupation and settlement as a redemptive doctrine merge into a single project.

This religious frame also makes territorial compromise harder to legitimize. When control of land is presented as fulfilling a divine promise, withdrawal can be framed not merely as a political or strategic choice but as surrendering something that no government has the right to give up.

Religious power is also reshaping the conditions of public life within Jewish Israeli society. Gender segregation is one example. Its expansion is often presented not as a restriction of personal freedom but as a concession to religious freedom. Separating men and women becomes "cultural adaptation." Limiting women in certain spaces becomes "protecting the freedom of the religious."

This framing shifts the question. When women are asked to sit at the back, or their participation is limited in a ceremony, an institution, or an academic program, the debate often centers on how far the state should go to accommodate the religious public's needs. The issue remains contested in courts and within society. Gender segregation has not become a general rule, but the fact that these demands have moved from the margins into law, universities, the military, and public institutions shows that the balance of power has changed. In July 2026, the Knesset passed a law extending gender segregation in higher education to graduate programs.

Education also raises similar questions about the balance between religious autonomy and common civic duty. The state funds a vast Haredi education system while the debate over whether these schools teach basic subjects continues. Public money continues to support parts of the Haredi school system that are not required to teach the full core curriculum. The issue is not simply whether the Haredi community should be free to educate their children according to their beliefs, but what the state can reasonably demand in return for that funding.

The convergence of religious-nationalist ideology, territorial control, and state power is increasingly visible in the Israeli military. The influence of Religious Zionism has grown in combat ranks and command. For years, there has been debate over the use of religious language to motivate soldiers and over the tension between military orders and rabbinic authority, especially when it comes to evacuating settlements or holding land.

The issue is not whether individual religious soldiers obey rabbis over commanders. It is the growing overlap between military might, territorial control, and a religious-nationalist ideology that views land control not merely as a political or strategic goal but as a stage in divine redemption or the reclaiming of God-promised land. When war is framed as part of a religious salvation narrative, compromise begins to look like weakness, withdrawal like sin, and political solutions like surrendering something sacred that politicians never owned.

At its most consequential, fundamentalism can push political goals beyond the scope of ordinary bargaining by placing authority not just in the will of citizens or government but in a divine will that one side claims the exclusive right to interpret.

The existence of religious parties, of course, is not enough to say Israel has become a theocracy. The courts, a free press, the opposition, civil society, and a large secular public still exist. Religious demands still face resistance in the courts and within Israeli society itself. But democracies do not always collapse overnight. Sometimes elections continue while the rules quietly change: rules about who counts as a full citizen, where freedom ends, and who has the right to define the common good.

Israel does not need to abolish elections, shut down courts, or suddenly resemble Taliban-era Afghanistan for religious fundamentalism to reshape the state. Tel Aviv coffee shops may stay open. Elections may continue. Strong secular and liberal constituencies may persist. Formal democratic institutions may survive while the meaning of citizenship, equality, and personal freedom shifts beneath them, and while an already unequal and oppressive order for Palestinians is further reinforced as religious claims over land and sovereignty gain greater political power.

The question is not just whether democratic institutions survive, but what kind of political order they are used to sustain. Democracy for whom, and on whose terms?