Israel’s religious right is changing the state from within
The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel calling for gender segregation in public spaces
Ehab Jabareen writes in Al Jazeera on 17 Aug 2026:
In Israel, ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalist forces are wielding growing political influence over questions that reach far beyond their traditional constituencies: gender segregation, religious education, rabbinical authority, the relationship between religious and civil law, and the meaning attached to settlement and territorial control.
Their growing influence raises a broader question about religious fundamentalism and state power: what happens when fundamentalist forces do not need to overthrow the state because they can use its existing institutions to reshape it from within?
Picture Tel Aviv a few years from now. The cafes are still open. Women still walk the streets. Elections continue. The Knesset still meets. The Supreme Court has not shut its doors. There has been no coup.Something deeper has changed, though. Sex-segregated spaces keep expanding, justified as respect for the religious public. Religious schools receive more public money while remaining free of any real obligation to teach science, maths or English. Religious demands carry greater weight in public life, while the limits of individual freedom are increasingly drawn around a religious-national vision of what the state should be.
This shift is not taking place in a secular state or an equal political order. Israel was established as a Jewish state, while Palestinians have never enjoyed equality within the political system it created.