Israel: Facing The Future

This is Israel's southern border with Egypt.

Today a seven-metre-high fence separates the two countries

along 150 miles of the Sinai Desert.

Over the last two years, jihadists have launched several attacks from

across the Egyptian border, killing Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Israel's once-peaceful southern border has turned hot.

These attacks were the violent extreme of a broader radical

Islamist ideology, that swept through the region in the wake

of the Arab Spring.

Israel has survived many challenges in its short life,

including near destruction, only to become the most powerful

country in the Middle East and at the forefront of the global economy.

But as my journey across the Holy Land shows, Israel also faces

new challenges from within the country.

The religious population is growing and so are the tensions.

There's increasing disaffection from Israel's Arab minority.

And yet Israel is also a country that CAN surprise. What you see here

is not always what you are told to expect.

This is an extraordinary scene. Thousands and thousands

of Israeli citizens, all of them anti-Zionist, all of them Jews.

Israel is approaching a crossroads.

The path it takes could have a huge impact on this the most

volatile region of the world and therefore all of us.

This is Tel Aviv, but it could be Barcelona or even San Francisco.

There are many freedoms here which are unheard of in almost

the entire Middle East region. Equal rights for women, for gays,

a free press, to name but a few, this is an open and dynamic society.

Tel Aviv may look like any other Mediterranean holiday resort,

but actually it isn't. Just a few minutes flying time

from here are hostile borders. This country has been almost

continuously at war ever since its foundations 65 years ago.

Young people here lead a schizophrenic existence.

ROCK BAND PLAYS

These musicians in this Tel Aviv bar may look like any other rock band.

SINGING IN DIALECT

But they also have to fight. The men are all reserved air force pilots.

SINGING IN DIALECT

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In 2006, in Lebanon war, I found myself like every one or two days,

I found myself on the beach,

reading a book or writing something,

and then five hours later, I was flying above, in the darkness

above Lebanon. I even turned to write a few songs airborne.

-Do you?

-Above the war, you see everything, see the explosions,

you hear the noises and you have the privilege or the point of view

that you can write about it.

Cos of this, the way we live in Israel, always on alert,

always on some kind of worry about your life, I think

we're enjoying life better, we're making better art, better music,

-because we're living right here.

-You're living on the edge more.

We're living right here and right now. You know

how many likes on Facebook we have from Gaza?

-From Arabs, yes, it's unbelievable, actually.

-Really?

I don't know yet why is that, but I'm very, very happy with that,

on our Facebook page which is, babylongirlz.com

-or at Facebook.com.

-THEY LAUGH

We have almost one third of the likes from Arab people.

You know the image that you're projecting here is a very far cry

from the hard-faced military image that Israel is

often projected, so how do you think the rest of the world sees you?

Someone said once, if an alien will land here, it would think

-Israel is...is ruling the world.

-It draws a stereotype.

It's probably the world's worst, worst way of travelling

in the world when you know you can't speak your own language

and you feel uncomfortable with saying where you're from

and definitely what you did in the army and stuff like this.

You don't have to drive from Tel Aviv to get

a glimpse of the dual life that is the lot of many young Israelis.

This is the Negev in Southern Israel,

a few miles from the Egyptian border.

ROCKET FIRES

Back, back, back, back!

Lay down, lay down! Look over there!

EXPLOSION

-It may look as if Israel is embroiled in another war.

-MACHINE GUNFIRE

In fact these paratroopers are on a training exercise with live fire.

The Israel Defence Force is the country's single most

important institution.

Many Israeli men must still train regularly for war,

some into their 40s.

Why do you have to keep at such a high battle-ready state?

Well, we're here to defend Israel,

and if the enemy decides to open war,

we have to be ready, we still have

a lot of neighbours that don't want us here, and they will do whatever

they can to drive us out of here, and we'll have to defend ourselves.

Every war is a war for our survival, for the people of Israel,

for the state of Israel.

In the wake of the Arab Spring,

and not for the first time, Israelis are feeling alone.

Syria is in flames with the risk of chemical weapons falling

into Hezbollah's hands. Jordan, where Islamism is on the rise.

Egypt now run by the Muslim Brotherhood,

whose core ideology opposes the existence of Israel.

And Gaza now run by Hamas,

backed by Iran, whose President has

threatened to wipe Israel off the map and may soon be nuclear-armed.

The new fence along the border with Egypt is the latest in a series

of steps Israel has taken to seal itself off from its Arab neighbours.

Although the Arab Spring has provoked unease across Israel,

some see it not as a threat

but as an opportunity to end Israel's growing regional isolation.

This morning, I've got an appointment

on the seafront at Tel Aviv

with a man who was once a pillar of the Israeli establishment,

a former speaker at the Israeli Parliament,

a man tipped to become Prime Minister

and who even served for a short while as interim Israeli President.

Avram Burg is also a leader of Israel's peace movement.

He fears Israelis are in danger of being trapped by their long

history of persecution.

We came here 70 years ago in order to go out of the pathological

relations between the Jew and the non-Jew,

mainly in the Christian world, in which we lived in ghettos,

called our villages, called shtetls in Yiddish, so we had confined

communities, confined ghettos, walled ones sometimes.

We moved to the Middle East

and all of a sudden, we have here the largest shtetl ever!

The reason much of this country is still in this shtetl is

because there are groups around this country who still want to destroy.

We had holocaust and we were traumatised,

and the world recognised it and we needed a safe haven, but ever since,

we made the trauma our strategy. It is not needed any more.

We must start planning,

moving from the strategy of trauma to the strategy of trust.

Maybe we don't have many out there to trust, but we have some,

let's start with them, but...

But this region respects power, it does not respect weakness.

OK, we shall strike Iran, we shall strike Saudi Arabia,

we shall strike this and this and this and this,

and then there will be another one! So what is next?

So I believe that the strategy of power only exhausted itself.

But Avram Burg is in a minority. Most Israelis are no longer

in the mood to take risks for peace. They've come to doubt

that there will EVER be a lasting settlement with their

Arab neighbours and seem almost to have switched off from the issue.

At the recent election, Israelis focused on internal issues

like the high cost of living

and the growing burden on the state of Israel's most religious Jews.

I'm heading out of Tel Aviv,

towards Israel's spiritual capital, Jerusalem.

This city has been fought over by Jews, Christians and Muslims

for over 1,000 years. Today, Jews are quarrelling among themselves.

Israel was founded as the world's only nation state for Jews

on European post-war principals, democratic and mainly secular.

This is the neighbourhood of Mea She'arim. For 140 years,

it's been home to the ultra-Orthodox who live very conservative lives

in closed communities.

Ever since the foundation of the state of Israel, there's been

a clash of values between secular liberalism

and religious Judaism. But the religious population of this

country is growing very fast, much faster than the secular

population, and the tension between these two groups is also growing.

A minority of ultra-Orthodox still oppose

any participation in the Jewish state. They believe its creation

was a heresy and should have awaited the coming of the Messiah.

On the eve of Israel's last election, this neighbourhood gave

a rousing reception to a visiting American rabbi who urged them

to boycott the election.

This is one of the extraordinary things about this country.

Thousands of anti-Zionists, all of them Jews.

MUSIC PLAYS

Although most ultra-Orthodox opposed the creation of Israel,

they've demanded and got unique privileges.

Not only are they exempt from military service,

they also get welfare benefits, so they can

continue their lives in prayer and study at Yeshivas like this one.

I was given a rare glimpse inside a Yeshiva by Rabbi Dov Halbertal.

From morning till night, it throbs with learning.

So these boys will be how old?

They start from 16 to 21, 22 when they marry then.

And in those years, they are day and night sitting only in this place.

Reading the Talmud, reading the Torah.

Most intensely learning the words.

And what about the sort of basic subjects

like mathematics or history?

-Do they learn that here?

-Not at all.

-Not at all.

-Only Torah.

-Concentrated, in spirits.

-Right.

-In morals, in values and religious.

-Yes.

-Jewish.

By 2060, the ultra-Orthodox are forecast to become nearly

a third of Israel's population, the country's fastest growing minority

funded by a shrinking secular majority.

It doesn't seem sustainable.

All these boys won't probably be contributing taxes, they'll spend

most of their lives, the rest of their lives, deep in spirituality.

What do they contribute to the state?

They are the real state of Israel. Without them, Israel doesn't exist,

you don't need the army, you don't need the budget, you need nothing.

How can they be the state of Israel if they don't go in the army

and they don't pay taxes?

Because they are the DNA of the state.

The DNA of the state.

They establish the soul of the state,

the real deep meaning of the state of Israel.

But the deep meaning of Israel means different things to different Jews

who've come from a multitude of countries.

A battle is under way for the soul of the Jewish state.

Last ,year police had to intervene as ultra-Orthodox extremists

tried to impose their strict values on the rest of the population.

REPORTER: 'On Monday, police clashed with hundreds of ultra-Orthodox

'who'd been trying to force women

'and girls to walk on a different side of the street from men.

'Israel's political leaders, so often critical of religious extremism

'in Islamic countries, have ordered a crack down on intolerance at home.'

Only rarely do these quarrels end in violence,

and only a small minority are involved.

Some ultra-Orthodox reject modern technology,

insist on gender segregation on public transport

and protest against driving on the Sabbath.

Some rabbis, even ministers, have said that Jewish religious law,

known as the Halakha, should be expanded beyond marriage,

burial and divorce.

How much pressure is there from the ultra-Orthodox for Jewish

religious law to expand into other areas?

The question is what dominates more -

the Jewish or the democratic part of, you know, of this state.

And what is the dominant impulse at the moment?

-The trend is toward more traditional.

-Religious?

-Religious, yeah.

-Er...

And what will that do to the cohesion of this country?

That's a very, very difficult question,

because the part who is becoming more democratic and liberal,

they are becoming more and more liberals, yeah.

Ah, so the gap is widening?

It is widening, and that's the...

And that's the real big problem of our nation today.

What was that about? Why did they chuck that at us?

They don't like too much of the modern,

the instruments and appearance.

That's the kind of, er, you know, demonstration.

I see, protest against our presence.

They don't want to be modern at all.

We are in a war.

The last election brought this conflict to a head.

Polling the second-highest number of seats was a new secular

party headed by Yair Lapid, a telegenic TV star.

He's demanded an end to the ultra- Orthodox's burden on the state,

turning up the heat in this clash of values.

The one issue that barely registered in the election was Israel's

conflict with its Palestinian Arab neighbours.

Elected Prime Minister for the third time was Benjamin Netanyahu.

He's taken an uncompromising line to the dismay of even Israel's closest

allies, but here in Israel, Bibi,

as he's popularly known, remains popular.

It's Saturday night, and I've come to this soccer match in Jerusalem to find out why.

Here at the Teddy Kollek stadium, the city's premier soccer team,

Beitar Jerusalem, are at home.

Beitar has a long history of support for Netanyahu's governing

party - Likud.

What proportion of the crowd here would vote Likud?

Bibi, of course. Bibi.

We have not known anybody except him.

Bibi Netanyahu already proved his mind and proved his way.

I think Bibi Netanyahu is the best.

But why, I wondered, was Bibi best when, under him,

Israel seems to have become further out of step with world opinion

about how to achieve peace with its Palestinian neighbours.

But there's no peace yet.

Peace. We hope it's come.

We want...we want to come. We don't have with whom to speak.

The other side don't want peace.

They don't want the country.

They want us into the sea.

They want us dead.

For peace,

till now, nobody did it like...

not Rabin, and not everybody that's trying to do this.

If it happens, I think Bibi Netanyahu will do the best.

I'm a bit different from the others here.

-Bit different from the other fans, really?

-More liberal, yeah.

What about peace? Do you think there ever will be peace in this country?

-I hope.

-What do you think is preventing peace?

-Religious. Religion.

-Religion?

-Yeah.

-On the Palestinian side or the Israeli side?

-Both.

And do you think Bibi will deliver peace or not?

Under Mr Netanyahu particularly, Israel is getting a very bad press

in the rest of the world - does that worry you?

Mistrust of Arab intention sometimes manifests itself in open

displays of bigotry.

During this game, a hardcore of fans

in the stand opposite unfurled a banner which said,

"Beitar, pure for 70 years,"

in protest at the signing of two Muslim players.

Would you have a problem if the team hired an Arab player?

For me, never have a problem,

but there are people what, er...

they have a problem with this.

-Some, some of the fans have a problem.

-Yeah.

-Why, why do they have a problem?

-I think maybe 10%, no more.

There is over there people they too much making trouble to this er,

team, you know.

I don't care, you know, to bring some Arab player.

-It doesn't worry you?

-No.

The police arrested the fans, the stand was closed and the club fined.

But the incident highlights growing tensions between Israel's

Arab and its Jewish citizens.

One in every five Israeli citizen is an Arab, descendants of those

Arabs who remained when the state of Israel was formed in 1948.

They were given full and equal citizenship,

and many Israeli Arabs have benefited from what the Israeli

state has to offer, like good education and health care.

I'll have a medium pomegranate juice, please. Very good for you, eh?

But in general, Israeli Arabs are much poorer than

their fellow Jewish citizens - they have fewer jobs

and believe they're treated as second-class citizens.

This culture clash has provided a rich seam for Israeli Arab

comedy writer Sayed Kashua in his hit series Arab Labour.

Both Jews and Arabs have managed to laugh at themselves

at the travails of the hapless hero, Amjad.

What's the stereotype that you play with in your material, in your comedy?

Ah, well, in my comedy, in my comedy, actually Amjad is

trying to do his best to fit in Israeli society. I think that they

know that he knows that he will never be accepted into that society -

the Israelis would always look at him in a different way.

'Unknown to his new Jewish neighbours,

'Amjad is actually a professional journalist.'

How do you think the average Israeli Jew sees

or thinks of the average Israeli Arab?

As a threat, as someone that you cannot really trust.

The Israelis think that there is something called

the culture of the Arabs which they mean the mentality of the Arab.

The average Israeli would think that the Arab,

because of his culture and mentality, is more violent,

and most of the Israelis would think that you are much more primitive.

It's like hell, and you are not...

you are not accepted like a real citizen.

You know, you've made it, whatever you may think,

you appear to have made it pretty big time,

you've made it big time here.

It's just one thing to make clear, it's not that I made it

because the Jewish realise I'm a good writer, let's...

-Absolutely.

-Let's make that clear.

-Of course.

You elect Arabs to the Knesset,

there are Arab judges, so on the ground,

in what way do Israeli Arabs feel discriminated against?

In all aspects of life that you can imagine. First of all, it's...

I think it would be impossible to make us feel comfortable

or comfortable or welcomed in Israel if there is

no solution with, er, with the Palestinians, that's for sure.

We can survive if they fix it with the Palestinian people - that's...

that's still the major problem for us.

It's very, very complicated to...

to belong to a state, erm, that's fighting your nation.

What Sayed Kashua refers to as his "nation"

are the Palestinian Arabs with whom Israel has been

locked in conflict since the foundation of the state in 1948.

Most Arabs fled or were evicted.

The descendants of the minority who stayed largely reconciled

themselves to living in a Jewish state, but divisions have been

growing, especially in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm in Northern Israel.

Umm al-Fahm has been the centre

of Arab Islamic protest against the

creation of the Israeli state. This is the heart of what's called

the Islamic Movement Northern Branch.

It's a pretty radical movement.

It's closely aligned to Hamas,

which seeks the destruction of the Jewish state.

Sheikh Raed Salah is the head of the Northern Movement.

He frequently accuses Israeli political leaders of plotting

to destroy Islam's third-holiest site,

the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Inflammatory accusations like this raise fears amongst Israelis

that their fellow Arab citizens could become a fifth column.

In 2010, ultra-Nationalist Jews demonstrated in Umm al-Fahm, calling

for the banning of the Islamic movement. It ended in a riot.

While violent clashes are rare, their frequency is rising.

Increasingly, Israeli Arabs emphasise their Palestinian identity

and kinship with their relatives who in 1948 fled across the border

just a mile from here.

The failure to reach a settlement with the Palestinians is not only

a major barrier to better relations between Israeli Jews and Israeli

Arabs, it's also costing Israel support from its closest allies.

20 years ago, a plan was brokered to build a separate state

for the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza.

And for the last 20 years, the two states for two peoples

has been a sort of holy grail for peace negotiators

trying to solve this intractable conflict.

Separated by checkpoints and a wall, Israelis

and Palestinians barely talk any more - they can't agree

the terms of two states, and it doesn't look as if they ever will.

I'm on my way to the West Bank to find out why.

The West Bank has been under Israeli control

since 1967 when Israel defeated Arab armies threatening to attack.

Faced with unexpected territorial gains, Israel was reluctant to part

with the new territory, fearing the Arabs might strike again.

Standing on these hills on the West Bank, overlooking Israel,

it's easy to see why Israel's been so concerned about its security.

At its narrowest point, Israel is just 12 miles wide,

and in fact, on a clear day, from these hills, you can see

the Mediterranean sparkling in the distance, and security is

one of the reasons why Israel began to build settlements on these hills.

The Palestinians say that settlements have been a major

stumbling block to a negotiated peace.

Ma'ale Adumim is one of the largest settlements originally built

as a buffer to protect Israel's borders.

Today, 40,000 Israelis live here.

Paula Stern has been here for 12 years.

Over here, you have the Zero-Seven neighbourhood,

leads into an older part of Ma'ale Adumim that must be about 30 years old, erm,

and that's where the centre of the town is.

I'll take you around.

'This settlement has been here for so long that Israelis

'now regard it as a suburb of nearby Jerusalem.'

I came to Ma'ale Adumim, I think it was a combination of ideological

but more, more social, and it just seemed like an amazingly

beautiful place to be and, and I love it.

This is a place where my children have tremendous freedom,

and the schools are wonderful.

These houses over here are newly built.

There's a tremendous need for housing in Israel in general,

and this area meets the need.

And who typically lives here?

The picture we get in England is of a settler being a fellow

with a beard and a yarmulke on his head and a gun.

Erm, who lives here, it's an incredibly diverse community.

Diverse if you're Jewish. Palestinians aren't allowed

to live here, but they can come here to work.

So this is where you do your weekly shop?

Yes. Every week, I come here.

-Wow, it's pretty big.

-It's huge.

And the staff here would be Israeli or Palestinian?

Both.

One of the managers is an Arab. Arabs and Jews shopping,

Arabs and Jews working here as well.

So these guys serving meat here are Palestinians or Israelis?

Yes, yes. Palestinians.

THEY CONVERSE IN HEBREW

-His Hebrew is pretty good too.

-Yes. Absolutely.

Most of the people who stock and work in the areas, most of them

are Palestinian, probably more than half, probably more than half.

OK, so if this settlement didn't exist, they wouldn't have jobs?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Palestinians and Israelis seem to get along here,

so it's easy to forget that the UN and even most of Israel's

allies have declared these settlements illegal.

Israel disputes this. It's a touchy issue for those who live here.

-I keep referring to you as a settler.

-OK.

-Which you don't see yourself as a settler?

-Erm...

-Or do you?

-Am I settler?

Yes, I'm a settler, because what do we do as human beings?

We settle in a place, we make a home, that's what we've done,

we come to the same supermarket, we buy the same food,

we can buy the same clothes, we go to the same hospitals.

But you don't have the same rights.

If we had peace, if we didn't have the security issues,

then we might have the same rights.

The West Bank may now be home to both Israelis and Palestinians,

but only the Israelis enjoy the rights that go with citizenship.

The Palestinians here are stateless.

A viable Palestinian state on the West Bank would require

Israel to withdraw from almost all of it,

but since this was first discussed, the number of settlers

have tripled and moved ever deeper into the territory.

Unlike Ma'ale Adumim, they weren't built to strengthen the Israeli border.

350,000 settlers now live here.

The faster these settlements grow deep into the West Bank,

the harder it's surely going to be for any Israeli government

to dismantle them by force, if necessary,

in the event of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

So why has Israel continued to build these settlements on land

set aside for an independent Palestinian state?

In Jerusalem, I met David Landau,

a keen observer of events in Israel for 45 years.

An observant Jew himself, he is profoundly troubled

by the rise of religious nationalism.

Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, these religious Jews claim

a divine right to settle over the whole of their biblical homeland.

When Israel found itself in possession of these territories, there was this burgeoning,

this flowering of this pernicious

religious ideology, and today,

this ideology is what fuels the government.

Does Jewish orthodoxy

necessarily entail a desire for the present day state of Israel

to impose itself on the whole of the biblical territory which

happens to be populated by another people as well as the Jewish people?

And my answer to that is a resounding no.

The argument is predicated on irrational, Messianist,

religion-driven thinking, not on hard-headed politics.

Just as Hamas's ideology driven by theological, Messianic thinking.

Precisely.

While successive Israeli governments have authorised settlement expansion,

they draw the line at building on private Palestinian land,

but in defiance of their own government, extreme Jewish nationalists

have done just this, provoking clashes with Israeli police.

Right next to one settlement, legal under Israeli law,

another construction is under way, this one by Palestinians.

It's the largest project on the West Bank today,

a new city in the making,

inspired and part-funded by Palestinian entrepreneur Bashar Masri.

There's an Israeli settlement over there, you're here -

how far apart, what a couple of miles, a mile?

Yes, and this is a settlement of a bunch of radicals,

they don't fit in anywhere, even in Israeli society.

They're ultra-radical to be part of a main society like this.

So you don't talk much?

We don't talk at all, and now they've taken us to court.

On what grounds, what grounds?

The basic grounds that this is their land, and we should not exist.

What even this bit, this is theirs?

That's correct, yes, that's their biblical land,

I'm not talking about commercial land,

this is the land that God promised them, and so I can't deal

with that, you know. I don't think they have any legal grounds.

Even in an Israeli point of view, the West Bank is not part of Israel.

If you look at the world through Palestinian eyes, you can glimpse

how a state of their own might start to heal old wounds.

Homes for 40,000 residents with schools,

mosques and a commercial centre.

Already, 8,000 Palestinians have applied to live here.

And why did you pick this site?

This is a beautiful site.

Each one of the buildings as you can see, has a view,

each one of the apartments has a view, and that's important that

you have a nice view, good living look at these views, look at the valley,

look at the mountains, you know, it's a beautiful area.

As Masri showed me round,

it was sobering to contemplate the consequences

if the Palestinians don't one day become masters of their own fate.

This is home, this is our nation, and not every day,

the world has the chance to create a state from scratch.

We also want to send a message to the world that we,

the Palestinian people, are ready to build and to make a good living

for ourselves. We're not the terrorists that you think about,

we are the builders, we want to live like any other nation.

A good chunk of the Israelis definitely believe

-the Palestinians should have their own state.

-Then why doesn't it have?

Well, I guess a lot of politics and it is the power of the radicals,

and, you know, this project has been criticised by radicals on both sides,

and you know you're doing something right if you're criticised

by both radicals, but if we cannot achieve a Palestinian state

in the near future, it will be a disaster for this project,

it will be a disaster for the Palestinian people at large.

It will be a disaster, I think, for Israel also,

it will be a disaster for the potential of peace

any time in the future. We'll be killing each other

throughout the next 100 years, which I would hate to think about.

But the two-state solution is on its deathbed,

and what's killing it is mutual distrust.

While the Palestinians accuse Israel of not being serious about peace,

the Israelis feel the same about the Palestinians.

I'm on my way to Ramallah.

Although Israel occupies most of the West Bank, most Palestinians

are governed day-to-day by the Palestinian Authority based here.

The PA says it is committed to a peaceful resolution

of the conflict, but what Israelis see is something else.

So just behind me is the PA Prime Minister's office,

and I'm now turning into a street called Yahya Ayyash.

Yahya Ayyash was known

by the Israelis as "the engineer", because he designed and built

Hamas suicide bombs, which of course killed dozens of Israeli civilians.

For Israelis, the deliberate targeting of civilians

has destroyed whatever faith they had that their Arab neighbours

will ever accept the permanent existence of a Jewish state.

Tributes like this on state-run PA TV to a terrorist

involved in killing 38 civilians, including 13 children,

fuel Israeli fears that the PA has not abandoned the terrorist option.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas says he does believe in a two-state solution,

and under his leadership, Palestinian terrorist attacks

from the West Bank have significantly decreased.

Within Israel, there's a widespread view that Palestinian

political leaders have engaged in double speak.

Comments like this to the Arab world from senior PA official

Abbas Zaki suggests a hidden agenda, that a two-state solution

is simply a stepping stone to the end of the Jewish state.

Israelis also fear that if they relinquish control of the West Bank

to the PA, the more radical Islamist group, Hamas, might take over.

They point out that when Israel forcibly removed 9,000 settlers

from Gaza in 2005, rocket attacks increased.

All this has entrenched Israel's ideological right,

now the largest single voting block in the Israeli parliament.

Whereas Prime Minister Netanyahu has committed himself to the two-state

solution, most MPs in his ruling party, Likud, support annexing some

or all of the West Bank into one state as part of a greater Israel.

I've arranged to meet one of their rising stars.

Tzipi Hotovely calls the West Bank by its biblical name Judea and Samaria.

Just explain to me in simple terms

what your vision is for the West Bank.

My vision is that Israel will have the sovereignty

on all the territory. And in order to understand this as a solution,

you need to understand that the idea of separation failed dramatically

at 2005, and Hamas ruined Gaza and made it

a small terror state. And when we saw that results,

we can't do the same thing in Judea and Samaria,

we can't afford ourselves

to build another Iranian terror state in our east border.

How will it be a democratic state

if you take over the whole of the West Bank? You'll have as many Arabs

almost as Jews without the same rights.

If you go for this idea, you need to go all the way, democratic.

That you'd give Palestinians Israeli citizenship?

You'd give Israeli citizenship, and they can be Israeli equal citizens.

They could become the Prime Minister at this stage?

They could become, I don't know, head of the supreme court?

They could become the police chief?

The constitution of this state will be defined in a democratic way,

but it will give priority to the Jewish value.

This is the only Jewish nation in the world. People that want to be

citizens in this state should have the same rights and the same duties.

I think every citizen must do a national service,

and if you're not willing to get the duties of this country,

you can't get the citizenship.

Are Palestinians likely to accept a citizenship test designed

to guarantee the Jewish character of a single state?

And even if they did, would Palestinians and Israelis live

happily ever after when they see each other as neighbours from hell?

Just look at their garden fence.

This is the concrete separation wall that was built

by the Israelis to separate Israelis from Palestinians,

to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from coming into Israel

to target the civilians, as they did during the second intifada.

A single state would mean dismantling this wall,

which Israelis have relied on to stop suicide bombing attacks.

But over on the other side, the next generation of Palestinians

are also talking about one state,

though it's not the kind of one state that Tzipi Hotovely has in mind.

On Tuesday afternoon, six Palestinian activists, calling themselves

the Freedom Fighters, attempted to travel on an Israeli bus,

headed to Jerusalem, as part of a political stunt carried out

in front of nearly 100 journalists.

Inspired by the Arab Spring, these activists are getting

the world's attention.

They found a more powerful weapon than guns - a receptive media.

Today, they are highlighting Israeli restrictions on their freedom

of movement, the fact that they can't visit Jerusalem without a permit.

-Because they don't allow Palestinians to go to Jerusalem.

-There. There. There.

SHOUTS IN ARABIC

Don't touch me. You don't push me. I'm a lady, you're a racist!

I arranged to meet one of the activists

from the bus demonstration.

-Hurriyah, hi, nice to meet you.

-Hi, nice to meet you too.

-Show me your town.

-Yes. So we're going to start

by walking down this way.

-OK, can we just cross or...?

-Yes.

'Secular, educated and cosmopolitan, these young people have grown up

'surrounded by the symbols of Palestinian statehood.'

So this looks pretty new - what is it exactly?

It shows a guy who's trying to raise a flag,

because in every demonstration, and it's something that Palestinians

usually try to do, they try to climb and raise a Palestinian flag.

-It's a symbol of, erm, struggle.

-A symbol of resistance.

-Resistance?

-Yeah. That's what it means to me, at least.

But the old guard is losing its appeal.

This generation of Palestinians say they're no longer

interested in a separate Palestinian state, their focus

is on getting full civil rights, to give Palestinians a better life.

Do you think it's still got life in it or do you think

the two-state solution is now dead?

I think it's dead. I don't see even myself involved in this

political process, if we're talking about West Bank.

West Bank is nothing - it's a few rocks and mountains.

13% of complete Palestine. From my eyes, it's to Agfa and Haifa,

not firing the...the Jewish out, no, no, not at all.

-You want to share it with them?

-Share it with them,

I want to take my basic rights, that's it.

Everyone's going to have to realise eventually that compromises

need to be made on both sides. The problem is,

is that no-one wants to have a rotten compromise.

What I mean by a rotten compromise, is that, you know,

the type of compromise that happens between the master and the slave.

The West Bank for us is a small...is a big prison, so putting me

and locking me in the West Bank and preventing me

to go anywhere I want, preventing me to go to Jerusalem,

where I was born, preventing me from go to Fallujah, which is where I am

originally from, this is treating me like an animal in a cage.

I don't think a two-state solution will live, because I don't think

it's a just solution, so we're never going to have peace without justice.

Sorry, what's...what's full justice? Is it one state or two states?

Full justice, simply, simply, simply is going from Ramallah to the beach,

having a moment of peace, and going back without being...

The beach in Israel?

The beach in Jaffa, in Agfa, in Haifa...

Which is in Israel. I know you call it Palestine,

-but they call it Israel.

-They call it...in Israel, OK, to go,

and I don't, I don't really care if I'm ruled by a rabbi or a sheikh

or a PA or an Israel or whatever.

All I care is just to go peacefully, to move,

not being shot, not being harassed,

not being humiliated in the checkpoints,

just peacefully, just like that.

Want to have a beer on the beach, that's it.

While these young Palestinians want one state,

they don't want what the Israeli right wants,

one state whose dominant Jewish character is guaranteed.

If the Arab population becomes larger than the Jewish

population, it would be the end of the world's only Jewish state.

But if Israel remains in the West Bank without giving

Palestinians the vote, can it still claim to be democratic?

It can be Jewish or it can be democratic,

but if it wants to be Jewish AND democratic, which is...which was

what they intended when they set it up, it cannot, er,

swallow the West Bank, with all the Palestinians in it.

Israel, as we know it, will no longer exist. Either it...

Explain what you mean there.

Well, either it will be a unitary Jewish Arab state,

no longer a Zionist state dominated by a Jewish, er, national

ideology, but it will be a state in which 15 million people

all have the vote - one man one vote -

and whoever's President or Prime Minister

or Chief of Staff or Chief of Police could be Muslim,

Christian, Jewish, but it's no longer a Jewish state,

it's just another state, so Zionism,

which posited Jewish sovereignty, erm, last...put in a good 100 years,

and that's that. And, you know, the Arabs have argued,

since the dawn of Zionism,

that this is just another crusader epoch in Palestinian.

Crusader state lasted 150 or whatever years

and then it vanished.

-So what should Israel do?

-It should get the hell out of there.

David Landau is not alone.

A growing number of high-ranking Israelis have called for ending

the occupation without waiting for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

But the Netanyahu government shows no sign of withdrawing,

and this is damaging an image already tarnished

by the use of overwhelming force.

WAILING AND SOBBING

When Israel invaded Gaza in 2008, far from sympathising

with Israel, that it was acting in self-defence, what the world saw

were pictures of dead Palestinians.

This is Habima, Israel's national theatre in Tel Aviv,

performing The Merchant Of Venice.

The Jewish money lender, Shylock, is getting beaten up.

Today, it's Israelis who feel that they're getting a good kicking

on the international stage.

Last summer, in London, this performance

was disrupted by members of a growing global campaign

aimed at boycotting Israel on every front -

economic, academic and even cultural.

In the theatre foyer, I met Eytan Schwartz,

who's fighting against the boycott on behalf of Tel Aviv.

I belong to the political camp who sees...

..our control of Palestinian territories as something wrong.

I would rather see the Israelis withdraw, us withdraw,

immediately from the Palestinian territories, hand it over

to them, let them live their lives and have a prosperous state,

I hope for them and I hope for us that's what's going to happen very soon.

Having said that, and while I oppose my current government's policy,

I still can't understand the amount of criticism against

this government, or any Israeli government,

in comparison to the treatment that other governments or nations

receive around the world for conflicts that they have.

I don't like the fact that British troops were involved

in killing dozens, hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan.

I don't like that fact, but that's not my business as an Israeli

to draw moral judgement about the actions

of the British Army in Afghanistan,

thousands and thousands of miles away from the UK.

So you're saying that Israel is held

-to an even higher standard than comparable democracies?

-Absolutely.

On President Obama's recent visit, the Americans warned

of the dangers of trying to settle the conflict

with the Palestinians on the basis of biblical borders.

Israel's shriller critics sometimes ignore the fact that Zionism

began as a secular liberation movement,

much like any other to free a persecuted people.

Its founding fathers hoped to confine theocracy to the temples.

So what are the chances that Israel will survive as a secular

Jewish and democratic state?

One man who's seen it all is one of Israel's spy masters -

Efraim Halevy.

He came to this country as a young teenager in 1948,

later rose quickly through the ranks of the Mossad,

and served under five Israeli Prime Ministers,

including the current one.

'To Halevy, the growth of religious ideology

'on both sides of this conflict leaves Israel with only one option.'

I don't think there could be a solution

-to the problem between us and the Palestinians.

-Ever?

-Ideologically, there cannot be an end of conflict.

-Ever?

Ever. Both sides claim to have rights on this land,

and they claim that they are the only ones that have rights

on this land, and no side can in any way, er,

forgo its rights on every inch

of territory, because it's holy land,

so the whole issue of rights,

if you want to pursue it,

you're pursuing a path which will lead you nowhere,

it will lead you into permanent conflict.

We can't sustain permanent conflict,

they can't sustain permanent conflict in the end.

Israel has been at many crossroads in its relatively

short existence - is it now at a major crossroads?

Yes, we'll have to come to terms and face our destiny,

we'll have to decide what is the more important -

the land or the nation?

And in the past, the more, erm,

moderate religious people in this country recognise

that you have to give the priority to the people and not to the land.

I believe, in the end, we will survive

-as a Jewish democratic state.

-You do?

-Yes.

In the end, the right sentiments will prevail,

but it will be...it will not happen before one minute before midnight.

It'll only happen when the leader will stand there

and say, look there's nothing left now, you know,

if you open the door, you'll just find...a cliff.

It sounds to me as if you're saying...I'm optimistic.

Yeah, I'm optimistic, yes.

I'm optimistic and...

I was here in 1948 and I saw as a boy...

-The war of independence.

-..the war of independence.

And I saw the suffering and the sorrow

and the dead and the wounded.

And I saw what this did to the population and I saw the immigrants

who were coming in from Eastern Europe, came here in tatters.

And now look at the skyline.

And now look at the skyline. Exactly.

Optimism and resilience have been the life-force of the Jewish people,

surviving 3,000 years and against all the odds.

It was this that finally secured the Israeli state, secular

and democratic, in the biblical land of their ancestors.

Now a biblically inspired nationalism is challenging

the secular and democratic values of Israel's founding fathers.

Upon the outcome of this battle will depend the next chapter

in the history of the Jewish people.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd