Research On Israel Party Politics From The Perspective Of Religion Conflict

What is religion? As a great creation of human civilization, religion delivers more than doctrines and creeds, rather, it is an ideology. An adherent’s belief in a religion derives from his recognition of the religious ideology. Ideologies are fundamentally different. When people of different ideologies attempt to convert each other, conflict occurs. That is why religious conflicts have never ceased since the creation of religion.In Israel, religious conflict takes on three forms:inter-religions conflict, religion-secularity conflict, and conflicts among denominations, and the latter two are most conspicuous in Israel politics. To analyze the impact of religious conflict, we need to know the special roles Judaism plays in Israeli politics and society. Judaism plays prominent roles over the establishment of the country and the development of its partisan politics. In terms of political power, religious denominations actively involve in the country’s political activities, employing political weapons to defend their fundamental interests; in terms of political ideology, Judaism is closely related with Zionism, and together they constitute the ideological basis on which the country is founded; in terms of culture, the Israeli society recognize Judaism and bears high tolerance towards Jewish adherents as well as their religious activities.It reviews the development of partisan politics in Israel chronologically under the context of religious conflict, including the Zionism movement, which is also the origin of political parties in Israel. In the same phase, the influence of religious conflicts emerged and intensified. Specifically, the construction of political parties in Israel, inheriting the political tradition prior to the foundation, is distinctly divided into two groups as secular and religious. The division of political parties is another evidence of religious conflict playing dominant role in the development of partisan politics in Israel. On this basis, the author intends to reveal the intensifying process of how religious conflicts influence the political construction in Israel, by presenting the evolution of political parties in different times.Understandably, the impact of religious conflict comes in two aspects. On the one hand, it propels the ethnic identity, facilitates the Jewish unification, and contributes to the founding of the nation. On the other hand, as the religious power grows, it demands more interests, resulting in a proliferation of religious conflicts in forms of constraints on the public life and government functions, and even government overthrows. Religious conflict jeopardizes the democratization and secularization process in Israel’s partisan politics, and it is also detrimental to the country’s external political environment.This paper aims to analyze in details the specific forms of religious conflict in Israel. It introduces the general development of different political parties in Israel and summarizes the impacts religious impact have on Israeli politics.