T. A. KARASOVA. POLITICAL HISTORY OF ISRAEL. LIKUD BLOCK: PAST AND PRESENT, Moscow: Natalis; Institute Of Oriental Studies Of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, 2009, 528 p.

The publication of the book by T. A. Karasova, a well-known Russian expert on the history and political system of Israel, is undoubtedly a significant milestone in the study of the modern political history of the Middle East. The work is distinguished not only by its theoretical depth and excellent knowledge of historical texture. T. A. Karasova worked for many years at the Russian Embassy in Israel, taught at Israeli universities, met with many Israeli political and public figures, which gave her a rich factual material that is not always available to other researchers. The book, of course, is also a reflection on his own practical experience, which provides the author with a broad vision of many aspects of the modern political life of the country, and makes it possible to brilliantly navigate the intricacies of party and personal ties. The latter is especially important, since politics in Israel is highly personalized, and the personal views and qualities of leaders are often as important to voters as party programs and declarations. Therefore, the brilliant knowledge of personalities demonstrated by T. A. Karasova

it gives the whole work a special uniqueness, and the conclusions drawn by it acquire additional credibility.

As you read this book, you think again about the high degree of concentration that the history of the modern State of Israel has. Its political history is not inferior to the situation in any developed Western European democracy in terms of the richness of events, the diversity of ideological platforms and the intensity of the struggle between the participants in the political process. However, in European countries, the formation of modern state mechanisms and democratic norms took more than a century, while Israel has passed this path in a little more than a hundred years, if we count from the moment of the official formation of the Zionist movement. Then, as the author notes, in just 35 years (1950-1985), Israel made "a sharp transition from the state of an underdeveloped fringe of the world economy to the group of industrialized countries" (p.211), and then to the category of high - tech economies. Probably, this rapid entry into history is one of the explanations for many shortcomings and imperfections of the country's political system, which are analyzed in detail in the book. This includes the apparent lack of stability of Israeli institutions of power, the excessive dependence of government coalitions on small parties, which is disproportionate to their position in parliament, and the ongoing disputes about the place and role of religion and religious institutions in the country's socio-political life. Society and the political class are aware of all these "difficulties of growth", as evidenced by the constitutional reform on the agenda.

At the same time, the history of the establishment of the Likud political bloc and its establishment as one of the main parties in power in the country clearly demonstrates the democratic, competitive nature of the Israeli political system. The leadership of the MAPAI Labor Party, which stood at the cradle of the State of Israel and was the ruling party for the first almost thirty years of its existence, already at the initial stage of state construction had to accept "the existence of an open and irreconcilable opposition" - the anti-government right-wing Herut movement, which later formed the core of the Likud party association (p.69). In the 1977 elections, Likud defeated the Maarach Labor bloc. Although the event has been dubbed an "electoral coup" in the press, Likud's assumption of power was not the result of any underhand machinations of the party bureaucracy or a conspiracy by anti-government forces. The entire procedure for changing the government took place in strict accordance with legal, democratic rules. It was caused by a number of socio-political, economic, and ideological reasons, the in-depth analysis of which is given a large place in the work. As T. A. Karasova notes, in an open and transparent struggle, "the coming to power of Likud and the ousting of Labor from it were due to the strengthening of nationalist sentiments in society as a result of two wars and the occupation of Arab territories. These conditions have shaped the political views of a new generation of Israelis, who are guided by more rigid ideological and political attitudes than the traditional Ma'arach program could offer" (p. 88).

Modern Israeli society has inherited a sharp ideological confrontation between political forces from the period of economic and organizational structuring of the Yishuv-the Jewish community in mandatory Palestine in the 1920s and 1940s. Zionism, as the author of the monograph reminds us, has never been a homogeneous movement. Jewish nationalism, which first developed on the basis of European culture and the ideological quest of the nineteenth century, then absorbed various ideological theories that flourished in Europe between the two World Wars. Tracing the roots of the modern Likud ideology, T. A. Karasova examines in detail the views of the founder of the so - called revisionist movement in Zionism, V. Jabotinsky. His worldview, which was formed under the influence of the ideas of Italian nationalism at the beginning of the XX century, was close to the European doctrine of integral nationalism, which is equally alien to the values of classical liberalism, and the socio-class and economic determinism of socialist thought. V. Zhabotinsky's national concept emphasized the hegemony of the nation over all its constituent parts, both individual and class. The integrity of the nation, in his view, should not be destroyed by the preferences of individuals, nor by group or class interests. Echoes of this doctrine can be heard today in the accusations of betrayal of national interests made by representatives of the national camp, which primarily includes Likud, against those who advocate the search for compromises with Arab neighbors, for a critical reassessment of Israeli policy towards Palestinian Arabs.

One of the central ideas of V. Zhabotinsky's integral nationalism, as noted in the book, is the education of a new type of Jew, who should "courageously and majestically resist the whole world" (p.25). If for social Zionists the idea of forming a new Jewish identity was primarily associated with the formation of a Jewish worker, creating a new life in the land of his ancestors by peaceful means, then the ideologist of Revisionist Zionism called for the education of "hardened fighters"who would force other peoples and countries to give up the Promised Land to the Jews" (p.26).

The policy of implementing the national rights of the Jewish people by force, adopted by the adherents of V. Jabotinsky's ideas from the ETZEL and LEHI militant organizations, of course, played a role in eliminating the British presence in Palestine, to which much attention is paid in the book. However, the book would only have benefited if T. A. Karasova had formulated clearer assessments of the ambiguous activities of the Zionist underground at that time. The violent methods used by these organizations to intimidate the Arab population, especially in the 1940s, were provocative and contributed to further aggravation of the already complex Arab-Jewish relations. The use of Jewish violence to oust Arabs from Palestine is a historical fact. He refutes claims that it was only Arabs who used force to achieve their political goals and that Israelis were not responsible for the problem of Palestinian refugees.

The Zionist-Revisionist program demanded that all of historical Palestine, including Transjordan, be transformed into a " self-governing state under the auspices of the Jewish majority." Any other" reduced "options were considered as a" defeatist " position. V. Jabotinsky was a categorical opponent of any political compromises with the local Arab population of Palestine and, quite in the spirit of the ideas about higher and lower races inherent in integral nationalism, did not attach importance to Arab nationalism.

The absolutization of force and methods of force was the basis of his ideas about the solution of the Arab question: "Our colonization must either stop or continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the protection of a force that does not depend on the local population - an iron wall that the local population is not able to break through " (p. 35).

The long history of the Middle East conflict and the very history of the creation of the State of Israel have already refuted V. Jabotinsky's theories about the possibility of "solving the problem" only with the help of force. Agreements and compromises between warring parties, complex diplomatic moves and negotiation processes have become as much an integral part of it as wars and other armed clashes. T. A. Karasova writes that without compromises on the Jewish side, "without consent to the plan for the partition of Palestine in 1947, the creation of a Jewish state would have been impossible" (pp. 35-36). M. Begin, a loyal follower of V. Jabotinsky, signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, returning the Sinai Peninsula to it and eliminating Jewish settlements there. I. Shamir, like M. Begin, a member of the Jewish underground in the pre-state period, was forced to agree to hold the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, the first international forum in which all the direct parties to the Middle East conflict, with the exception of the PLO, took part. However, the famous "iron wall" In In the first decade of the twenty-first century, when the right-wing national camp was firmly established in power after the collapse of the Oslo process, Jabotinsky's strategy of isolating the Arabs and forcing them to make concessions by force proved more popular than ever.

Most of the book is devoted to this period. The author analyzes government programs, positions of leaders and their opponents within the party, and thoroughly covers all the nuances of Likud's policy both inside the country and in the foreign policy direction.

During these years, there have been dramatic changes in the Israeli political system, once again showing that its structure is not stable, that it is in the process of formation. There was a split in the ruling Likud party and the withdrawal of its head and Prime Minister A. Sharon from it. The traditional political balance between "left" and "right" forces was broken by the Kadima party, which, according to its creators, was supposed to offer society a "third way", moving away from maximalism and "left" and "right". T. A. Karasova from-

He notes that there was "a shift in the boundaries and boundaries between the ruling coalition and the opposition" (p.178). This was an expression of the long-standing tendency in Israel to level the ideological differences between the leading parties-the Labor Party and Likud. A symbolic confirmation of this process was the unification in the ranks of the centrist Kadima of the "right hawk" A. Sharon with the "left dove" S. Peres.

Some Israeli sociologists have been quick to "average" all the political forces in Israel on this basis, classifying both Labor and Likud as centrist parties with a left or right bias. However, the author of the monograph emphasizes that " the variation of nuances in approaches to the main problems of Israel among different parties is still quite large, which, in our opinion, does not allow us to agree with the point of view that there is a single "averaged" or single rigid approach to the problems of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict" (p.178).

At the same time, I would like to object to the author's conclusion that the outcome of the processes of the last decade, recorded in the 2009 elections, was the return of the Israeli political system "to its two-block equilibrium, which has been established with some interruptions in Israel since 1977" (p.188). Indeed, the two leading party blocs - the Labor bloc (MAPAI, Maarach, Israel Labor Party) and the right-wing Conservative bloc (Herut, Likud) - have been competing for power for decades. But the growing trend of alienation of Israeli society in recent years has led to the fact that the two parties - Likud and Kadima, which won the largest number of seats in the Knesset in the last elections (27 and 28 out of 120, respectively), belong, albeit with different shades, to the right camp. Ts Livni, who grew up in the Likud camp as a politician Kadima, which has become the face of the Kadima party, ideologically declares its commitment to the ideas of V. Jabotinsky, although it emphasizes the need to adapt them to modern reality, i.e. to recognize the impossibility of the simultaneous existence of a Jewish state and an indivisible Eretz Yisrael1. Thus, although Likud and Kadima oppose each other on the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, they are still ideologically "one-rooted" parties. Therefore, it is hardly possible to talk about recreating the" two-block equilibrium " of previous decades. Rather, it may be a process of more detailed disengagement in the right-wing camp, while at the same time pushing the left-wing forces, which showed the lowest results in the entire history of the elections, to marginal positions in Israeli politics.² At the same time, the success of the centrist Kadima, which captures the electorate of discredited leftist forces, shows that the idea of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians based on the principle of two states is still in demand in society.

The lack of credibility of leftist forces in Israel is not least related to the collapse of hopes for reaching peace agreements with the Palestinians in the 1990s of the last century. The drama "Oslo Trial" became one of the central plots in the book by T. A. Karasova. It managed to clearly show the incompatibility of the positions of right-wing forces and the personal views of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu with the process of difficult compromises, overcoming the established mutual hostility and distrust that was initiated by I. Rabin and his associates. While I. Rabin, far from idealizing his opponents, when entering into negotiations with the PLO, called for understanding that "peace is concluded with enemies, even with the most despicable enemies," in the eyes of B. Netanyahu, the enemy itself, represented by Palestinian nationalism and its organizations and leaders, is not a legitimate party to the conflict. "The so-called Palestinian problem can be solved within the framework of two sovereign states, Israel and Jordan, without creating a third State, artificial and unstable," the current Israeli Prime Minister believes (pp. 392-393).

Based on the fact that the cause of the conflict is not a territorial problem at all, but "the persistent refusal of the Arabs to recognize Israel's right to exist within any borders" and that "sliding to the borders of 1967" is deadly for Israel, the Likud actively opposed the foreign policy course of the Labor government in the 1990s. the right-wing parties were behind the anti-government campaign launched by extra-

¹ Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew) - Land of Israel. In the Jewish tradition - the territory on which Ancient Israel was located; in the modern sense - the territory of historical Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

² The Labor Party and the far-left Meretz Party won 13 seats and 3 seats, respectively.

Jewish-minded settlers and young people who used all means of fighting Rabin, including illegal ones (p. 387). The tragic consequence of this tactic of fighting a political opponent, most likely unexpected even for its creators - the leaders of Israel-was the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister on November 4, 1995. Describing these events, T. A. Karasova, who was then an employee of the Russian embassy, based on her personal impressions very accurately conveys the atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty that prevailed among the Likud leadership during those difficult days for the country. Not only was Netanyahu's reputation under threat, but he also personally feared that leftist forces would stage a "witch hunt" against those who incited extremists and fanatics. The very democratic foundations of the Jewish state's existence were called into question.

As the author writes, under these circumstances, B. Netanyahu, with the support of his party members, found the strength to declare that "the change of power can only take place in a democratic way. It is impossible to let the assassin's pool decide who will be the head of government in Israel " (p. 123). The surprise election campaign that followed in May 1996 was perhaps one of the most dramatic in Israel's history. Although Likud lost to Labor by the number of seats in the Knesset, but in the election of the Prime Minister with a minimal margin over the Labor candidate Sh. Peres was defeated by B. Netanyahu by 0.9%.

It seems that this date can be considered the beginning of a countdown for supporters and creators of the peace process. Netanyahu's victory, albeit by a minimal margin, showed that the forces that either lost faith in the possibility of reaching agreements with the Palestinians, or did not want to do so, were gaining the upper hand in society. Although Netanyahu was ousted from the political arena by Labor leader Elbaradei Barak in the next parliamentary elections in 1999, the latter's attempts to activate the peace process cost him the post of prime minister. Since 2001, Israeli voters have consistently shown more solid support for the right-wing camp led by Likud than for the left.

Analyzing this phenomenon, T. A. Karasova points out that Likud achieved a pre-eminent position in the Israeli political arena, including thanks to the support of immigrants from the former USSR, who believed that Labor had deceived their expectations by its indifference to their pressing social problems, as well as its inability to ensure the safety of ordinary citizens of Israel. However, religious and ultra-orthodox parties played a special role in promoting Likud to a leading position in power, as the author emphasizes.

Likud's relations with the religious community, with the parties and movements that represent it, are the most interesting and poorly studied page of Israeli political history in the Russian scientific literature. The ideological paradox of Likud is that the movement, which grew up on the basis of a completely secular revisionist trend in Zionism, already in the late 1940s began to "increasingly use religious doctrines to 'reinforce' its political program" (p.231). On this basis, an alliance was formed between the right-wing Herut party and the religious camp. Realizing the potential electoral opportunities of Israeli believers, Likud effectively " let " religion into politics, enlisting first the support of Sephardic traditionalist circles, and then the religious Orthodox. The author rightly notes that the strength of this alliance was determined both by the tactical tasks of the Likud and the individual views of its leaders: if M. Begin, being a deeply religious person, was the creator of the "covenant" with ultra-orthodox parties (p. 257), then the pragmatist and main "silovik"in Israeli politics A. Sharon took a course for governing the country without the "Haredi diktat" ³ (p. 255).

In general, Likud's alliance with the ultra-Orthodox proved to be an unsafe and burdensome burden when making important domestic and foreign policy decisions. Having gained a strong position in power, radical religious circles are trying to impose their rigid lifestyle on the entire country, which is completely unacceptable for many Israelis, regardless of whether they are secular people or follow religious traditions.

T. A. Karasova pays special attention to the negative consequences of the right-wing alliance led by Likud and the religious camp for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Religious parties actively joined the political struggle for the preservation of territories, introducing a religious component to the Arab-Jewish confrontation that worsened it. Pravonatsiona Alloy-

³ Haredim (Hebrew) - religious Jews belonging to the ultra-Orthodox trend in Judaism.

Jewish fundamentalism, which became the core of "political lobbying capable of resisting at the governmental level any attempt to start withdrawing from the occupied territories or curtailing the construction of Jewish settlements there" (p.237). We are witnessing the consequences of these processes today, when the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has become almost paralyzed in its actions to unfreeze negotiations with the Palestinians, in particular because of the pressure on it from ultra-religious forces and the radical part of the settlement movement.

The book provides a detailed analysis of the development of the Likud's position on the cardinal problems of the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is important not only for purely scientific research, but also for understanding the reasons for the collapse of the Oslo process - the first direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in history. After the final chord at Camp David in July 2000, when the Palestinians rejected what they saw as unprecedented concessions offered to them by Prime Minister Barack Obama, the Israeli establishment's view that there was no partner for peace negotiations prevailed. However, the manifested Selves. Arafat and his entourage had good reasons for their intransigence in the negotiations and restraint in their approach to the final documents. The author analyzes in great detail the deplorable state of E. Barak's government coalition, which almost collapsed on the eve of Camp David. It was clear that it was being replaced by right - wing forces led by Likud, which had already taken steps in the previous cadence (1996-1999) to review Rabin-Peres ' policy on the peace process, in particular by unfreezing settlement construction in the West Bank. How could the Palestinian leaders expect Israel to fulfill its promises if the Likud party's program, which was about to take power, rejected the very idea of creating a Palestinian State?

I would like to emphasize once again that T. A. Karasova's monograph is not only a fundamental scientific work. It is important for understanding the realities of modern Israel in all their complexity and inconsistency. Those who write about Israel and the Middle East - professional diplomats, journalists, and politicians-can learn a lot of useful, if not previously unknown, information from it.

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