President Isaac Herzog addressed the 22nd Herzliya Conference on Tuesday and warned that Israel stands at a “fateful crossroads” regarding its shared future. Against the backdrop of the war and upcoming elections, the president called for an “Israeli Contract” and cautioned that escalating tensions could turn the election campaign into a “civil war.”
1+Herzog opened by addressing growing friction between Israel’s different communities and warned of eroding cohesion. “In our shared home there are cracks,” Herzog said. “If once we lived side by side, today there’s a feeling we’re living against each other. The friction between us is breaking all conventions.”
The president called for stopping the deterioration by rewriting the shared rules. “We must stop before these cracks reach the foundations,” he warned. He proposed an “Israeli Contract” based on three components: Rule of law—the president made clear there can be no selective enforcement or disregard for the law based on ideological reasons. “Without one law, there is no shared state,” he said, adding: “There is no sacred criminality. From any side.”
1+Belonging—Herzog emphasized that the democratic system must guarantee a place for everyone. “A citizen can lose an election, but not lose the state. He can win an election, and not think he got permission to erase half of society.” The future—the president called for turning social diversity into an advantage and building frameworks that will accommodate the changes taking place in the ultra-Orthodox, Arab, and peripheral sectors.
Against the backdrop of the election campaign, the president addressed leaders and the public with a demand for responsibility: “Elections are not a civil war. Elections are our way of deciding disputes without violence. They replace governments, they don’t replace a people.” He added that democracy requires the ability “to know how to win without trampling, and to know how to lose without dismantling.”