Despite its leaders’ sometimes bellicose rhetoric and international reputation for intransigence, on closer examination Israel seems to be having an identity crisis in its sixtieth anniversary year. Never-ending political crises and growing economic inequalities beg the question – does Israel risk imploding from within?

In recent years, there has been a slow-down in Jewish immigration from the disapora, and most new arrivals are less motivated by the idealism of the early settlers. Young Israelis’ lack of enthusiasm for serving in the Israel Defense Forces – once a crucial aspect of Israeli identity – is another indication that the Zionist ideal lacks resonance today, an impression reinforced by the decline of the kibbutzim, once a rite of passage for idealistic young people from around the world. Meanwhile, growing tensions in relation to the rise of the ultra-religious raise questions about what it means to be Jewish, and to live in a Jewish state, suggesting that Israel is as vulnerable as any other nation to the corrosive effects of identity politics.

Many Western critics suspiciously interpret Israel’s every move as motivated by an expansionist agenda, but arguably the state has already compromised key tenets of Zionism in undertaking the peace process. With the ‘Islamification’ of the Palestinian movement, and the increasing ambivalence towards Israel of the US, even the significance of the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be taken for granted. What is the true character of the Israeli state today and what is revealed by changing attitudes to Israel in the West? As Israel celebrates its sixtieth birthday, has the ‘Zionist dream’ been fulfilled or shattered?