The Ascendance Of Israel's Radical Right
Reviewed by Robert O. Freedman
The "radical right" in this solidly researched book is not the current Israeli government, but rather the extremist fringe whose core consists of the settlers, whose parliamentary expressions are the new parties of Tehiya, Tzomet and Moledet, and whose most dynamic personality is Ariel Sharon. More than twenty percent of Israelis sympathize with the views of the radical right on how to deal with the Palestinians, that is, transfer or deportation. Sprinzak traces the origins of the far-right ideology back to the 1930s, but it is the settlers who are now most drawn to extreme views out of self-interest. He concludes that the radical right will not be able to stand in the way of a peace settlement, about which he seems to be unduly optimistic.
