关于以色列周二的大选，即便可能需要数天或数周才能明确谁将领导这个国家，但有两点可以肯定。
Two things can be said about Israel’s election on Tuesday, even though it may be days or weeks before it becomes clear who will next lead the country.
第一，作为一场参与式民主的实践，这次投票规模空前。高达77%的合格选民投出了神圣的一票，创下历史新高，这实际上是一场关于总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡对2023年10月7日哈马斯袭击应负的责任及其应对措施的全民公投。第二，取决于接下来发生什么，这种民主极有可能被扼杀。
The first is that, as an exercise in participatory democracy, this vote was immense. An unprecedented 77% of eligible voters cared enough to vote in what amounted to a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responsibility for, and response to, the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. The second is that this democracy could well be extinguished depending on what happens next.
虽然我们尚不清楚议席分配的最终结果，也不清楚总统伊萨克·赫尔佐格将授权谁尝试组建政府，但我们已知这场针对内塔尼亚胡的公投结果：在全体以色列人中，他输了；但在犹太裔以色列人中——即排除了占人口20%的阿拉伯裔族群后——他赢了。而且这两个结果的差距都不小。
Although we can’t yet know the exact distribution of seats won, or whom President Isaac Herzog will ask to try forming a government, we know the result of the referendum on Netanyahu: Among all Israelis, he lost, but among Jewish Israelis — so, excluding the 20% of the population that is ethnically Arab — he won. And neither result was close.
这种分裂——不是犹太人与阿拉伯人之间的分裂，而是以色列作为一个国家与犹太裔以色列作为一个次国家实体之间的分裂——揭示了一个刺眼的真相，并迫使这个国家面对一个无法再回避的选择。它将是中东那个世俗、多族裔的民主孤岛，还是几十年来它自豪地自诩为的那样？还是说，那个从未完全实现的愿望，已走到了尽头？
This bifurcation — not between Jews and Arabs, but between Israel as a state and Jewish Israel as a substate — tells a searing truth and confronts the nation with a choice it can no longer avoid. Will it be the island of secular, multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East that for decades it proudly imagined itself? Or has that ambition, never quite fulfilled, come to an end?
内塔尼亚胡迅速行动，试图堵死任何与阿拉伯政党组建联合政府的道路。截至周三，在近86%的选票完成统计时，阿拉伯政党看起来将赢得19个议会席位，掌握着组阁的关键少数派地位。内塔尼亚胡称，任何犹太复国主义政党（即任何相信以色列国合法性的政党）若组建包含他们的联合政府，将是“耻辱与羞愧”。
Netanyahu was swift in trying to block any path to a coalition formed with the Arab parties, which — with almost 86% of votes counted on Wednesday — looked set to win a king-making 19 seats in parliament. It would be “a disgrace and a shame,” the prime minister said, for any Zionist party (meaning any party that believes in a state of Israel) to form a coalition that includes them.
这是一份非同寻常的声明，即使在以色列内部，内塔尼亚胡所用的语言如今已因哈马斯三年前以其野蛮行径激起的伤痛与愤怒而变得常态化。内塔尼亚胡的政治意图，要么是阻止阿拉伯选票发挥作用，要么是在反对派联盟领袖加迪·艾森科特若反悔邀请阿拉伯人入阁时，将其他犹太政党从该联盟中剥离。
This is an extraordinary statement, even if within Israel the language Netanyahu used has by now been normalized by the hurt and outrage that Hamas sparked with its savagery three years ago. Netanyahu’s political aim is to either prevent Arab votes from counting, or to peel other Jewish parties away from the opposition coalition should its leader, Gadi Eisenkot, reverse himself and invite Arabs into government.
无论背景或政治算计如何，内塔尼亚胡的声明都极其种族主义且反民主。这反映了以色列的未来：若这种分裂的结果为内塔尼亚胡及其联盟伙伴继续执政并巩固权力创造了授权。
No matter the context or political calculation, Netanyahu’s statement was profoundly racist and anti-democratic. It reflects what Israel’s future holds should this split result create a mandate for Netanyahu and his coalition partners to continue in power and entrench it.
这一事实于周三由领导中间偏左的民主党人的亚伊尔·戈兰最清晰地阐述出来。“内塔尼亚胡输了。我会数到120。65比55多，”戈兰在社交媒体帖文中写道，引用了以色列议会的总席位数以及他撰写时包含阿拉伯选票在内的计票数。“这就是以色列民主运作的方式。句号。”这未必属实，但理应如此。戈兰帖文的其余部分反映了其联盟伙伴领袖们现在面临的抉择，其中包括一些人——如以色列我们党领袖阿维格多·利伯曼——尽管本身属于右翼且反对内塔尼亚胡，却已明确排除与阿拉伯人共同组阁。“如果我们不停止恐惧，如果我们不停止种族主义，我们在这里就没有未来，”戈兰写道。
This fact was most clearly articulated on Wednesday by Yair Golan, who leads the left-of-center Democrats party. “Netanyahu lost. I know how to count to 120. 65 is more than 55,” Golan wrote in a social media post, referencing the total number of seats in Israel’s parliament and the count at the time he wrote it, Arab votes included. “That’s how Israeli democracy works. Period.”That isn’t necessarily true, but it should be. The rest of Golan’s post reflected the choice that now faces his fellow coalition leaders, including some — such as Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party — who oppose Netanyahu despite themselves being from the right and have explicitly ruled out sitting in government with Arabs. “We have no future here if we don’t stop being afraid. And if we don’t stop with the racism,” Golan wrote.
毫不掩饰其自由派立场的民主党在以色列政坛势力日渐式微，预计仅能赢得8个议席，这颇具意味。该党于2024年通过合并组建，此前已明朗的是，曾经占据主导地位的工党甚至无法单独跨过进入议会的门槛。因此，戈兰的观点是否代表犹太以色列人的主流看法，远未可知。坦率地说，在阿拉伯以色列人中也并非如此。
It’s telling that the unashamedly liberal Democrats are a shrinking force in Israeli politics and look set to win just eight seats. The party was formed through a merger in 2024, as it became clear that the once-dominant Labour Party would not even be able to cross the threshold into parliament alone. So, it is far from clear that Golan’s is the majority view within Jewish Israel. Nor, to be frank, within Arab Israel.
虽然宗教保守、政治立场温和的拉姆党表示愿意加入犹太联合政府，且以前也这样做过，但预计它也只能赢得7个议席。其他预计的12个阿拉伯议席属于联合名单，这是一个由共产党和世俗政党组成的联盟，他们在投票前表示，愿意在议会中以票数支持由艾森科特领导的少数派政府，但不加入政府。
While the religious conservative, politically moderate Ra’am party has said it is willing to join a Jewish coalition and has done so before, it looks set to win only seven seats. The other 12 projected Arab seats belong to the Joint List, a coalition of communist and secular parties that said before the vote that they were willing to support a minority Eisenkot government with their votes in parliament, but not to join it.
正如以色列-巴勒斯坦关系常见的那样，和解的最佳机会恰恰是最需要双方展现政治勇气的机会，因为这意味着要疏远甚至激怒双方政治基本盘中那些视对方为不可调和、几乎不具人性、永远无法信任的敌人的那部分人。
As is so often the case with Israeli-Palestinian relations, the best chance for reconciliation is the one that would require the most political courage from both sides, because it means alienating or even enraging the parts of the two respective political bases that see the other as an implacable, barely human enemy that can never be trusted.
艾森科特、利伯曼及其他反对派领袖在审视各自选项时，不会对这些选项感到满意。与阿拉伯政党接触合作，将冒着失去未来选民和导致其联盟破裂的风险。但不接触合作，只会把胜利拱手相让给内塔尼亚胡，让他利用这个胜利永久改变以色列。据曾多次担任以色列政府顾问职务的舒基·弗里德曼称，该国只有4到8年的时间来阻止这种变化，这种变化的影响远超内塔尼亚胡个人、10月7日野蛮行径的后果，以及随后在加沙和约旦河西岸的残酷回应。
As Eisenkot, Lieberman and other opposition leaders look at their options, they will not like them. To engage with the Arab parties would be to risk losing future voters and fracturing their coalition. But not to engage would simply hand a victory to Netanyahu that he will use to change Israel forever. According to Shuki Friedman, who has held a number of roles advising Israeli governments, the country has only between four and eight years to prevent this change, which goes far beyond Netanyahu, the fallout from the savagery of Oct. 7, or the brutality of the response that has followed in both Gaza and the West Bank.
“我们曾几乎是一个自由民主国家，”犹太民族政策研究所所长弗里德曼在他任教的耶路撒冷希伯来大学办公室里对我说。他说，问题在于“我们是否想继续这样下去？”他表示，这场辩论也关乎以色列极端正统派的灵魂之争，这一群体的爆炸性人口增长——平均每户有六个以上孩子——一直在改变着以色列。尽管他们目前仅占人口的不到15%，但本月早些时候的一项经济研究计算得出，最早到2030年，极端正统派宗教学校中的儿童数量将超过国立希伯来语学校。
“We were almost a liberal democracy,” Friedman, the director general of the Jewish People Policy Institute, told me at his office at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches law. The question, he said, is “do we want to continue to be this?”The debate, he said, is also about a fight for the soul of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox, whose demographic explosion — with an average six-plus children per family — has been transforming Israel. Though they make up barely 15% of the population today, an economic study earlier this month calculated that as soon as 2030, there will be more children in Ultra-Orthodox religious schools than in state Hebrew language schools.
塑造这些孩子的争夺正在进行中，而且如果要在他们成年之前改变其教育轨迹，现在就亟需政策变革。极端正统派传统上并非犹太复国主义者。他们并不认为拥有一个以色列国有多重要；对他们而言，重要的是身处圣地以迎接弥赛亚的到来。但他们正被民族主义右翼招募，并在内塔尼亚胡为赢得其政治支持而发放的国家补贴鼓励下不断壮大人口。正是这笔钱给了他们不工作、只学习宗教文本的奢侈。
The fight to shape these children is underway, and requires policy change now if their educational trajectory is to be altered before they come of age. The Ultra-Orthodox traditionally were not Zionists. They did not see importance in having an Israeli state; what mattered to them was to be present in the Holy Land for the coming of the messiah. But they are being recruited by the nationalist right and encouraged to grow in number by the state subsidies Netanyahu has handed out to win their political support. It is this money that gives them the luxury of not working and learning only religious texts.
因此，联盟关于接纳还是排斥阿拉伯人的决定，所牵涉的远不止族裔包容性。一个不同的政府可能会取消对极端正统派的财政支持，终止他们的兵役豁免，并要求其宗教学校教授核心课程，以使他们为参与经济做好准备。
So the coalition’s decision on whether to include or exclude Arabs has more than just ethnic inclusivity at stake. A different government could remove financial support from the Ultra-Orthodox, end their exemptions from military conscription and require their religious schools to teach the core curricula that would prepare them to take part in the economy.
更重要的是，一个不同的政府可能会制止内塔尼亚胡对民主制度、尤其是对法院的攻击，制止其政府通过暴力煽动巴勒斯坦人，以及制止那些正在消除某种和平共处可能性的激进定居点政策。一个由艾森科特领导的联盟还可能最终就10月7日事件启动公开调查，以揭示这样一场灾难——最终对两个社群都是灾难——是如何被允许发生的。
More importantly, a different government could halt Netanyahu’s assault on democratic institutions, in particular the courts, as well as his administration’s incitement of Palestinians through violence, and the aggressive settlement policies that are removing options for some form of peaceful coexistence. An Eisenkot-led coalition could also finally launch a public inquiry into Oct. 7 to reveal how such a a calamity — ultimately for both communities — could have been allowed to happen.
要想有机会成功，所有这些政策转变都必须从现在开始——而这需要艾森科特及其伙伴将以色列的阿拉伯政党和选民纳入其中。除此之外的任何做法，包括与内塔尼亚胡及其利库德党组成联合政府，都无法改变以色列的走向。这一选择是二选一的。它将决定哪一个以色列——世俗民主的整体，还是犹太多数主义的整体——成为真正的以色列。
To have a chance of success, all of these policy changes would have to begin now — and that requires Eisenkot and his partners to bring Israel’s Arab parties and voters into the equation. Anything else, including a unity government formed with Netanyahu and his Likud party, would be unable to change Israel’s course. This choice is binary. It will decide which Israeli state — the secular-democratic whole or the Jewish, majoritarian one — is to be the actual Israel.