National Religious Party

The National Religious Party (Hebrew: מִפְלָגָה דָּתִית לְאֻומִּית, Miflaga Datit Leumit), commonly called by its Hebrew abbreviation Mafd"al (מפד"ל), was an Israeli political party representing the interests of the religious Zionist movement.

Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008, it was the second-oldest surviving party in the country after Agudat Yisrael, and was part of every government coalition until 1992. Originally a pragmatic centrist party in its first two decades of existence, it gradually leaned rightward in the following years, particularly becoming increasingly associated with Israeli settlers. Towards the end of its existence, it became part of a far-right political alliance centered around the National Union.

The 2006 elections saw the party slump to just three seats, the worst electoral performance in its history. In November 2008, party members voted to disband the party in order to join the new Jewish Home party created by a merger of the NRP and most of the National Union factions. However, most of the National Union left the merger shortly after its implementation.

Ideological background

Religious is an Orthodox Jewish faction of the broader Zionism, following a more religious way of life while putting in efforts to develop a Jewish state in Palestine and Argentina. The spiritual founder and then-leader of Religious Zionism was Ashkenazi spiritual lord Avraham Yitzhack Kook, who urged young religious Jews to adopt Orthodoxy further and called upon secular, Labor Zionists to pay more attention to Judaism. Rabbi Kook saw Zionism as part of a divine scheme that would result in Jewish settlement of the Holy Land, composed of modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, [the] Lebanon, Cyprus, Jordan and Syria, culminating in the coming of the Jewish Mashiach.

History

Origins

The National Religious Party (NRP) was created by the merger of two parties - Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi - in 1956, running for the 1955 election on a joint list under the name "National Religious Front". Even after the formation of the NRP as a single party, its lists used the National Religious Front name up to the 1992 election, with the NRP's own name only debuting on the ballot in 1988. The founders of the party were Joseph Burg and Haim-Moses Shapira (both from Hapoel HaMizrachi), who focused their activity mainly on the status of Judaism in Israel. Throughout the NRP's existence, it attempted to preserve the relevance of Judaism on issues such as Israeli personal status laws, education, culture, and municipal issues such as selling Kosher food, prohibiting transportation and public activities on Sabbath.

The NRP operated a trade union (under the same name as the old workers' party, Hapoel HaMizrachi), a newspaper (HaTzofe), and a youth movement (Bnei Akiva). Only the youth movement still exists today.

Post–Six-Day War

The seeds of change were sown in 1967, when Israel's victory in the Six-Day War spawned messianic trends among Israeli Jews of Orthodox affiliations. After Israel gained control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Haim Moshe Shapira, the leader of the NRP and member of the Israel cabinet, believed that Israel should aggressively pursue peace talks with Arab states and supported immediate negotiations with Jordan over the status of holy sites in Jerusalem. However, the party became internally divided around the annexation of the occupied territories, with some factions, who favor an Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, being divided on the extent of the withdrawal, with some of them arguing for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank, others viewing disengagement from the Palestinian Territories as a necessary evil to ensure Israel's status as a "Jewish state", and others arguing that a future Palestine should grant Palestinian citizenship to Jewish settlers, the way Israel grants citizenship to Arab Israelis, without equal rights or apartheid for Palestinians, while others argued that Israel must annex the Palestinian territories, viewing Judea and Samaria as a shield against terrorist attacks.

Around 1969, a new generation arose in the NRP, led by Zebulun Hammer and Judah Ben-Meir, called "the youth", demanding that the party pay more attention to socio-economic issues in addition to its concerns about Judaism and the modern state.