Israel is deeply fractured. The schism has become bitter and heated as both sides see themselves to be in an existential war for the future of Israel. The language used has become so venomous (particularly in reserved channels in Hebrew) that calls for a coup and for civil war are far from uncommon.
Israel is nearing the precipice and the seemingly irreconcilable differences may soon erupt into civil unrest -- as Uri Misgav writes this week, the “Israeli spring” is on its way.
The point here is that President Trump’s utilitarian and determinedly transactional style may work effectively in the secular western hemisphere, but with Israel (or Iran) Trump may find little or no traction amongst those with an alternative weltanschauung that expresses a fundamental different concept of morality, philosophy and epistemology, to the classic western deterrence paradigm of material ‘carrots and sticks’.