Yair Golan says he’s unsure whether Israel is ‘truly a democratic state anymore’

Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s left-wing Democrats party, says in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that he doesn’t know whether Israel can be considered a democracy anymore.

“I’m not sure whether Israel right now is truly a democratic state anymore,” says Golan, who formed the Democrats as a merger between the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties after winning the Labor primaries earlier this year. “It is not a question of left or right any more: these titles are meaningless.”

“The right today in Israel is people who think we can annex millions of Palestinians, and Israel should adopt some sort of policy of revenge, that we can live by our swords and not attempt to reconcile with the Palestinians or any other hostile entity in the region,” he says. “I think 180 degrees the opposite.”

Golan tells the Guardian that while his party believes in putting an end to Israel’s military and civilian presence in the West Bank and implementing a two-state solution, it knows that Israel cannot go down that path until security is restored.

“Our vision is a two-state solution, but right now we are a nation in trauma. People lost their sense of security; people do not trust the IDF to protect them,” he says. “We need to be proactive militarily, but at the same time we need to combine it with political vision.”

“The liberal camp in Israel is still alive,” he says. “We do not fight for revenge. We fight for the security of Israel.”