All politics is local. The recent Israeli elections are a good example. Most Americans tend to assume that Israeli politics is dominated by the Palestinian issue. That was definitely the case when Benjamin Netanyahu, campaigning against terrorism and the fear of a Palestinian state, defeated Shimon Peres in 1996. By contrast, the outcome of this election was determined by internal Israeli political and social pressures.
Israeli society is divided against itself along ethnic, religious, and economic lines.
The Arab or Sephardic Jews tend to be more conservative and view Israel as a religious state. But Israel also has a large population of European or Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated to Israel in the wake of World War II and, more recently, after the collapse of the Soviet empire. They tend to be much more secular in their views, a little better off. They do not see Israel as a religious state. Tensions have increased markedly since Netanyahu's election, largely because he has been forced by political necessity to let the Orthodox Jews take over important areas of the government, the most important being the Interior Ministry, thereby enabling them to decide who is a Jew and who is not.