The Histadrut

The last time the Histadrut declared such a strike was in March 2023 in opposition to the judicial overhaul promoted by Netanyahu’s radical right-wing government. The move, coupled with mass protests and significant business support, prompted Netanyahu to suspend any further legislation. This time, the strike was organized amid widespread public anger at the government’s handling of the hostage-release negotiations, following a dramatic weekend in which the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six more hostages in Gaza.

Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David’s declaration of a general strike became a rallying cry. The same day, an estimated half a million Israelis (5 to 6 percent of the population) marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other major cities, demanding the government agree to a cease-fire deal that would enable the safe return of many (or all) of the remaining captives. However, it is still unclear what effect, if any, this strike will have on the ongoing US-brokered negotiations.

The context — the slow but inexorable emergence of opposition to the war — is crucial for understanding the Histadrut’s decision. Following Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli society was almost fully mobilized in support of a military campaign in Gaza. The government claimed that war was a necessary and unavoidable response to an existential threat against all Jewish life, as well as the only way to bring back the hundreds of Israelis who were kidnapped from their homes. Any opposition to the war was denounced as illegitimate or even as treachery. Critical voices were suppressed and faced severe violence, arrests, and — in the case of workers — suspension from work and even dismissal.

However, as the war dragged on with no end or strategic goal in sight, voices of opposition calling for cease-fire negotiations that would ensure the safe release of the remaining hostages began to grow. The lives of these hostages were clearly in extreme danger both from their captors and from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks, which were unprecedented in their scope and cruelty. In the face of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and repeated claims from the government and the army that only increased military pressure would bring home the abductees, an opposition movement began to take shape.

Leading the charge were some of the families and relatives of the hostages, organized in the Hostages Families Forum. They emphasized the risk that the war poses to the lives of abductees still in Gaza, some of whom had become unintentional casualties of IDF snipers and Israeli air strikes. This increasingly vocal opposition fueled the growing protest movement that swept ever-greater numbers into the streets for the weekly Saturday demonstration in the center of Tel Aviv, near the government’s headquarters and the IDF’s central command.

Additional support for a cease-fire and hostage agreement came from a rather unexpected source: the IDF and the military establishment itself. During the first months of the war, the military had maintained that it was possible to simultaneously achieve the government’s two main war goals — defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages — despite mounting evidence that these objectives were in tension.

By early July, the military high command, including top senior generals, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and the head of military intelligence, concluded that the two goals were “mutually incompatible” and that the latter should be prioritized over the former. This position  was later adopted by Netanyahu’s own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, making him the lone supporter of an immediate hostage deal within Netanyahu’s cabinet.

The growing protest movement coupled with the military’s revised position led to a dramatic shift in public opinion. During the first months of the war, an overwhelming majority of the Jewish-Israeli public supported the war in Gaza. Yet by May of 2024, a poll published by Israel’s public broadcasting channel showed that 47 percent of respondents supported an end to the war in return for the release of Israeli hostages, while only 32 percent were against it.

By early July of this year, a poll released by Channel 12 News showed two-thirds of the Israeli public agreed that returning the hostages was “more important” than continuing the war, compared to just over a quarter who believed the war in Gaza was the more important goal. A demand that was initially taboo had over the course of a few months become the majority position. Nevertheless, despite the shifting stance of the military, as well as mounting international pressure from the United States and other allies, the growing public outcry failed to bring about a change in the government’s commitment to pursue war indefinitely.

It is now clear that the main obstacle to a cease-fire agreement has been Netanyahu himself. Some pundits blame his intransigence on the dependency of Likud, and Netanyahu, on the support of extreme right-wing forces. For these groups, the war is an opportunity to deepen the occupation and expand the dispossession of Palestinian territories, in both Gaza and the West Bank. Others suggest that these objectives simply align with Netanyahu’s own ideology and strategic vision. Either way, Israel’s prime minister has not budged from his hard-line rejection of even a pause to the violence.

Seeking an additional counterweight to the government’s position, various elements within the protest movement turned to the Histadrut, which is by far the most prominent labor federation. Hoping to harness its political and economic muscle to their cause, organizations linked to the families of hostages and other groups opposed to the war’s excesses applied  pressure on senior officials within the union. For several months, mass demonstrations calling for the union to throw its weight behind a hostage deal took place at the entrance to the Histadrut’s main building in Tel Aviv. Families of hostages met with the federation’s chairman several times during the last few weeks, urging him to use all his power to push for their release.

Turning to a union may not seem like an obvious choice for a grassroots protest movement. However, until the 1980s, the Histadrut was not simply a vehicle for collective bargaining, but a leading socioeconomic actor in Israel’s corporatist economy. As such, it not only played a direct role in wage bargaining, price setting, and tax policy, but also controlled and operated the state’s largest bank, health care insurer and provider, pension funds, and industrial conglomerates, making it Israel’s second-largest employer after the state.

Thus, by virtue of its central partnership with the Israeli state, the Histadrut is not only an organization that represents the class interests of its members, but a major social-political actor, responsible for both job creation and welfare provision. Viewed in this light, the protest movement should properly be seen as an appeal to the Histadrut to renew its historic position as a pillar of the Israeli state capable of wielding power within the political and economic arenas.

Dealignment in Israel

When news of the killing of six additional hostages arrived on September 1, the Histadrut chair finally announced he could no longer stand on the sidelines. Not only did he call for a general strike to begin at 6 a.m. the following day, but he sought to mobilize the whole of Israeli society against the government.

I call on the general public not to remain indifferent and to take to the streets tomorrow. The day of the strike is not for sitting at home but for going out to protest and to cry out the cry of our people. Do not lend a hand to incitement and division — lend a hand to saving lives.

The Histadrut published a list of workplaces to be shut down, after which numerous other organizations announced they too would join the strike, including Israel’s Medical Association, the Teachers Union, and the Bar Association. This unprecedented moment provided even more fuel to the fire, resulting in one of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history. Some commentators, including some on the Left, were quick to mark this as the turning point that could well bring about a cease-fire.

For a moment at least it seemed that the entire country was headed toward a complete, and possibly enduring, shutdown. Strikes closed government offices and ground much of the public transport services to a halt. Municipalities in Israel’s densely populated central region, including Tel Aviv, also participated, leading to shortened school hours and closures of daycare centers and kindergartens. Most hospitals provided only emergency services, dock workers shut down Haifa Port, and flights at Israel’s international airport were paused for several hours. Many private employers, whose workers are not unionized, including restaurants, shopping malls, retailers, and many high-tech firms, also heeded the Histadrut’s call, ceasing operations for the day.

However, within a few hours, the significant obstacles to sustaining an effective general strike started to come into sharp relief. Many unionized workers ignored the call to strike, maintaining their normal work, including some of the biggest workers’ committees in the country. Just hours after the strike began, it exposed internal tensions within the union, pitting the conservative right-wing rank and file that tended to align with the government against the liberal leadership, which was often more critical of Netanyahu. Similar tensions were evident even in smaller, more democratic, and radical unions like Koach LaOvdim, which allowed their members to choose whether or not to join the strike.

Sure enough, the weakness of the organization’s leadership and the limits of its ability to turn against the government were rapidly revealed. Right-wing criticism of the union became rife on both mainstream and social media. The prime minister even called the general strike a show of “support” for Yahya Sinwar and Hamas. As well as mocking the strike, the government also turned to the labor court requesting an immediate injunction against the strikes, claiming they were “political” and thus illegal according to Israeli law. The court complied, ruling that the strike was not related to workplace issues, nor legally declared, and demanded that workers return to work by 2:30 p.m. that same day. This was a major setback for the union, which complied with the ruling.

Histadrut’s failure to help advance a cease-fire and a hostage exchange exposes its internal weaknesses, as well as the legal-judicial limitations on the right to strike in Israel. But these divisions are not unique to the union. They track onto broader conflicts within Israeli society.

Much like union members in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, in recent decades many working-class Israelis have shifted their political allegiances to the political right. There is no doubt that at the root of this process was the liberalization and privatization of Israel’s political economy since the 1980s. Implemented by both right- and left-wing governments, often acting in collaboration, this campaign dealt a series of blows to the Histadrut, which gradually lost its main sources of power. As a result, in this period union density decreased from 79 percent in 1981 to 34 percent in 2006 (it is currently hovering just above 25 percent). The once robust welfare state sustained by the Histadrut has all but disintegrated.

Both the Likud and Labor Party had a hand in advancing this neoliberal agenda. However, while the Labor Party largely abandoned its previous commitment to collaborating with the unions and the goals of full employment and a robust welfare state, the political right shrewdly attracted working-class Jewish voters by offering them various “loyalty benefits.” Some of these took the form of affordable housing, social benefits, and public sector jobs in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as various other “wages of colonialism” distributed through the party machinery of the Likud and its political allies. Others were distributed through a growing “political exchange” between the Histadrut and the Likud, which granted electoral support in return for various labor-friendly concessions, such as wage increases, multilevel collective agreements, and more.

This shift has given the right a deep-seated social basis among working-class Israelis that is not easily dislodged. To turn the Histadrut into a bulwark against hard-right policies — whether economic policy, antidemocratic or racist legislation, or support of the war and the occupation — is thus an uphill battle that will require immense effort, both within the union and more generally on the Left.

Nevertheless, the support from the Left and centrist parties for the Histadrut’s strike actions was a glimpse of another potential political realignment, with organized labor as a core component that could provide some opposition to the ongoing war as well as rebuilding the welfare state. It remains to be seen whether more significant efforts to promote a left-wing agenda as part of a wider (albeit gradual) change in labor politics could be made.

The second obstacle is Israeli legislation that limits the ability of organized labor to take action on political issues as opposed to economic issues. For organized labor to play a more significant part in Israeli politics, these limits need to be removed. This is a lesson that Israel’s liberal elites have yet to fully understand: during the last two years, they have repeatedly called on the Histadrut to take a more hard-line position against the government, yet it was their agenda of liberalization and privatization of the economy in the 1980s onward that undermined organized labor and encouraged the courts to limit the space for political strikes.

Nevertheless, last week’s events, especially the Histadrut’s alignment with the pro-cease-fire camp in Israel, can, cautiously, be seen as a welcome development. Firstly, it marks the return of the Histadrut as the largest collective actor within Israeli society, one that must take a position and be involved in any significant political struggle. Secondly, the general strike, however brief, has empowered the growing protest movement. Since the strike, large protests have taken place across the country, including this past Saturday’s historic rally, which might yet bring about the longed-for and much-needed cease-fire.

Where might the Histadrut go from here? The leadership’s courageous step is in some ways a radical one: it goes against the organization’s tendency to cooperate with the government for the sake of its members’ employment terms, and against the political bent of its main power base. But it also revealed the organization’s weaknesses, which explain its failure to achieve its key aim of compelling the government to reach a deal on the return of the hostages and — as a corollary — ending the war.

The Histadrut’s leadership can act independently of the rank and file because its highly centralized power structure enabled the current chair to decide to call a strike. However, without the support of its members, the leadership’s ability to carry through is seriously undermined. While political configurations and allegiances are complex, it seems fair to say that the internal tensions within the Histadrut are unlikely to be resolved without serious political work.

Changing the current dynamic, however, cannot be done by the Histadrut alone. It will require a significant political realignment, and more significant collaboration between the union and political forces that are committed not only to replacing Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing agenda his coalition has been leading for the past years, but to rebuilding the welfare state, empowering unions, and advancing a more progressive alternative to the neoliberalism that has only increased support for occupation and war.

The reality is that within Israel, much of the power to stop the war lies in the hands of groups that do not have a primary interest in Palestinian lives. Nevertheless, concern for the hostages held in Gaza has exposed deep fault lines within Israeli society. Factions committed to indefinite war, regardless of its costs, now stand against others that see pursuing such a path as unsustainable.

It is very likely that as the war rages on — claiming lives in the West Bank as well as Gaza while imperiling the prospect of peace or a hostage deal — the ranks of the latter will only grow. Within this context, advocates for peace might find an influential ally within Israel itself. For this reason, at least, we should be attentive to the limits, and possibilities, of such a development.