What kind of Israeli society will we find once the war is over? What will it look like? Will it be as tough and intolerant as it appeared during the long weeks of fighting? Will the freedom to criticize government policies go back to what it was before the war? Or maybe society will adopt the new codes that emerged during the campaign, when the public was expected to bite its tongue as long as fighting was going on. And what will the political constellation look like on “the day after”? Will the right manage to turn the support it received during the war into an electoral sweep in the next elections? And then there’s the left. Will it manage to rouse itself from its wartime hibernation?

While the war may still be going on, a certain calm that has begun to permeate the public mood is already noticeable. Even though the cease-fire has already collapsed, and rocket fire from Gaza has started again, there is a feeling that life is returning to normal. The aggressive mood has died down, the waves of racism have begun to dissipate and unrestrained responses on social media have already become more moderate. All in all, the dialogue has calmed down, and the ideological debate between right and left is almost back on track again.

In the early days of the fighting in Gaza, it seemed as if Israeli society had reached a situation like nothing it had probably ever seen before. There certainly had been wars in the past. They were also portrayed as existential. Tens of thousands of reservists were also called up at the time, and also then there was a deep sense of identification with the casualties and their families. Still, it seems like the current war in Gaza released a safety valve of sorts, resulting in various social phenomena unlike anything we had ever seen before. Many people felt that whoever veered from the wartime consensus could pay a steep price for this.

Many of the past wars were stopped because of protests by their opponents. The two wars in Lebanon, in 1982 and 2006, sparked enormous demonstrations, which ultimately brought both wars to an end. The public showed considerable understanding to these protests, regarding them as an integral part of the culture of open debate. During both wars the leadership was forced to pay a steep public price, and many politicians were even forced to resign in the wars’ wake.