ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Israel's new economic and legal order and the rise of an American-style economic and legal culture in contemporary Israel. It analyzes the gradual devaluation in the status of collective labor rights in Israel and discusses the emergence of legal mechanisms that have reinforced a neo-liberal conception of labor relations in the workplace since the mid-1980s. The chapter examines the selective interpretation given by courts to the two new Basic Laws. Chief Justice Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court has recently specified guidelines pursuant to which the new Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty should be interpreted. The chapter concludes with an examination of the prima facie tensions between the prevailing neo-liberal ideological and economic momentum in Israel, recent legislation and adjudication which regulate, at least to some extent, competition in the marketplace and the "egalitarian" adjudication of the Supreme Court in several recent civil-liberty cases.
