ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the accommodation made by the Labor Zionist Movement (LZM) to the religious sector, both the Religious Zionists and the non-Zionist Charedim. The leadership achieved by the LZM over the yishuv, over the World Zionist Organization, and over the State of Israel, as well as the decline of that leadership and its potential replacement by the Religious Zionist "civil religion," can be most usefully analyzed in terms of Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony. Most adept at handling and weathering the Jewish-Palestinian conflict through its separatist approach, the LZM proved the superiority of its nationalist strategy over opposing approaches when the national conflict reached its zenith for the first time. This success sealed the LZM's hegemony: it became identified in the public mind with the nation-state-building project, leading to a continuous and long-term domination of Israeli society, which lasted until 1977.
