This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture.

Guy Ben-Porat is Professor at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is the author of Global Liberalism, Local Populism: Peace and Conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland (2006) and Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel (2012). He is also the co-author of Policing Citizens: Minority Policy in Israel (2019).

Yariv Feniger is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and a fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. His areas of research include social and educational inequality, education policy and comparative education. His last co-authored book on education inequality and education policy was published in 2019.

Dani Filc is Professor at the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His fields of research include Israeli politics, populism and the health care system. Among his publications are Hegemony and Populism in Israel, Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health-Care in Israel and The Political Right in Israel: The Many Faces of Israeli Populism.

Paula Kabalo is Associate Professor at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. She is the head of the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies. Her most recent book Israeli Community Action: Living Through the War of Independence was awarded the AIS Shapiro Prize for 2020. Her research focus is on the history of citizen associations and civil society in Israel and the interrelations between David Ben-Gurion and the wider public.

Julia Mirsky is Professor at the Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Her research focuses on the psychological aspects of migration. She has published extensively on this subject and supervised numerous MA and PhD students. At Ben-Gurion University, she serves as the Samuel and Miriam L. Hamburger Chair in Integration of Immigrant Communities and heads the Center (in progress) for Research and Education on Migrants' Lives.

Introduction, Part 1: Historical Overview, 1. Zionism between Despair and Hope, 2. Mamlakhtiyut: The Zionist and Israeli version of Republicanism, 3. Melting Pot and Plurality of Cultures in Early Israel, 4. The Palestinian National Movement: A Short History, 5. Israel's Foreign Policy: The Historical Mound, Part 2: Institutions, 6. The Political System and Political Parties, 7. Israeli Organized Civil Society: Trends and Challenges of the Nonprofit Sector, 8. Major Contemporary Trends in Civil-Military Relations in Israel, 9. Israel's Legal System: Institutions, Principles and Challenges, 10. The Israeli Education System, 11. How the people of the book became the people of the media: The Israeli media landscape, Part 3: Foreign Relations and Policy, 12. Israel and the Palestinians, 13. Israel and the Arab World - from War to Peacemaking, 14. The Special Relationship between the United States and Israel, 15. The Rubik's cube of Israeli-European Union relations, 16. Israel-Russia Bilateral Relations: Market Rationality and Political Affinity, 17. Better Late than Never: China-Israel Diplomatic Relations in Perspective, Part 4: Divisions and Schisms, 18. Leadership Legitimacy, Responsiveness and Representation in Palestinian Society in Israel, 19. Religious Zionism - Romantic Religious Nationalism in Israel, 20. Religion in Contemporary Israel: Haredi Varieties, 21. Israel: Between Religion and Secularism, 22. Haredism vs. Traditionalism: A New Reading of Mizrahi Religious Politics at the Start of the 21st Century, 23. The Ethiopian Jews in Israel, 24. Acculturation as a two-way process: Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel, 25. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Gender Relations in Contemporary Israel, 26. Paradoxes of control: Incorporating precarious migrants in Tel Aviv in times of restrictive migration policies, 27. Demographic Trends in Israel, 28. Israel's Economic Development - an overview, 29. The Israeli Labor Market, 30. The Startup Nation: Myths and Reality, 31. Neoliberalization of Welfare and Social Protest, 32. Peripheralities, Part 5: Culture, 33. Desert, Hill, and Sea: Cinematic Visions and Re-Visions of War, 34. Bass and Silsulim: Israeli Music after muzika Mizrahit, 35. Who Killed Poetry? An Israeli Perspective, 36. Large, Cheap and Mizrahi ("Oriental"): Israeli Cuisine