The Religious Parties
Several religious parties have been elected to each Knesset. Basically, the religious parties may be divided into two groups: Zionist parties that accept the principles of modern Jewish nationalism; and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties, which are non-Zionist, would like Israel to be a theocratic state run according to their interpretation of Halacha (Jewish religious law), and which barely tolerate the reality of the secular Jewish state. Only in the First Knesset did the religious parties run in a single bloc, the United Religious Front, gaining 16 seats.

Two of the religious parties have pre-state origins: the National Religious Party, which as Mizrahi was a member of the World Zionist Organization and the pre-state Jewish national institutions in Palestine; and the ultra-religious Agudat Yisrael, which remained outside these institutions, but just before the establishment of the state signed the famous "religious status quo" agreement with Ben-Gurion. According to this agreement, the Sabbath and Kashrut (Jewish dietary law) were to be officially observed in the state, issues of marriage and divorce would be left in religious hands, and the haredi circles would be allowed to maintain an independent educational system. After the establishment of the state, Ben-Gurion also agreed that students in yeshivot (religious seminaries) would be exempt from military service. When the promise was first made there were about 400 such students; today there are tens of thousands.

The National Religious Party was a member of all the governments except briefly that of Rabin in 1974 and his second government in 1992-95. The NRP was considered politically moderate and concentrated on such issues as education until after the Yom Kippur War, when the Greater Land of Israel's messianic forces within it gained the upper hand and took the party progressively to the extreme Right. In recent years the NRP has also moved religiously closer to the haredim. An attempt to elect representatives of a moderate national-religious party, Meimad, to the 13th Knesset failed, when the party did not pass the qualifying threshold. Meimad is trying again for the 15th Knesset. The haredi political camp is divided into two blocs: United Torah Judaism, which is made up of the Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatora parties; the second is Shas, most of whose Sephardi supporters are traditional Jews of Islamic country origin. Though Shas was briefly a member of Rabin's second government, and some of the haredi spiritual leaders are moderate on the peace issue, the haredi parties tend to prefer right-wing governments, which they claim are more sensitive to their demands. The haredi parties are keenly concerned with receiving financial benefits from the state for their own institutions and preserving (or even expanding) the religious status quo. Currently the haredi parties are involved in a battle against the Supreme Court, many of whose rulings in their opinion have intruded into the sphere of Halacha.

In the 14th Knesset the religious parties together had 23 seats: the NRP had nine, UTJ four, and Shas 10. All three lists were members of Netanyahu's government.