How to Achieve Electoral Reform for Israel

...The process of obtaining that number of signatures would in itself involve a major public effort, with all that this entails in the way of public education...

...The only departures from this pure proportional representation system are that a party must receive a minimum of slightly more than 1 percent of the votes to qualify for a seat, and it is possible for parties to enter into agreements to pool extra fractions of percentages for the advantage of one or the other...

...But the democratic "citizens' revolt" I envisage can change all this...

...Each of the electoral districts would be allocated its share of Knesset seats in proportion to its percentage of the country's total population...

...There are many other reforms that have been proposed, including a complete change in the structure of the Israeli political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one, whereby a chief executive or president would be directly elected by the voters independently of the Knesset and would relate to the Knesset on a separation-of-powers basis similar to that in the United States...

...Under the present system, the eastern and western Galilee, the south and the Negev are badly underrepres-ented in the Knesset, while Tel Aviv and its surrounding area and the Jezreel Valley kibbutzim are overrepresented...

...Since their boundaries are permanently fixed, they obviate the necessity for politically painful decisions in drawing district lines...

...At the same time, any electoral reform, to be worth the effort, must meet the demands of the "non-party" population, which is increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo, by providing for closer relations between the voters and their representatives, broader representation of the different interest, ethnic and geographic groups that make up Israel's society, and greater independence for Knesset members from their party hierarchies...

...At the present moment, they provide only limited support because they are unorganized and must face the united opposition of those who actually hold political power in the country...

...Commentators have credited the public outcry with having had an impact on the government's pullback decision...

...Kiryat Malachi was a stagnant development town in the south until Katzav became mayor and led its revitaliza-tion...

...Meir Shitrit transformed another development town, Yavne, into a garden suburb...

...Take, for example, Moshe Katzav, who came into public view as the very successful mayor of Kiryat Malachi...

...Under this system, the country would be divided into a fixed number of large districts, say 8 or 12, based on permanent regional divisions, and the 120 Knesset seats would be apportioned among them periodically on the basis of population...

...Under the present electoral system, voters cast their ballots for specific political parties rather than for individual candidates...

...Mayors like Katzav and Shitrit, or the Labor party's Jacques Amir from Dimona, have made their way into the Knesset without waiting in line, because of the reputations they have gained as a result of their local successes...

...They became virtually self-contained provinces within the polity...

...The Israeli public overwhelmingly supports electoral reform in the polls, but until now the issue has not been sufficiently important to Israelis to make a real effort to bring about change...

...The subdistricts can serve as the basis for a new electoral system, in some cases by being combined...

...If it gets 40 percent of the votes, it will receive 48 seats in the same manner...

...Citizen involvement in politics is minimal under such a system, while the number of good people willing to kowtow to the party leadership long enough to rise in the ranks is quite limited...

...But if such an effort can be mounted, it would have an excellent chance of succeeding...

...Gad Yacobi, a veteran Labor party Knesset member who frequently served as a minister in the governments of Israel, has been a loyal supporter of electoral reform over the years...

...If a vacancy occurs during the life of a sitting Knesset, then the next person on the list of the party involved automatically takes his or her seat in Israel's parliament...

...Today Katzav is minister of social welfare...

...Voters would be able to vote for individual candidates or for a straight party ticket...

...seat . Districts uould be reo reptesentation...

...Political suicide has never been popular—certainly not in Israel...

...All this helped create a very centralized party system with considerable power in the hands of the party leadership and bureaucracy through their control not only of normal electoral politics, but also of economic opportunity for party members...

...Today, slightly more than 1 percent of the total vote will gain a seat in the Knesset...

...That is how Meir Kahane was elected...

...In September 1982, after the Lebanese Christian militia massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut, Prime Minister Menachem Begin refused to appoint an external committee of inquiry to determine whether the Israel Defense Forces had enabled the massacre to take place...

...Almost everyone born since the establishment of the state falls into this category...

...Look at the response in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War or the aftermath of the 1982 massacres in Lebanon, as well as a number of less prominent situations...

...David Ben-Gurion advocated electoral reform back in the 1950s and even tried to build a new party, Rafi, around that issue, among others, in the 1960s...

...The two large parties, Labor and Likud, do not want to antagonize the small parties who are their potential coalition partners by advocating electoral reform...

...They have grown up with the state as a reality...

...Its report, issued five months later, exonerated Israel of any direct responsibility but led to serious punishments for those whose negligence had allowed the Lebanese Christians to do their deed...

...In the election for the present Knesset, 15 parties or party blocs qualified for seats...

...Subsequently, he was elected to the Knesset and is now chairman of the Prime Minister's Council for Social Planning...

...Among the debilitating consequences of this system of proportional representation are the extreme multiplicity of parties, the strengthening of the party bureaucracy at the expense of the government and the voters, the unhealthy deepening of political divisions in the country as a whole, and the increasing sense of political alienation that envelops many Israelis...

...Both are now available...

...It was developed to meet the needs of those pioneering the resettlement of the land, as those needs were perceived by the settlers from Eastern and Central Europe...

...Candidates would carry party designations on the ballot and would be listed under party columns...

...The small parties in the Knesset are properly afraid that any serious electoral reform will prevent them from obtaining Knesset seats in future elections...

...It is clear, however, that any proper change would have to eliminate exclusive reliance on proportional representation and provide for more direct representation of the voters...

...A ready-made basis for such a division presently exists...

...That is the only way to break down the present resistance to electoral reform on the pan of the powers that be...

...After the votes are counted, each party receives the number of seats to which its percentage of the vote entitles it...

...instead of the to foster the ambitions of some individuals would be eliminated while preserving those parties—large, medium-sized and small—that have demonstrated staying power on the political scene over the years and thus arguably deserve representation...

...All of these have been too few and far between, however, to overcome the resistance of the two major parties who pay lip service to electoral reform in their platforms, but do nothing to advance it...

...Outside of the Knesset, lobbying for electoral reform has primarily been the province oiolim (immigrants) from the English-speaking countries whose experience in the lands of their origin has made them strong supporters of both personal and district elections...

...It is these people who can provide a base of support for electoral reform...

...Forty years after the state's founding they represent a decisive majority of the population...

...Each party submits a list of its candidates for the Knesset in rank order...

...But electoral reform that has any chance of being enacted must take into account the present party system and the reluctance of any of the present parties to accept any electoral arrangement that does not give at least those parties in the coalition some hope of survival...

...Within a short time he was joined by others, until a major sit-in was underway, leading to the appointment of the Agranat Commission to investigate why Israel had been surprised by the war and, following the commission's report, the resignation of the Meir government...

...In their heyday before the state, everything from sports clubs to paramilitary forces, from schools to banks, was organized by party or camp...

...Another possibility, which I prefer, is what is called a fixed multi-member district system...

...What is necessary at this point is not to decide on the specific system but to mobilize the public so that change may be brought about...

...Israel's territory within its pre-1967 borders (plus east Jerusalem) is presently divided into fourteen administrative subdis-tricts which would meet the requirements for permanent electoral districts...

...These subdistricts, which follow the country's regional geographic divisions, are now used for the administration of elections...

...Thus the parties consolidated their position in Israel's political system in ways that transcend the usual political concerns of access and representation...

...This would reduce the number of parties able to compete in the election, allow voter choice of individual candidates and not simply party lists, thereby encouraging the parties to nominate attractive candidates in every district...

...Party business is conducted so that, with rare exceptions, only professional politicians—people who are prepared to spend all their time in partisan political activity— can gain enough seniority and recognition to be nominated to high office...

...Thousands of Israelis demand that the government abandon its plan for a gradual withdrawal from south Lebanon during a demonstration in Tel Aviv's central square on March 16,1985...

...The simplest change in the electoral system would be to retain proportional representation as at present, but to raise the minimum percentage needed to win a seat...

...What is needed is a half million to a million signatures on a petition demanding a change in the electoral system...

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...There is only one way to bring about electoral reform in Israel—by a democratic "citizens' revolt" in the form of a massive campaign of public mobilization...

...This means that party leadership has enormous power because it determines who is included on its party's list and in what order...

...The present party system actually antedates the state...

...The parties would be able to attract voters by nominating exceptionally good candidates who could pull votes away from the larger parties in the districts where the candidates' party has little support, or by convincing the voters in districts where the party has abundant support to vote a straight ticket for them...

...After the establishment of the state in 1948, the new government assisted these party institutions in order to facilitate the development of the country and the absorption of the mass of new immigrants...

...In most cases, their Knesset lists were chosen by a narrow group of party leaders...

...The two major parties, evenly balanced as they were in the number of seats each obtained, had to compete for the support of the minuscule parties with one to six seats to try to form a governing coalition, and in the end failed to do so, leading to the establishment of the present national unity government in which both major parties plus many of the smaller parties are represented, leaving in opposition only the extreme left and the extreme right in the Israeli spectrum...

...Even as the parties were being consolidated in the framework of the state, however, the change in Israel's population introduced large numbers of people—either immigrants or members of a new native-born generation— who had no ideological stake in any particular party and did not particularly care to be dependent upon the parties for services they considered to be rightfully the province of government...

...A large segment of the Israeli public protested, culminating in a demonstration of several hundred thousand people in Tel Aviv...

...In the 1970s, the Democratic Movement for Change, led by the famous archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, made electoral reform a major issue, but failed to move matters along before the party broke apart over other issues associated with the first Begin government...

...Such a change would alter the present system, which rewards splintering by encouraging leaders of factions within existing parties to set up their own parties prior to each election and thereby improve their chances of getting elected to the Knesset...

...Within a week, Begin reversed his decision and the Kahan Commission was appointed...

...Groups such as the Committee of Concerned Citizens, originally chaired by Chaim Herzog before he became Israel's president, and the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, have been active in seeking to mobilize public support for electoral reform...

...Even more important, they recognize that serious electoral reform will lead to changes within the party structure, thereby weakening the ability of the present party establishments to control the party machinery and nominations to the Knesset...

...Within each district, as many parties as wished could submit lists, but voters could vote either for party lists or for individual candidates up to the total number of seats allotted to that district...

...This group includes public figures like Knesset member Meir Shitrit, to whom I referred earlier, and leaders of the business community such as Al Schwimmer, one of the founders of the Israeli Air Force and former head of the Israel Aircraft Industries, and David Kulitz, one of the wunderkind Israeli entrepreneurs and first chairman of the Israeli Forum...

...For example, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War one lone man, Moti Ashkenazi, a major in the reserves who had been caught with the rest of his Jerusalem brigade in the bunkers along the Suez Canal and who fought in the only bunker not captured by the Egyptians, stood in front of the Knesset with a placard and mounted a one-man protest calling for Golda Meir's government to resign...

...This should be presented to the Knesset by 50,000 citizens marching in Jerusalem...

...As vehicles for pioneering before the existence of a Jewish government, the individual parties—particularly the labor and religious parties, which embraced strong doctrinal positions—developed educational, welfare and social service institutions of their own that went far beyond the normal political purposes of party organizations in other countries...

...Various proposals for change have been advanced, ranging from continuing the present parliamentary system, with a certain percentage of the Knesset's 120 seats elected from districts and the remainder elected at large, to a complete constitutional change instituting a system more like that of the United States...

...It is hard for outsiders to visualize the degree to which the parties or ideological camps (groups of parties sharing an overall ideology such as Labor's socialism, Likud's populist nationalism, or the religious parties' traditional religion) dominated the lives of ordinary Israelis, but Israelis took it for granted...

...Similar demonstrations in support of electoral reform would affect government decision makers, says Elazar...

...Now, however, a new broad-based coalition of concerned citizens is emerging...

...Although the Israeli establishment appears to be very conservative, in every case where there has been a massive public outcry, the establishment and the government have responded rapidly to the pressure...

...The Knesset results stand in stark contrast to what happens in local politics, where the direct election of mayors, introduced in 1978, has led to a flowering of political talent as interested people find it easier to run for office on the basis of their personal talents...

...Were that threshold to be raised to a 3 percent minimum, all the present fly-by-night splinter parties established . This system 1osWS Proposal One ent3t,on...

...This, in turn, strengthened the vested interests opposed to electoral reform, since any threat to the existence of a particular party could undercut the life structure of many people...

...The signs carried by the demonstrators read: "Leave Lebanon Now," "A Third Year in Lebanon," "Occupation is Cancer" and "No More Death Stages...

...The parties would thus be able to attract the voters as before, but the burden of attracting new voters would be placed on the candidates they choose rather than on the ideologies they espouse...

...At the same time, one party could elect a majority and be able to form a stable government by careful construction of tickets in the various districts...

...Previous efforts at electoral reform have been stalemated because the proposed reforms conflict with immovable political interests of long standing...

...But electoral reform can be enacted only by a Knesset made up of parties and individuals whose political life may be threatened by that reform...

...Proportional representation multiplies parties, deepens political divisions and increases political alienation...

...Voting for those representatives on a regional basis would strengthen regional consciousness and foster interregional cooperation in other areas because the Knesset members would have an interest in working together, while at the same time every Knesset member would have a broad enough base so that the kind of parochialism sometimes associated with individual member constituencies would be prevented...

...Such a system would assure appropriate regional representation in the Knesset without overemphasizing localism...

...Perhaps most devastating is the fact that central control over the nominations process has led to an increasing mediocritization of Israeli politics...

...Both Katzav and Shitrit are leading lights of Herut, Likud's principal party...

...This means that every voter would be able to vote for as many candidates as the number of seats allocated to her or his district...

...As a general rule, all candidates would be elected at large within each district...

...What is needed to spark the effort for electoral reform is a public figure who can take the lead and an organization to provide proper support and funding...

...While many of these functions were subsequently nationalized when the state was established, many others still remain in party hands...

...Any party could nominate candidates for any and all of the seats in each district, as provided by the state election laws...

...There are many kinds of electoral reform that a "citizens' revolt" could support...

...Thus, if a party wins 20 percent of the votes, it will get 24 seats out of the 120 in the Knesset, and the first 24 names on its list will become Knesset members...

...Since then, efforts to achieve change have been confined mostly to a few individuals or small groups...

...A portion of the Democratic Movement for Change survives in the Shinui Party, and even today Knesset members Amnon Rubinstein and Mordechai Virshubsky of Shinui remain advocates of district elections...