Elections '77
A MOMENT GUIDE TO THE CONFUSION OF POLITICS IN ISRAEL ELECTIONS 77 The Electoral System Israel's most distinctive and consequential political feature is its electoral system. .. .The entire...
...A voter cannot pick some candidates from one party's list and some from another's...
...And if on economic matters, why not also on intensity of religious conviction...
...And that really does complete the Left...
...Mapai dropped slightly to 32 percent...
...In that year, Achdut Avodah merged with Mapai, under a new name—the Alignment—and, together, they won 37 percent of the vote...
...And that does take care of the Left...
...By and large, the NRP has endorsed Mapai's moderate socialism and its centrist foreign policy in return for major concessions in areas of primary interest to its * leadership—to wit, matters of religious observance and personal law (e.g., marriage and divorce...
...And 21 percent in 1965, when it merged with the Liberal Party (of which more later...
...Since the NRP knows this full well, it may, in the end, choose to soften its foreign policy position in return for continued authority over religious life in the country...
...Looking to place a bet...
...It is still trying to deal with the problem of succession—how do you follow the founding fathers of a country, such as Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Sharett, Meir?—and it is currently reeling from the revelations of corruption that have recently come to light, and many citizens believe that, after all these years, it is time to try something new— but Labor still controls a great part of the nation's life, and is still in command of a party machine that sometimes makes Tammany Hall look like a kindergarten...
...So, a religious party, right...
...Hence the anomaly...
...Since their total vote has never exceeded five percent, dropping on occasion to less than three percent, and since the Communists have never been part of a coalition government—not even the "wall-to-wall coalition" that governed after 1967—we'll spare you the details of their electoral experience...
...And a new party, Rafi, founded by Ben Gurion and some of his supporters who broke away from the Mapai, won eight percent of the total vote...
...The entire country is the single election district for Knesset elections...
...In general, the greater the number of parties in the coalition, the more difficult it will be for the government to take bold policy initiatives...
...It is difficult to imagine that Labor and DASH together will win over 50 percent of the vote, since most of DASH's success will be at Labor's expense...
...When the notion of faction was voted down, the group split away to found (together with two other smallish parties) Mapam—which Achdut Avodah subsequently joined...
...The differences between Right and Left in Israel have to do not only with economic policy and conceptions of the proper role of government...
...And here is how it has expanded, contracted, changed over time: In 1948, Mapai won 36 percent of the vote, and in 1951 it won 37 percent...
...The reputation was earned in the early years of independence, when it was still closely tied to its Irgun roots, and when it moved into vitriolic and sometimes violent opposition on the issue of German reparations...
...Thus—with all the risks inherent in political prediction, especially in so complex and volatile a system—the best bet seems to be that the Likud will stay at roughly its present strength, and that Labor, instead of losing to Likud, will lose to DASH—which will also pick up modest support from other small parties...
...he will want to choose as his coalition partners those whose policies are most nearly like the policies of his own party...
...Which it would have remained, according to all expectations, in the forthcoming election, had it not been for the sudden emergence of Yigal Yadin's new coalition as a rallying point for people fed up with the long rule of Labor...
...Because religious voters are entitled to differences on economic matters as well, are they not...
...Shimon Peres did not become Minister of Defense because Yitzchak Rabin was so fond of him, but because Peres represented a very important group within the Labor Party, a group Rabin could not ignore...
...Four religious parties...
...Remember Murphy's law: If anything can go wrong, it will...
...Labor's strength derives in large measure from the Histadrut, and you take power away from Labor...
...And then went on, in 1973, to win 40 percent...
...And two of which are enormously important...
...The prime minister, in addition to his special visibility, has one major weapon in his bargaining arsenal: he can threaten to resign, and, if he does, the government topples...
...This does not mean that the government can do whatever it wants to...
...So now we move to the Right, which includes the Middle...
...But, in recent years, Herut—or Gachal—or the Likud—has gained considerable support from centrist voters and from the disaffected of the Left...
...Wrong...
...And now there is a more plausible place for the disenchanted to go...
...Second, the government is a coalition, and it cannot propose policy without the endorsement of all the members of the coalition...
...These two, Mizrachi and Poalei Mizrachi, which work together as the National Religious Party, have been members of virtually every coalition since 1948, and it is their opposition to the Rabin government which was the proximate cause for the resignation of the government this past fall and the early elections now scheduled for May...
...Sometime members of coalition governments, these two parties represent classical Orthodox views, and voters whose attitude toward a secular Jewish state is at best lukewarm...
...Which brings us, so far as Israel's labor parties are concerned, to 1948 and independence...
...All of which proved largely irrelevant anyway, because the Labor Party, as the new entity was called—and is called today—won 46 percent of the vote—not quite the landslide it had hoped for...
...No more space...
...They, too, have always managed to garner ("garner" is one of those odd words, which gets used only about votes and prizes) between three percent and five percent of the vote...
...Now, that was fairly easy, and we're done with the Left...
...In the American system, the winner of an election wins "everything," and the loser loses...
...Defenders argue that proportional representation is the fairest system of all, precisely because it so accurately reflects the dissensus among the people...
...The rationale for the name was that their electoral merger did not signify a merger of the two parties, which remained organizationally separate...
...Yes, Israel has a Communist Party...
...On the other hand, he cannot initiate policy on his own: legislative proposals require the endorsement of the government, not merely of the prime minister...
...Moked, the most recent, is an amalgam of new left factions—not really communist...
...But in the course of the swallowing, the right moved toward the center...
...That is how it happens that prime ministers must often appoint to high office in the government people with whom they strongly disagree...
...The present system places a great deal of power in the hands of the party hierarchy, since no one (unless he is extremely well known) has much of a chance if he goes it alone...
...Herut began, in 1948, with only 12 percent of the vote, and dropped to seven percent in 1951...
...Mapai is a moderate socialist party, akin to the British Labor party or the Social Democrats of Germany...
...If that position does not soften, the classic coalition of Labor and the NRP (which has been the basis of virtually every Israeli government since 1948) will be irreparably broken...
...It has been at the center of every coalition...
...The Past First came Mapai...
...The criticism points to the fragmentation that results from proportional representation, as well as to the lack of a close constituent/voter relationship...
...They would vastly prefer a state governed by the authentic interpreters of the Law, Israel's rabbinate...
...Coalition building is a complex procedure, involving very hard bargaining over power and policy...
...Things remained fairly stable in the 1961 elections (we're at the Fifth Knesset by now), with Mapai winning 35 percent, Mapam eight percent and Achdut Avodah seven percent...
...Indeed, Begin himself was suspended from the Knesset for a time on account of his role in violent demonstrations which took place on that issue...
...There is a minimum rule: no party which gets less than one percent of the vote gets any representation...
...Mapam, still including Achdut Avodah, won 15 percent, then 13 percent...
...But the Likud also includes the National List, the Free Center, and other ephemeral parties, as well as Gachal, which was a merger of Herut and the Liberals, who were a merger of the General Zionists and the Progressives...
...In concert with Gush Emunim (an important pressure group whose story is told elsewhere in this issue of moment) they have adopted a hard-line "not-one-inch" position, and have impressed that position on their party...
...Beginning at the beginning, there was Herut, founded in 1948 by Menachem Begin, commander of the Irgun (forgive the expression, a terrorist group) and heir to the Revisionist tradition of Jabo-tinsky (another story, for which a full-blown history of Zionism is really required, and recommended...
...So far, fairly simple...
...Actually, Mapai was founded in 1930, a merger of Achdut Avodah and Hapoel Ha-tzair, two socialist parties which differed on some of the finer points of socialist ideology...
...DASH at 18, Likud at 37, everybody else about the same...
...In order for a government (or cabinet) to come into being, it must win the approval of a majority of the members of parliament...
...Not an auspicious beginning...
...The candidates are not people, they are parties...
...he will want to maximize the size of the parliamentary majority which supports the coalition, in order to insure that the absence or defection of several members will not bring his government down...
...Its climb to centrality in opposition began in 1955, when it picked up 13 percent, followed by 14 percent in 1959 and again in 1961...
...Now, since Israel's politics antedates Israel's independence, it should be obvious that a party of the Right founded in 1948 is not really the beginning...
...No more space only if you assume one spectrum...
...Herut is the heart of the Likud...
...It's hard to know whether politics happens along a straight line, or around a circle, which brings the extreme.Left and the extreme Right next to each other...
...Thus a party that wins, say, 13 percent of the total national vote will get 13 percent of the (120) seats in the Knesset...
...Some Consequences Because the coalition controls a majority in the Knesset, it can be quite confident that its legislative proposals will be approved...
...In the long term, one of DASH's central policy proposals is a radical change in the electoral system, a change in the rules that would allow for greater emphasis on candidates, less on party structures...
...That would most likely produce a very shaky coalition—60 seats for DASH and Labor together, plus three votes from the pro-Labor Arab parties...
...For all its inner turmoil, Labor cannot be discounted...
...They have to do also with foreign policy...
...While even after 1967 the older establishment within the NRP was content to let Labor determine Israel's foreign policy, younger elements within the party became increasingly adamant regarding Israel's potential return of the West Bank to Jordan...
...And appears likely, in the forthcoming elections, to win less, or lose more, depending on how you want to put it...
...Two of which, the Agudat Yisrael and the Poalei Agudat Yisrael, are interesting but not important...
...we're not betting...
...But in 1969, Rafi came back to the fold of the Alignment, creating the Israel Labor Party—a merger— which aligned with Mapam, creating, for the first time, a full-spectrum coalition of the Left— and the hope that a majority party might, at last, emerge...
...For most of Israel's political life, it has not encountered any significant—certainly not any coherent—opposition...
...And it is quite specifically the NRP's recent development of a foreign policy that has led to the very high probability that, after the forthcoming elections, Israeli politics will no longer be the same...
...Unless, of course, you count the Communists as part of the Left...
...When he casts his vote, he picks a party—and that is all he picks—with that party's candidates intact—no substitutions, deletions, changes...
...He has not won office in his own right, in his own name, but as leader of his party—a leadership the party can reject whenever it wants to...
...the key difference is that most of it takes place within the government (or, if you will, the executive branch) rather than in the Knesset...
...In the Israeli system (proportional representation), parliamentary seats are divided among the parties according to the percentage of the vote which each party has won...
...In fact, it has two, or, depending on who and how you count, three...
...When a voter goes to the polls, he selects the party of his choice...
...Indeed, in a funny way, the chief victim of DASH's emergence may well be the Likud, which had hoped to emerge as the coherent opposition to Labor, winning many votes from those disenchanted with Labor's internal divisions...
...The center, represented by these parties, was swallowed by the right...
...Except, of course, that it wasn't a party, just an alignment...
...Much will depend on the relative strength of the parties after the election, specifically on whether Labor will be able to craft a coalition without NRP participation...
...There are no geographically based constituencies...
...Instead, the leader of the largest party is invited to ' 'form a government...
...Call it Labor down from 51 to 42...
...In the short term, such a victory would almost inevitably insure that DASH would be included in the next coalition, and would tilt the new government's policy toward the dovish side...
...And, in 1973, expanded again to include several of the smaller right-wing parties, and calling itself Likud, the Right won 30 percent of the vote...
...And emerged, thereby, as a real opposition party...
...But before we go farther back, let's examine the phenomenon of a right-wing party that endorses national health insurance, in opposition to a left-wing government which opposes it...
...It has provided every prime minister, minister of finance, minister of defense, and foreign minister the State has known...
...There is every bit as much political bargaining in Israel as there is in the United States...
...But Israel has two...
...The party's representatives in the Knesset owe their seats to the party, and only in very unusual circumstances will they vote in opposition to the party policy...
...But if you lose your bet, don't blame it on moment...
...In addition, and perhaps even more important, there is a new party running that stands a good chance of winning as many as 15 or 20 Knesset seats...
...Some Problems Much attention has been devoted by critics of Israel's political system—especially from within the country—to the electoral system...
...In putting together a governing coalition, the prime minister will try to achieve three goals: he will want to keep the number of parties to a minimum, in order to reduce the number of compromises that his party will have to make as it develops policy, as well as the number of ministries it will have to allocate to its partners...
...Well, almost...
...Running as Gachal in 1969, the new right-wing coalition won 22 percent of the vote...
...Herut has a reputation for demagoguery which it has only lately begun to live down...
...Which makes them Left as well as Arab, and which means that Mapai has been able to count on their support in establishing coalition governments...
...In 1955, Mapam and Achdut Avodah split, the former receiving seven percent, the latter eight percent of the vote...
...But because no single party ever controls a majority of parliament's members, the process of forming a government is a process of building a coalition of several parties which in combination control the needed majority...
...The question of whether Rabin can put together a viable government may well depend on the success of the smaller parties, on such wholly unpredictable matters as whether Israel's Arabs continue to vote for pro-Labor parties or move still closer to the Communist Party, which has scored impressive gains among them recently...
...Ever since '48, Mapai has been Israel's principal political party...
...The Government Unlike the American system, Israel's provides for a parliamentary government, whose central features are as follows: .. .The prime minister is not directly elected by popular vote, as the president of the United States is...
...But it has never been able to muster a majority in the parliamentary elections...
...There are several Arab parties that are, for all practical purposes, affiliated with Mapai...
...It is chiefly responsible for the hassle given the Reform and Conservative communities in Israel, and for the continuing theocratic elements in Israel's governance...
...And that, in turn, means that there will no longer be so pressing a political need to allow the NRP complete dominance in the religious sector...
...In 1942, a faction within Mapai (Siah Bet) sought to be recognized as an independent grouping within the party...
...Critics point to the inability of recent Israeli governments to come to any clear agreement on a peace policy, and suggest that the fault lies with the coalition form of government...
...These three goals sometimes compete with each other...
...At that point, either a new coalition is formed— most often the case—or, if that proves impossible, new parliamentary elections must be called...
...The Prospects It is not only the breakdown of the historic Labor-NRP coalition which makes the forthcoming elections the most unusual in Israeli political history...
...It was in 1965 that the real fun began...
...Even after the coalition is formed, and a government comes into being and is endorsed, one or another of its members may withdraw, leaving the government without its needed parliamentary majority...
...While Labor is split, its central tendency is more or less dovish—at least relative to the Right, which is almost uniformly hawkish, and which provides much of the secular support for Gush Emunim— the uncompromising movement which insists on retention of all the occupied Arab territories...
...No new party has ever managed to come close to such initial success, and if DASH—the name of the party headed by Yi-gal Yadin—manages to accomplish what the polls now suggest it will, the consequences could be very profound...
...But it came back in 1959, winning 38 percent, while the other two parties of the left were winning seven percent and six percent, respectively...
...When the government loses a parliamentary vote of confidence—as it does when it lacks majority support— it must resign...
...At the same time, Mapam was winning its traditional seven percent...
...That's it, no...
...Not so complicated...
...These parties have lovely names, such as Cooperation and Fraternity, or Progress and Development...
...Which is so...
...Left, Right, Center...
...Almost...
...They were merely joining together in the elections...
...So the difference would have been that inKnesset seats since 1949 (total: 120) The Left The Right (& Middle) Religious Parties Others 1949 Mapai 46 Herat 14 United Religious Communists 4 Mapam 19* General Zionists 7 Front 16 Arabs 2 Progressives 5 (Including Agudat Others 7 Israel, Poalei Agudat Israel, Mizrachi, Hapoel Hamizrachi) 1951 Mapai 45 Herut 8 National Religious Communists 5 Mapam 15* General Zionists 23 Party 10 Arabs 5 Progressives 4 Torah Religious Front 5 (Agudat Israel & Poalei Agudat Israel) 1955 Mapai 40 Herut 15 NRP 11 Communists 6 Mapam 9 General Zionists 13 TRF 6 Arabs 5 Achdut Avodah 10 Progressives 5 1959 Mapai 47 Herut 17 NRP 12 Communists 3 Mapam 7 General Zionists 8 TRF 6 Arabs 5 Achdut Avodah 9 Progressives 6 1961 Mapai 42 Herut 17 NRP 12 Communists 5 Mapam 9 Liberals Agudat Israel 4 Arabs 4 Achdut Avodah 8 (General Zionists Poalei Agudat Israel 2 and Progressives) 17 1965 Alignment Gachal NRP 11 Communists (Rakah) 3 (Mapai & Achdut (Herut & Agudat Israel 4 Communists (Maki) 1 Avodah) 45 Liberals) 26 Poalei Agudat Israel 2 Arabs 4 Mapam 8 Independent Liberals 5 Others 1 Rah (Mapai splinter) 10 1969 Labor Gachal 26 NRP 12 Communists (Rakah) 3 (Alignment, including National List 4 TRF 6 Communists (Maki) 1 Rah & Mapam) 56 Free Center 2 Arabs 4 Independent Liberals 4 Others 2 1973 Labor 51 Likud NRP 10 Communists (Rakah) 4 (Gachal, National List, TRF 5 Moked (Communists & Free Center) 39 New Left) 1 Independent Liberals 4 Arabs 3 Civil Rights Movement 3 'Includes Achdut Avodah stead of working out the mechanics of a coalition government among different parties after the election, the negotiations would have taken place within the alignment, and before the election...
...The chief criticism of the present system is that it creates a politics of fuzziness, because of all the compromises it requires, and that it prevents a general consensus on policy from emerging, by exaggerating—and even rewarding—the differences among the several parties...
...First of all, there is always some risk of a defection among its parliamentary representatives...
...Even within the leading party, the prime minister does not have the kind of authority the American president enjoys...
...In any case, it is the leader of the largest party who must be asked to form a government, and given the first chance to do so, and it is virtually certain that Labor will be that party, Rabin that leader...
...Yes, the percentages are small, but remember, they matter...
...The question was chiefly how much to concentrate on the classic Marxist analysis of the class struggle...
...Elsewhere in these pages, we present a detailed article on the Yadin/ DASH phenomenon...
...For in addition to traditional political division along economic and foreign policy lines, there is the small matter of religion...
...It would also mean that DASH would have to be given some of the key ministries, which have until now always been in Labor's hands...
Vol. 2 • April 1977 • No. 6
