There will be a new election for Prime Minister and the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) on May 17, 1999. The elections were originally scheduled to be held in October 2000 but the political turmoil in Israel in January resulted in the calling for new elections. These elections are perhaps the most critical in the modern State of Israel because Israel is at a crossroads in determining the movement of the peace process and in dealing with its internal social, economic, and religious pluralism issues. While all the issues will help shape the new face and character of Israel as its forges into the twenty-first century, the religious pluralism issue will greatly affect the relationship of Israel with world Jewry, particularly with those in the United States. Therefore I thought it would be useful and important to describe the electoral system in Israel, its major parties and candidates for prime minister, and their positions on the major issues.

THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Israel has a mixture between a parliamentary and a presidential system of government. The election is national in scope; that is the entire country represents a single constituency of voters. The Knesset or parliament is proportional. The 120 member legislative seats are assigned in proportion to each party’s percentage of the total national vote, and is based on a list of candidates submitted by each party. As in a parliamentary system, in the past a government was formed by a prime minister, the head of the party that the president of the country considered to have the best chance of forming a viable coalition government. This usually means the head of the government would be the head of the party with the greatest representation in the Knesset. Israel has had a history of many different parties so that the government usually represented a coalition of several parties having representation in the cabinet. This situation gave undue influence to small factions which extracted, in return for the support of the government, extreme demands often disproportionate with their relative size. In 1992 the Knesset revised the Basic Law: The Government (Israel, like Great Britain, has no written constitution, but instead relies on a series of basic laws). It provided for the direct election of the prime minister.

The Basic Law: The Knesset provides that a candidate for office may be excluded for one of three reasons: negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, negation of the democratic character of the State, and incitement to racism.

Political parties may be doctrinal or non-doctrinal. Doctrinal parties exist to promote through the electoral process candidates who are committed to a series of relatively unchanging principles that are the whole reason for the party’s existence. Non-doctrinal parties exist primarily to gain political power by having their members elected to office. While the two major political parties in the United States are non-doctrinal, appealing to the broadest population and leaving strong ideology to various third parties, Israeli political parties have been doctrinal. Since the cliché that if you have two Jews you will have three opinions has a ring of truth, Israel has had always had a plethora of political parties. Usually its politics has been dominated by two or three major ones, but smaller parties have had important roles in almost all governments.

THE POLITICAL PARTIES AND CANDIDATES FOR PRIME MINISTER

Political parties in Israel fall within one of three types: left, right, and center. The left consists of workers parties. They were predominant in pre-state Zionist movements, the period of the yishuv—the Jewish community in pre-statehood Palestine, and in approximately the first half of the State of Israel’s existence. The left has been dominated by the Labor Party, a social-democratic party formerly led by David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Perez, Abba Eban, and others. It is presently led by former Chief of the General Staff Ehud Barak. It has tried to repackage itself as "New Labor" to counter the right and to appeal to the more individualistic and less collectivist Israeli public. It is running for the Knesset election under the framework of "One Israel." This represents an alignment of the Gesher and Meimad parties. The Gesher Party is led by Sephardi Jews such as former Foreign Minister in the Likkud Party, David Levy. The Meimad Party consists of moderate modern orthodox who split from the National Religious Party and support religious pluralism and a greater separation of religion and state. The Labor Party favors a more liberal and accommodationist approach to the peace process and is supportive of a religiously pluralistic society.

The political parties on the right consist largely of Likkud and the various religious parties. Likkud is a right wing party formed in 1973 which included Menachem Begin’s Herut movement. This movement has its roots as an opponent to socialism and has advocated the greater land of Israel. Its predecessor group, the IZL was an aggressive opponent to the British during the Palestinian mandate period. After statehood, it has advocated an aggressive hard line stance towards the Arabs and particularly the Palestinians. Ironically Menachem Begin, the first Likkud prime minister, began the road toward the peace process with the signing of the Camp David Accords. Benjamin Netanyahu, the third Likkud prime minister, could not reverse the momentum of the peace process stemming from the Oslo Accords and eventually signed the Wye Accords. However, his hard line stance requiring difficult to fulfill concessions by the Palestinians has slowed down or stalled if not killed the peace process. Likkud advocates a tough bargaining position through what it calls "peace through security." The Netanyahu government has also pushed to maintain the relative status quo of the right wing orthodox religious control over the society while offering minor but no real significant substantive concessions to groups advocating more religious pluralism. Netanyahu remains as the Likkud candidate for prime minister.

The National Religious Party has been the predominant religious Zionist party since the beginning of the state. It has played a role as a coalition partner in all but the Yitzhak Rabin government. It is the primary force behind the settler movement and the promotion of a greater land of Israel. It has been losing support to the more ultra-orthodox haredi political movement and the ultra-orthodox Sephardi Shas political party. To regain prominence, in recent years it has veered more toward the extremist religious political right. It has put up no candidate for prime minister but does have a list of members for the Knesset.

The center has long had a presence in the Israeli political scene. It has promoted greater accommodation with the Arabs. A new centrist party consisting largely of former members of Likkud but also those of Labor and some new figures in Israeli politics. It is led by its candidate for prime minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, a sephardi Jew and former minister of defense in Netanyahu’s cabinet. It also includes political newcomer, former Chief of the General Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Likkud defectors Dan Meridor and Ronni Milo, and a former leader of the Yisrael B’ Aliyah Russian emigre party, Alexander Lubotzky. Interestingly, another member is an attorney by the name of Pelossof, who is Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter.

The party is composed of a cross section of the population. It includes those from the right and left, secularists and traditionalists, young and old, and immigrants. As its name would suggest, the Center Party promotes compromise, moderation, and the middle ground. It favors democracy, egalitarianism, and clean government.

Two other parties have candidates for prime minister but stand little chance of winning much support. The Herut Party is headed by Likkud defector Ze’ev Binyamin Begin, son of former prime minister Menachem Begin. He is a staunch supporter of a greater land of Israel and split with Benjamin Netanyahu because of the Wye Accord and the lack of greater toughness with the Palestinians. The Balad or Arab National-Liberal Party is led by Professor Azmi Bishara. It advocates an Israel that is democratic and secular with cultural autonomy for its Arab citizens. It also promotes a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian solution which would probably entail a type of confederation of equal entities. Neither party, according to polls, stands a chance of garnering many votes.

CONCLUDING ANALYSIS

In Israel as in the United States, the voter is often reflective of political socialization in their family. Since the 1970s and continuing today, the Israeli population’s political orientation has swung to the right. This is largely the result of the increasing involvement of the more traditional Sephardi immigrant population and the religious population, both which have high birth rates. The Russian emigre population is also rather conservative and tends to vote with the right. However, a major shift has occurred in Israeli political parties.

The Labor Party has moved from the left to the center in its economic policy. Likkud has moved from the right to more in the center in its approach to the peace process. The new Center Party is comprised of people disaffected with both political parties. While this may seem convoluted and confusing, there are several reasons for this. These three major political parties are differentiated more by personalities and styles of leadership than by policy. Modern Israeli politics is moving away from an ideological thrust to a more pragmatic one. In this sense they are becoming more non-doctrinal rather than doctrinal, with continual shifting coalition partners who change political parties with the changing political currents or individual ambitions. Of course there are still doctrinal-ideological parties such as the various religious parties, ultra-nationalist ones, and those representing different subcultures such as the Russian and Sephardi groups. But to compete in an increasingly globablized and interdependent world, nations must become less insular and more pragmatic. No matter what the outcome of the Israeli elections, the pace may be affected, but not the general direction of the country, in internal issues or the peace process.