The Government of Israel

by Bob Zeidman

As you know, for every two Jews you get three opinions. Now consider 120 members of the Knesset, one prime minister, and a population of nearly 7 million people and then consider how many opinions you get!

In this installment of Israel Issues I’d like to explain, in very basic terms, the government of Israel. Like the United States, Israel is a democracy and, as you probably know, is the only democracy in the Middle East. There are many different flavors of democracy. Israel operates as a parliamentary democracy while the U.S. has a constitutional democracy. This seems ironic to me because the U.S. system of government is very close to the religious system used in Judaism. The Torah, like our Constitution, sets forth the written laws. The rabbis, like our legislators, are trained in the laws and selected by the congregation to represent them. Rabbis do not hold popular votes on religious law but rather uphold the written law and interpretations of those laws as determined by other rabbis and rabbinical courts, kind of like our justice system. Yet Israel has no formal constitution. Some of the functions of a constitution are filled by the Declaration of Independence, the Basic Laws, and the Israeli citizenship law.

The Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, has 120 members that are elected to 4-year terms, although the prime minister may decide to call for new elections before the end of the 4-year term. Unlike the U.S. where representatives are chosen by direct vote, in Israel people vote for political parties. The total number of seats assigned to each party depends on that party's percentage of the vote. Each political party then determines which people to place in those seats. An advantage of this system is that political parties with only a small percentage of the vote can still have representatives in Knesset and thus make their opinions heard. A parliamentary system gives a voice to all positions, including minority positions. A disadvantage is that it can cause chaos trying to get laws passed. Small minority parties can block laws from being passed when the majority parties are deadlocked on opposite sides of an issue. This is why we hear about coalition governments in Israel. Large political parties must make deals with small, minority parties in order to get things done at all. This is also why extreme groups within Israel, to the right and to the left, wield more power than similar groups here.

The independent judicial system in Israel includes both secular and religious courts. The secular courts consider legal issues, while the religious courts are for personal matters. Like here, the highest court in Israel is called the Supreme Court, whose judges are approved by the president and who serve for life. These courts have only a limited right to review legislation passed by the Knesset, and these reviews mainly consider technical issues about how the laws are implemented.

The president of Israel is essentially a ceremonial position with few actual responsibilities other than approving Supreme Court justices. The president is elected by the Knesset for a 5-year term. The current president, since August 2000, is Moshe Katsav.

The prime minister is the real head of government. Before 1996, the prime minister was appointed by the majority party in the Knesset. In 1992, the law was changed to have direct popular elections for prime minister and Benjamin Netanyahu became the first elected prime minister in 1996. The problem with direct election is that the prime minister can belong to a different party than the majority party in Knesset. With all of the maneuvering among parties in Knesset to get laws passed it was possible that the prime minister and Knesset could completely deadlock on most issues, creating an effective stalemate for long periods of time. This happened on a number of occasions and the law for direct elections was repealed in 2001.

Israel has had eleven prime ministers since its independence in 1948. Each of them has been strong-willed and certainly opinionated, as they must be for such an important job. Each of them has reflected the public opinion of 1 million to nearly 7 million people in Israel. Each prime minister represents Israel, its people and its government, to the rest of the world. And each prime minister has had an enormous influence on Israeli society including not just its politics, but its economic stability, its social structure, its security, and its continued existence. A list of these important people is given below. In subsequent columns I will profile each one and do my best to describe their personalities, their histories, and their influences on Israeli politics and Jewish life.

David Ben-Gurion (1948-54)
Moshe Sharett (1954-55)
David Ben-Gurion (1955-63)
Levi Eshkol (1963-69)
Golda Meir (1969-74)
Yitzhak Rabin (1974-77)
Menachem Begin (1977-83)
Yitzhak Shamir (1983-84)
Shimon Peres (1984-86)
Yitzhak Shamir (1986-92)
Yitzhak Rabin (1992-95)
Shimon Peres (1995-96)
Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99)
Ehud Barak (1999-01)
Ariel Sharon (2001- present)

References:

1. The Jerusalem Post, http://info.jpost.com/1999/Supplements/Elections99/background/government.shtml.

2. The Jewish History Resource Center: http://jewishhistory.huji.ac.il/Internetresources/Zionism.htm#PM.

3. The Jewish Virtual Library: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/Population_of_Israel.html.

4. Nation By Nation: http://www.nationbynation.com/Israel/Gov.html.

5. Prime Minister’s Office of Israel: http://www.pmo.gov.il/english.

6. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Israel.