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Israel
MULTIPARTY SYSTEM
Political power in Israel has been contested within the framework
of multiparty competition. Parliamentary elections are held every
four years, and, unlike many parliamentary systems, the electorate
votes as a single national constituency. Power has revolved around
the system of government by coalition led by one of the two major
parties, or in partnership among them. From the establishment
of Mapai in 1930 until the 1977 Knesset elections, Labor (and
its predecessor, Mapai) was the dominant party. Labor's defeat
in the 1977 Knesset election, however, transformed the dominant
party system into a multiparty system dominated by two major parties,
Labor and Likud, in which neither was capable of governing except
in alliance with smaller parties or, as in 1984 and 1988, in alliance
with each other.
Since 1920, when the first Elected Assembly was held, no party
has been able to command a simple majority in any parliamentary
election. Israel has always had a pluralistic political culture
featuring at least three major polarizing social and political
tendencies: secular left-of-center, secular right-of-center, and
religious right-of-center. No single tendency was dominant in
the 1980s. Political fragmentation, as marked by the proliferation
of parties, is a long-standing feature of Israeli society. For
example, in the prestate period, between 1920 and 1944, from twelve
to twenty-six party lists were represented in the Elected Assembly.
In the first Knesset election in 1949, twenty-four political parties
and groups competed. Since then the number has fluctuated as a
result of occasional splits, realignments, and mergers. However,
dominance by two major parties and a multiplicity of smaller parties
remained deeply embedded in Israeli political culture (for details
of individual political parties, see Appendix B).
In addition to political operations, party functions during the
prestate period included "democratic integration," that is, the
provision of social, economic, military, and cultural services
for party members and supporters. During the postindependence
period, party politics, in particular regarding competition between
Labor and Likud and their respective allies, continued to be vigorous.
Many analysts saw signs of a political crisis looming with the
emergence of extremist minor parties and extraparliamentary protest
movements (e.g., Kach and Gush Emunim). These groups challenged
the traditional parties on such issues as the roles of the state
and religion and the future territorial boundaries of the Jewish
state.
Israel's major parties originated from the East European and
Central European branches of the WZO, founded by Theodor Herzl
in 1897, and from political and religious groups in the Mandate
period. For example, a faction called the Democratic Zionists,
including among its members Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president,
was active in 1900; Mizrahi (Spiritual Center), an Orthodox religious
movement, was founded in 1902; and the non-Marxist Labor Zionist
HaPoel HaTzair (The Young Worker), was established in 1905. Aaron
David Gordon, the latter group's spiritual leader, was instrumental
in founding the first kibbutz and moshav soon after the party's
establishment (see Political Zionism , ch. 1). Moreover, in 1906
the Marxist Poalei Tziyyon (Workers of Zion--see Appendix B) was
created to initiate a socialist-inspired class struggle in Palestine.
Ber Borochov was its ideological mentor, and Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi
were among its founding leaders. Vladimir Jabotinsky founded the
right-wing Revisionist Party in 1925 to oppose what he considered
the WZO executive's conciliatory policy toward the British mandatory
government and toward the pace of overall Zionist settlement activity
in Palestine.
These early, formative experiences in political activity produced
three major alignments. All were Zionist, but they had varying
shades of secularism and religious orthodoxy. Two of the alignments
were secular but ideologically opposed. The first consisted of
leftist or socialist labor parties of which Mapai, founded in
1930, was the dominant party. The second consisted of centrist-rightist
parties; Herut (Freedom Movement--see Appendix B), founded in
1949, the Revisionist Party's successor and the present Likud's
mainstay, dominated that alignment. Herut, which had become part
of Likud, eventually won a mandate to govern in 1977 under Begin.
The third major political alignment consisted of Orthodox religious
Zionists. A fourth category of minor Zionist parties also emerged,
traditionally allied with one of the two major alignments; non-Zionist
communist Arab or nationalist Arab parties constituted the fifth
grouping.
In the late 1980s, the stated values of Israeli political parties,
including religious, communist, Arab nationalist, and mainstream
parties, could not properly be placed on the left-right or liberal-conservative
spectrum except, perhaps, on the issue of the future of the occupied
territories. The positions advocated by Labor, Likud, Orthodox
religious parties, and the constellation of smaller parties allied
to them have varied greatly. On the extreme left, the most anti-Western
element in Israeli politics was Rakah (New Communist List--see
Appendix B), a Moscow-oriented group with a contingent of former
Sephardic Black Panther activists that appealed to Palestinian
Arab nationalist sentiment. Of the long-established minor parties,
the moderate left-of-center Mapam (formally Mifleget Poalin Meuchedet,
United Workers' Party--see Appendix B), which from 1969 to 1984
constituted a faction in the electoral alignment with Labor, the
Citizens' Rights Movement (see Appendix B), and Shinui (Change--see
Appendix B), were Labor's traditional satellites. Labor, in alignment
with Mapam from 1969 until 1984, favored a negotiated settlement
concerning the occupied territories involving the exchange of
land for peace.
On the center-right of the political spectrum were Likud and
its satellite parties, Tehiya, Tsomet, and Moledet. On the fringe
right was Kach, which the Knesset outlawed in 1988 because of
its racist platform that wished to expel all Arabs from the occupied
territories. Likud, especially its Herut component, favored retaining
much of the occupied territories to regain what it considered
to be the ancient boundaries of Eretz Yisrael. The positions of
the religious parties--the National Religious Party (NRP--see
Appendix B), Agudat Israel, Shas (Sephardic Torah Guardians--see
Appendix B), and Degel HaTorah (Torah Flag--see Appendix B)--generally
coincided with the right-of-center parties, although the NRP trade-union
component has continued its alliance with Labor in the Histadrut.
Israeli parties have engaged in many activities even in nonelection
years. Indoctrination of young people has been important, although
in the case of the Labor Party it had markedly lessened in the
1980s in comparison to the prestate period. Political parties
retained much of their early character as mutual aid societies.
Consequently, voters have tended to support the country's political
parties as a civic duty. Membership in a registered party has
not been a requirement for voting, but formal party membership
was high and party members have accounted for 25 to 50 percent
of the vote.
Except for small Arab and communist groups, Israeli political
parties have been basically Zionist in their orientation. Given
the shades of interpretation inherent in Zionism, parties drew
their support from adherents who might be secular, religious,
or antireligious, adherents of social welfare policies or free
enterprise (the distinction was not always clear because Mapai/Labor
in fact created Israel's capitalist economy), advocates of territorial
compromise or territorial expansion. In general, attempts to organize
parties on the basis of ethnic origin--for example, in the cases
of Yemeni, Iraqi, or Moroccan Jews--had been unsuccessful until
the early 1980s, when the Sephardi-based Tami (Traditional Movement
of Israel--see Appendix B) and Shas were formed.
With the exception of religious parties, Israeli parties possessed
national constituencies but also engaged in politics based on
territorial subdivisions and local interests. Increasingly during
the late 1980s, local party branches enjoyed greater independence
in selecting local personalities in internal party nominations
for mayoral, municipal council, Histadrut, and Knesset elections,
as well as their own parties' central committees and conventions.
This independence resulted in part from the growing tendency to
vote on the basis of individual merit--mayoral elections, for
example, reflected an emerging pattern of split-ticket voting--rather
than traditional party loyalty. This trend, if sustained, is likely
to lead to the decentralization of party control, if only to ensure
that voters will support the same party in national as well as
local elections.
Data as of December 1988
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