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Israel
National Religious Party
The National Religious Party, Israel's largest religious party,
resulted in 1956 from the merger of its two historical antecedents,
Mizrahi (Spiritual Center--see Appendix B) and HaPoel HaMizrahi
(Spiritual Center Worker--see Appendix B). The NRP (as Mizrahi
prior to 1956) has participated in every coalition government
since independence. Invariably the Ministry of Religious Affairs,
as well as the Ministry of Interior, have been headed by Knesset
members nominated by this party.
Although the NRP increased from four to five Knesset seats in
the 1988 elections, it had not fully recovered from major political
and electoral setbacks suffered in the 1981 and 1984 elections.
In those elections, much of its previous electoral support shifted
to right-wing religio-nationalist parties. As a sign of its attempted
recovery, in July 1986 the NRP held its first party convention
since 1973. The long interval separating the two conventions was
caused by factional struggles between the younger and the veteran
leadership groups. In the 1986 convention, the NRP's second generation
of leaders, members of the Youth Faction, officially took over
the party's institutions and executive bodies. The new NRP leader
was Knesset member Zevulun Hammer, former minister of education
and culture in the Likud cabinet (1977-84) and secretary general
of the party (1984-86). In 1986 Hammer succeeded long-time member
Yosef Burg as minister of religious affairs in the National Unity
Government. Hammer and Yehuda Ben-Meir, coleader of the Youth
Faction until 1984, were among the founders of Gush Emunim in
1974 (see Extraparliamentary Religio-Nationalist Movements , this
ch.). Both leaders somewhat moderated their views on national
security, territorial, and settlement issues following Israel's
1982 invasion of Lebanon, but the NRP's declining political and
electoral position and the increasing radicalization of its religiously
based constituency led to a reversal in Hammer's views. As a result,
in the 1986 party convention the Youth Faction helped incorporate
into the NRP the religio-nationalist Morasha (Heritage), which
was led by Rabbi Chaim Druckman and held two seats in the Knesset.
In return, Rabbi Yitzhak Levi, the third candidate on the Morasha
Knesset list, became the NRP's new secretary general. Moroccan-born
Levi has been a fervent supporter of Gush Emunim and an advocate
of incorporating the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into a greater
Israel.
Until the 1986 party convention, the dominant faction in the
NRP was LaMifneh (To the Turning Point). The center-most faction,
LaMifneh advocated greater pragmatism and ideological pluralism.
Burg, a Knesset member since 1949, who had held a variety of cabinet
portfolios including interior (1974-84) and religious affairs
(1982-86), led LaMifneh. Burg and Rafael Ben-Natan, former party
organization strongman, were responsible for maintaining the "historical
partnership" with the Labor Party that officially ended in 1977,
but continued in some municipal councils and in the Histadrut.
In the 1988 internal party elections, the NRP took a number of
steps to regain the support of segments of the Oriental Orthodox
electorate that were lost to Tami in 1981 and, to a lesser extent,
to Shas in 1988. The party also sought to regain the support of
right-wing religious ultranationalists. In the internal party
elections the NRP nominated Moroccan-born Avner Sciaki for the
top spot on its Knesset list, Zevulun Hammer for the second position,
and Hanan Porat, a leader of Gush Emunim and formerly of Tehiya,
in the third spot. As a result of these steps, the NRP attained
greater ideological homogeneity and competed with Tehiya and Kach
for the electoral support of the right-wing ultranationalist religious
community.
Data as of December 1988
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