Israel's Parliament, the Knesset
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, has announced early elections in Israel, to be held on January 22nd.
When so many people in the Levant are denied the opportunity to vote in meaningful elections in which the results make a difference to their lives, it seems churlish to gripe from afar about how Israel goes about its electoral business. Lots of Israelis gripe about it, though.
The fact is that Israel's electoral system looks great on paper - ultimate democracy - but in practice, leads to unstable coalitions that give disproportionate influence to parties that command relatively little support. The system is called the Party List and it works like this. I'l be as quick as I can.
Israelis' don't vote for individual candidates. They vote for a political party. And seats in the Knesset are allocated according to the proportion of the vote each party gets. Which party members get to sit in the Knesset depends on where they rank in their party's list of candidates. That party list is 'closed' - voters can't see it.
So that sounds sort of OK doesn't it? 10% of the vote = 10% of the seats. However, the percentage of the vote that a party needs to get before it can have a MK (Member of the Knesset) is only 2%. And this means that a lot of political parties - at the moment, 18 parties - end up in a Parliament that has only 120 seats.
The parties themselves represent a massive range of opinion. In the UK for example, most parties more or less agree on the same thing - secular democracy, respect for basic freedom for all, working together for peace, rule of law, protect the vulnerable, etc. They only disagree on the detail. That's not the case in Israel. Several are more or less mainstream left/right political outfits (Likud, Kadima, Labour), others are extreme nationalists (Yisrael Beitenu), others are religious (Shas, United Torah), others represent a distinct national group (e.g. the Israeli Arab parties, Balad and United Arab) and others are very left wing (Meretz).
What this means is that whoever has the most seats after the election has to cobble together a coalition of not just one extra party, or maybe perhaps two - as in most European countries - but several parties, most of whom will have a lot of political space between each other.
This means that even if the parties are not particularly good at governing the country then they are very good at maneuvering for power. And the smaller parties, those that hold the 'balance of power' will all extract a price from the largest party for their support. And that 'price' might be very high and something that most Israelis don't want and didn't vote for. And at the very least, each party in the coalition will want the plum Ministry jobs.
So Netanyahu's Government is propped up by a shaky coalition of his Likud Party, an extreme nationalist party, a few religious parties tending to the right and some odds and sods. This is why he has ended up with an extremist Foreign Minister whom the US Secretary of State won't even meet and a Defence Minister who is an ex-Labour Party Prime Minister who has since split from Labour to form yet another party (Independence) and who spends a good deal of time briefing against him. Israeli politics ain't pretty.
Netanyahu believes that he can hold this bunch together to form a similar coalition after January 22nd. He might be right. He's done well to keep it together since 2009, after all. But if a week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson said, how long is it to January 22nd?
If after all this you still thirst for more information about the Knesset, try http://knesset.gov.il
What this means is that whoever has the most seats after the election has to cobble together a coalition of not just one extra party, or maybe perhaps two - as in most European countries - but several parties, most of whom will have a lot of political space between each other.
This means that even if the parties are not particularly good at governing the country then they are very good at maneuvering for power. And the smaller parties, those that hold the 'balance of power' will all extract a price from the largest party for their support. And that 'price' might be very high and something that most Israelis don't want and didn't vote for. And at the very least, each party in the coalition will want the plum Ministry jobs.
So Netanyahu's Government is propped up by a shaky coalition of his Likud Party, an extreme nationalist party, a few religious parties tending to the right and some odds and sods. This is why he has ended up with an extremist Foreign Minister whom the US Secretary of State won't even meet and a Defence Minister who is an ex-Labour Party Prime Minister who has since split from Labour to form yet another party (Independence) and who spends a good deal of time briefing against him. Israeli politics ain't pretty.
Netanyahu believes that he can hold this bunch together to form a similar coalition after January 22nd. He might be right. He's done well to keep it together since 2009, after all. But if a week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson said, how long is it to January 22nd?
If after all this you still thirst for more information about the Knesset, try http://knesset.gov.il
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