The Two-Bloc System: A New Development in Israeli Politics
Israel's Odd Couple: The 1984 Elections and the National Unity Government, Introduction
Daniel J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler
The forty years since the June 1984 elections have been unique in
Israeli politics. For the first time in Israel's political
history, the Jewish state emerged from an election so closely
divided that no major party could form a ruling coalition. The
period was also unique in terms of the government that emerged as
a result of the election. Realizing that a new round of elections
would not have changed the political distribution significantly,
the major parties chose to share power in a national unity
government.
Although Israel had national unity governments in the past, this
was the first time that such an arrangement was instituted for
lack of an alternative. Like the heros of Neil Simon's play, the
national unity government was an "odd couple." Two partners, very
different from each other in character and outlook, constantly
quarreling and ready to leave each other were in fact living
together well enough because neither of them had any place else
to go. While not ready to admit it publicly, each partner knew
that no other political accommodation was available.
The 1984 Knesset elections and the resulting government reflected
quite accurately the political divisions in Israeli society in
the last decade. Hence this volume goes beyond electoral
analysis of the kind that served as the focus of the first two
volumes in the Israel at the Polls series, covering the 1977 and
1981 elections, to examine the working of the national unity
government.1 The basic shifts and divisions in Israeli politics
that began in the mid-1970s have not yet run their course.
However, the capability of diametrically opposed parties to join
forces -- even if plagued by conflict and recurring crisis -- is
a basic characteristic of Israel's political life. A short
analysis of the major trends prior to the 1984 elections is,
therefore, essential to understanding what has happened since
1984.
The Political System
Israeli politics of the mid-1980s were definitely those of a
two-bloc system, as distinct from the previous period that was
characterized by a single-dominant-party system, or from the
two-party systems characteristic of many Western democracies.
The bi-polar structure that began to emerge after the 1973
elections and crystalized in 1984 was different from the previous
system, in which one party -- Mapai and later Labor -- had
dominated all the coalitions that ruled Israel since its
establishment in 1948 and the pre-state Jewish community even
earlier. In the 1973 election, Likud, led by Menahem Begin,
gained 39 seats in the 120-member Knesset as compared to Labor's
51. In 1977 Likud won 43 seats while Labor dropped to 32,
whereby Labor was sent into opposition for the first time in
Israel's history. In the 1981 elections Likud increased its
parliamentary strength to 48 and formed the next government, also
demonstrating that the 1977 results were not an accident but
rather represented a basic shift in the country's distribution of
political power. While the 1984 elections resulted in a virtual
tie, they demonstrated further strengthening of the new political
pattern.
The 1981 and 1984 elections indicated that while Labor's
dominance was broken, its strength in Israeli society was by no
means eliminated and that it remained a major force in Israeli
political life. This strength was demonstrated by Labor's
comeback in the 1981 elections when it increased its electoral
strength to 47 seats, its emergence in the 1984 elections as the
strongest political party, and its constant lead in the opinion
polls since the inception of the national unity government.
Similarly, Labor victories in the Histadrut (General Federation
of Labor) and municipal elections reflect that party's continuing
prominence and vitality within Israeli politics.
The role and performance of the small parties is a central
feature of Israel's two-bloc system. One trend in the new
configuration of power is the decline of midsized parties. The
National Religious Party (NRP), which traditionally won 10-12
seats, dropped to 6 in 1981 and 4 in 1984. Similarly, in the
center of the political map, parties such as the Liberals or the
Democratic Movement for Change were either swallowed by one of
the two major blocs or disintegrated while their remnants, like
Shinui, continued to exist as small parties with 2-3 seats.
Another trend was the almost total identification of the small
parties with one of the two major blocs. Thus the Citizens'
Rights Movement (CRM) and Shinui belonged to the center-left
bloc, while Tehiya and Shas (the new religious Sephardi party)
identified with the center-right bloc. The NRP and Agudat Israel
tried to remain neutral, but with only limited success since only
the Likud was able to promise them to support the religious
legislation they sought. Other small parties like Kach (Meir
Kahane) on the right and the Communist Hadash and Arab-Jewish
Progressive List for Peace on the left were situated outside the
consensus and therefore could not join either of the two blocs.
The political map that began to develop in the mid-1970s differed
from the previous political map in another aspect. Previously,
Labor would choose parties from each camp -- socialist, civil and
religious -- according to its political interests and form a
ruling coalition. In the new configuration of power, the choice
of either of the big parties was limited to their immediate
ideological camp or the religious camp, where Likud enjoyed an
advantage.
The end result was not a two-party system; the electoral system
of proportional representation ensured the existence of small
parties and prevented either of the two major blocs from
achieving a clear majority. Each of the large parties needed the
small parties in order to form a coalition and was limited, in
its ability to choose from among the plethora of parties, to
those with ideological proximity. As in international politics,
where a bi-polar system is characterized by inflexibility, the
two-bloc system was also quite rigid. In 1984 the two-bloc
system reached a state that could have paralyzed the polity.
Division of Israeli Parties Into Three Camps
With all that has changed in recent years, including the fading
concern with parties and ideologies within the Israeli body
politic, the division of Israel's political parties into three
camps has persisted. These camps continue to exist partly for
party-political reasons and partly as a reflection of the
differences that divide Israel's voters even at a time when the
old ideologies are much weakened.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the three camps do not
relate to each other on a left-right continuum but stand in
something like a triangular relationship to one another.
For a long time, preoccupation with European modes of political
thought prevented us from seeing this triangular relationship,
although there never was a time when Israel -- and the Zionist
movement before it -- did not operate on this basis. Thus for
certain purposes, each of the camps is more to the left or more
to the right than any of the others. What each has staked out
for itself is a particular vision of what the Zionist enterprise
and its creation, the Jewish state, is all about. At times that
vision has assumed an intensely ideological form; at other times,
it has been more flexible.
The camps themselves are comprised of several parties, some of
which are quite antagonistic to others within the same camp. (It
is within the camps that left-right divisions do exist, with all
that implies.) The size of each camp is not fixed, either in
relation to the total population or in relation to one another,
but whatever the fluctuations in size, the camps themselves
persist. Their persistence is manifested in the stability of
camp (as distinct from party) allegiance in Knesset elections.
After the Six Day War, the camps seemed to be diminishing as
political as well as social factors in Israeli society as part of
a general movement from ideological to territorial democracy.
During the pioneering days of the prestate Yishuv the whole
political and social system was organized through ideological
groupings, but the system was evolving into one in which the
important ties and vital interests of the vast majority of its
citizens would stem from nonideological considerations derived
from the sheer fact of living in Israel.
Shift from Ideological to Territorial Democracy
The movement from ideological to territorial democracy was a
predominant feature of the first generation of Israeli statehood
(1948-1977). David Ben-Gurion led the way after 1948 through his
emphasis on mamlakhtiut (statism) in place of the earlier
political ideologies. He insisted on the provision of public
services by the state, services formerly provided by the parties
or camps to their members, and in the economic sphere oversaw a
shift from socialism to a quasi state capitalism for pragmatic
reasons. But Ben-Gurion merely prefigured and strengthened what
is a natural phenomenon in any new society: the decline of the
founding ideologies as the society takes shape and as the
founders are succeeded by later generations. Those in the new
generations are where they are because they happen to have been
born there, not because they chose to be builders of the new
society motivated by an ideological credo.2
Thus, a two-fold process took place in that first generation. The
prestate parties, based on their respective ideologies, were
forced to transfer functions and responsibilities to state
institutions and thereby lost much of the basis for their hold on
their constituencies. At the same time, their constituencies no
longer found the ideologies compelling or relevant.
By the late 1960s the new political leadership of the country
was, with a few exceptions, also nonideological, having leanings
in one direction or another derived from the old ideologies but
basically pragmatic in their orientation. These leaders faced a
new set of problems about which the old ideologies had little to
say. Though the parties kept up some semblance of ideological
commitment, it was understood to be merely a means of paying
obeisance to the halutzic (pioneering) spirit of the past. This
was most true of the Labor party, which had become a broad-based
coalition of sectors and factions, and least true of the
religious parties, which did have religious ideologies from which
they drew (although there, too, the largest of the religious
parties -- the National Religious Party -- had become so
pragmatic that the ideological dimension was only minimally
relevant.)
Hence, it was not surprising that after the Six Day War, the
emergence of new issues -- such as the future of the administered
territories and negotiation of peace with the Arabs -- should
have led to various fringe elements breaking off from one camp
and moving to another, something that had not occurred before in
Israeli politics. That -- plus the defection of many Labor
voters to the Likud and the tendency on the part of the young to
vote Likud no matter how their parents voted -- caused many to
believe that the camps themselves were breaking down.
The 1984 elections suggest that just the opposite is the case. It
is true that the old ideologies are even less effective now than
they were 15 years ago and that territorial democracy has become
even more entrenched on the Israeli scene, because the new
ideologies correspond only roughly to existing party
configurations. Yet after the transformation of the party
system, it is clear that the camps are holding together quite
well and that voter shifts and party divisions are more often
than not taking place within camps rather than across them.
Thus the Labor camp embraces the Labor Alignment, which joined
Mapam in an uneasy alliance with the Labor party until the former
split away as a result of the establishment of the national unity
government. The Labor camp also includes Shulamit Aloni's
Citizens' Rights Movement, an earlier Labor party breakaway.
The Likud was founded as an amalgam of the two major parties of
the civil camp -- the Herut and the Liberals -- and acquired
La'am in 1969, the one defection from the Labor camp that moved
as a body across camps. In the 1980s, under Herut's leadership,
the name of the camp was changed to the national camp In 1981
Tehiya broke away from the Likud yet remained in the same camp.
So, too, did smaller fragments under Yigal Hurvitz and Ezer
Weizman, which broke away in 1984. Both were identified by
voters as being fully within the civil camp. Weizman's later
decision to join the Labor party led to a negative reaction among
his voters, who never expected such a turn of events.
In every election since the establishment of the state of Israel,
the religious camp has won between 12 and 18 seats as a camp,
with the number usually ranging between 13 and 16. On one
occasion almost the entire camp was united; on others it was
divided between two parties: the National Religious Party and
Agudat Israel. Occasionally Poalei Agudat Israel would run
independently and win a seat on its own. In 1984 the religious
camp was fragmented among five parties that gained a total of 14
seats. What was significant is that all five religious parties
-- NRP, Agudat Israel, Matzad-Morasha, Sephardi Torah Guardians
(Shas), and Tami -- stayed within their shared camp, however
hostile the relationships were among them.
Amnon Rubinstein's Shinui seems the most problematic in terms of
its location in a particular camp. Although Rubinstein has tried
to avoid being identified with any one bloc, it is now quite
clear that his voters and for that matter his running-mates, fall
within the Labor camp. He himself demonstrated this in 1977,
when he dissolved the Democratic Movement for Change after the
late Yigael Yadin agreed to join the Begin government.
If not for ideological reasons, why do the camps survive? We
would suggest that they have come to reflect diverse facets of
Israel's emerging political culture and differing affinities
among Israeli voters in matters of political expectation and
style. Political scientists have referred to these preferences
as matters of "persuasion" rather than ideology, meaning a loose
set of orientations rather than a clear-cut doctrine focusing on
specific programs and goals. However these differences are
perceived, they continue to shape the configurations of Israeli
politics and the limits of voter change. Such shifts as are
taking place among Sephardim and younger voters (a majority of
whom are Sephardim) reflect a sorting out of persuasions as a
result of generational change.
Labor Versus Likud and the Transformation of Israeli Society
The May 1977 electoral upheaval was not only marked by the fact
that Likud emerged as the strongest political party, it also
represented the emergence of a new majority resulting from
demographic and ideological changes that were taking place in
Israeli society. As in many Western democracies, the new
majority was a coalition of minorities that were faced with the
task of governing in order to qualify as a ruling majority.
Labor -- or its predecessor, Mapai -- ruled the Jewish polity,
although it never enjoyed a clear majority. Beginning in 1935,
when David Ben-Gurion became the chairman of the Jewish Agency
Executive, Mapai formed a ruling majority that was sustained for
almost 30 years following the establishment of the Jewish state.
The core of this ruling coalition was a combination of
socialists, secular Zionists and a predominant Eastern European
Ashkenazi elite. While sharing power to a limited extent with
the NRP from the religious camp and the Progressive List from the
civil camp, it also came to command most of the power centers and
institutions of the World Zionist movement and Israel. Enjoying
these advantages and lacking a serious opposing contender for
power, it also proved itself as a governing party. It succeeded
in overcoming the hardships of the early years of statehood, the
absorption of over a million immigrants and the external security
threat from the Arab states. However, as is the case with many
ruling elites in other political systems, it was unable to adjust
itself to the changes in the ideological and social realities of
Israeli society. Labor in the mid-1980s was ideologically
committed to a secular, socialist Zionist state, searching for a
territorial compromise with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and
filling its Sephardi leadership slots with figures lacking grass
roots support. A major source of support for Labor was the
Histadrut, which controlled the labor unions as well as a large
share of nongovernmental corporations and companies through
Hevrat Ha-Ovdim (the Histadrut holding company that controlled
the largest single share of the state's economic enterprises).
Consequently, even after losing power in 1977, Labor continued to
be perceived as the party of the establishment, Ashkenazi and
more willing to make the cencessions for peace with the Arabs.
In the interim the state was going through a major demographic
transformation. From a society predominantly Eastern European in
its origins, the demographic balance changed due to a major
influx of immigrants from Afro-Asian countries. Settling in
moshavim (farming villages), development towns, or new
neighborhoods in older cities, they found it difficult to
identify with the ruling elite. Alienated by the organizational
embrace of Mapai, they slowly shifted their loyalties to Herut
(the major party in the Likud alignment), which was more open to
young Sephardi leaders, especially in the development towns. As
they advanced in society, feelings of relative deprivation grew
and were translated into electoral power during the 1970s. The
Sephardi vote might not have been sufficient had it not been
joined by growing nationalist forces in the aftermath of the Six
Day War and by religious voters who felt closer to Herut and
alienated by Labor's secularist attitudes. In short, a coalition
of Sephardi, religious, and voters supporting a harder line in
peace negotiatins was translated into a new majority, voting
directly for Likud or joining with it through other parties in a
government coalition following the 1977 elections.
The Likud, while capable of assembling a new majority, was not as
successful in governing effectively. Following a successful
diplomatic breakthrough with Egypt, which was translated into a
peace treaty in 1978, it ran into difficulties in economics and
security. The high rate of inflation that plagued both Likud-led
governments, of 1977 and 1981, almost led the country to
financial bankruptcy. The Peace for Galilee operation in
Lebanon, which at the outset enjoyed broad public support, slowly
turned into a protracted war with a steady erosion of public
backing. At the end of two administrations, the Likud's image
was that of a party unable to govern.
In effect, part of Likud's problem was the new majority that
brought it to power. In an attempt to reward its supporters,
both Likud governments poured resources into development towns
and underdeveloped neighborhoods in the big cities either through
Project Renewal (an Israel-diaspora project of urban
revitalization) or directly through government programs. At the
same time, the Likud government launched a major settlement drive
in Judea and Samaria that also consumed resources. Unable to
resist a Histadrut controlled by the opposition, with its demands
for cost-of-living-linked salary adjustments, and facing growing
defense expenditures as a result of the withdrawal from Sinai and
the ensuing war in Lebanon, Likud was faced with a hyperinflation
unprecedented in Israel's economic history.
Much of the blame, however, was due to Finance Minister Yoram
Aridor, who on the eve of the 1981 elections initiated loose
fiscal and monetary policies that he did not restrain following
the elections. By 1983 Israel was faced with economic disaster,
forcing Aridor to resign. It was only during the national unity
government that Israel succeeded in pulling out of both the
economic crisis and the war in Lebanon.
One would have expected that in light of such a performance the
Likud would have been punished at the polls in 1984. Indeed, the
Likud declined from 48 to 41 seats, but some of its losses were
absorbed by right-wing parties such as Tehiya (+2) and Kach (+1).
With the overall strength of the religious camp unchanged (13
seats), the nationalist-religious coalition declined by only 4
seats in the 1984 elections. Yet this drop was sufficient to
keep Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir from forming a majority
coalition.
The other camp fared no better. Labor lost three seats, which
apparently were absorbed by other parties in the center-left
camp. Labor's inability to form a coalition encompassing parties
from the left and the religious camp indicated that the
nationalist-religious-Sephardi coalition was holding and that if
it could not rule on its own, at least it could block the other
camp from forming a government. In short, the 1984 elections
represented a showdown between a party able to hold together a
built-in coalition but with a weak record in governing and a
veteran party that could no longer form a majority coalition even
though it controlled the major power centers and claimed to
represent the original values of Israeli society. The result of
this showdown was a stalemate in which each bloc was able to
prevent the other from ruling alone. (The actual campaigns of
the two major parties are analyzed by Efraim Torgovnik and
Jonathan Mendilow).
The 1984 elections offered an additional test. It was the first
campaign in the history of the Jewish state in which Menahem
Begin did not participate. One of the questions that was always
posed was how the Likud would perform without its charismatic
leader. Lacking conclusive empirical data on the Begin factor,
we can still observe that the Likud's ability to pull a
percentage of the votes that was close to that of Labor (31.9
percent compared to 34.9 percent), especially under very adverse
conditions, means that the party had survived the Begin era. The
Begin factor may have been important, but not critical.
Begin's absence was felt more during the two years that followed
the election when Herut went through a bitter power struggle
among leaders who sought to be Begin's heir, but ultimately
Yitzhak Shamir succeeded in rallying the party behind him.
Although the power struggle may resume, it seems that the first
period of the post-Begin era has not been as disastrous for Herut
as many expected. This phenomenon seems to be in accord with
Israel's political culture, where the departure of charismatic
veteran leaders does not tear their parties apart. The departure
of Ben-Gurion in 1963 led to a similar situation for Mapai; it --
and later Labor -- even increased their power in the immediate
post-Ben-Gurion era. In each case the structural realities
outweighed the importance of a single individual.
The Small Parties
The 1984 elections and the ensuing national unity government seem
on the surface to have benefited the small parties. In contrast
to the 1981 elections, the combined strength of the two major
parties declined from 73.7 percent to 66.8 percent of the total
vote. Shinui and the CRM increased their Knesset representation
from two to thre and one to three seats respectively, while
Tehiya grew from three to five and Shas's debut brought it four
seats. In addition, several other new parties succeeded in
entering the Knesset for the first time. During the national
unity government's tenure, Shas caused recurring government
crises, while other small parties and individual Knesset members
succeeded in capturing attention far beyond their electoral
strength. How do we explain this phenomenon in light of the
overall trend of the electorate to vote for one of the two major
parties?
As indicated above, the performance and role of the small parties
was limited to their respective camps. Most of the small parties
were identified a priori with one of the two major blocs, thus
drawing votes that might have gone to the major parties. Overall,
the small parties remained loyal to their respective blocs. The
two parties that attempted to present themselves as unlinked to
either coalition, the NRP and Agudat Israel, both suffered
losses, declining from six to four and four to two Knesset seats
respectively. (See Ilan Greilsammer's review of the election
campaigns of the religious parties). Moreover, the new parties
that succeeded in 1984, such as the Progressive List for Peace
(see Hillel Frisch on the Arab vote) and Kach (see Michal
Shamir's chapter), represented the extreme margins of Israeli
society -- one recommending a PLO-led Palestinian state and the
other the expulsion of Israel's Arab population. Shas, which was
also a newcomer to the Knesset following the 1984 elections,
deserves a special analysis.
Shas is a party representing a unique combination of two key
elements in Israel society -- the religious and the Sephardi. In
1981 Tami, which represented a similar -- although religiously
more moderate -- combination, succeeded in winning three seats
after many elections in which purely Sephardi parties had not
succeeded. Tami, however, declined from three seats to one in the
1984 elections, leaving only its leader, Aharon Abuhatzeira, in
the Knesset. Abuhatzeira, a controversial figure who toppled the
Shamir government in April 1984, could not compete against Shas,
which was inspired by the most respected rabbi and scholar of
Sephardi Jewry -- former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef. In both
cases, however, it was the religious element that enabled those
parties to succeed where other such parties had failed. (For a
broader analysis, see Hannah Herzog's article). Shas, however,
learned from the Tami experience and its main activity during the
tenure of the national unity government was to promote religious
legislation, thus competing more with the NRP and Aguda than with
Likud. The latter continued to represent many Sephardi voters'
discontent with their share in the allocation of resources in
Israel's political system. Moreover, despite a brief flirtation
with Labor and a short-lived resignation from the government in
order to increase pressure on the Likud, Shas was considered, and
also acted as, a party of the right-wing bloc.
Finally, the combination of a large number of small parties (13)
in a system of two major blocs does not contribute to stability.
Overall, Israeli voters indicated that they supported one of the
two major parties, whether by direct vote or through the small
parties that identified themselves with one of the two blocs.
The proportional representation electoral system allows for such
a large number of parties to succeed at the polls. In order to
reduce this inherent instability in the system, a change in the
electoral system is required.
While demands for electoral reform have increased in the wake of
the July 1984 elections, they are still being voiced by those on
the political periphery and are being met with deliberate silence
by those in the centers of political power. It is not well known
that in March 1984, on the eve of the Knesset vote to call for
new elections, then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir proposed to
Shimon Peres that the two major parties agree to raise the legal
minimum percentage needed to obtain a seat in the Knesset, to
prevent the proliferation of miniparties. Peres rejected the
proposal out of hand, making a strategic judgment that turned out
to be a very poor one for his party. He and his party held to
their position after the election and did not agree to the
inclusion of electoral reform in the coalition agreement
establishing the national unity government. In 1988, however,
Labor ostensibly reversed itself to support a quasi-popular
movement for electoral reform that succeeded in passing the first
reading in the Knesset but was then buried in committee.
Proposals for Electoral Reform
The simplest type of electoral reform would be just what Shamir
proposed, namely, raising the threshold for obtaining a seat in
the Knesset, which presently stands at 1 percent of the total
vote. As things now stand, Meir Kahane was able to win election
even though he had a minuscule number of voters behind him. If
the threshold were raised to 3 percent, virtually all the small
parties elected to this Knesset would be eliminated. The
medium-sized parties that fragmented -- a phenomenon most notable
in the religious camp -- would have to reunite in order to win
seats. Such a step might bring about a situation not dissimilar
to that in the German Federal Republic -- two major parties, plus
a third one of medium size. Although this third party might hold
the balance of power, it would also have greater incentives to
exercise that power responsibly. Or it might lead to two large
and four sattelite parties -- Arab, Left, Right, and Religious --
similar to the situation in the Scandinavian countries, the
Netherlands, and Switzerland.
More far-reaching electoral reforms have been proposed, including
a simple system of constituency elections for all 120 Knesset
seats; complicated formulas involving multimember districts, with
a certain percentage elected at large; and a proposal to divide
the country into permanent electoral districts corresponding to
its geopolitical regions, which would be allocated seats
according to population. Whatever their merits, none of these
plans have attracted real support among those who control the
government or sufficient support among the people themselves to
generate the overwhelming popular demand necessary to force the
decision makers to act. Hence, for all intents and purposes we
must envision a future in which the present situation, or
something very much like it, will prevail.
Strategies for the Major Parties
Given this situation, the only strategy open to the major parties
within the present electoral system is to try to maintain as much
party unity as possible, to continue to build bridges with other
parties in their respective camps, and to fight for the 5-10
percent of voters likely to shift their support at election time,
principally within -- but to some extent between -- blocs. This
might suggest that both parties should move toward a common
center and, indeed, to a great extent they have done just that.
But it seems that the small floating vote is not necessarily a
centrist vote. Rather, it appears to be a vote that wants strong
leadership and clear-cut positions and will support the party
that seems to offer more of both than its rival.
In the 1984 elections, both major parties made the mistake of
assuming that the floating vote was centrist and moderate. Hence,
both tried to move toward the middle in their election
campaigning and to gloss over the issues in the process. This, in
turn, led to a shift among those voters not irrevocably wedded to
either party. Disgusted with the wishy-washy character of the
major party campaigns, they turned toward the smaller parties. It
was only when the Likud caught on to what was happening and began
to project a firmer image that it recovered enough of those
voters within its camp and on the margins to prevent a
significant Labor victory.
It may be that the Israeli voter is a different animal from other
voters in this respect. In any case, Israeli party strategists
would do well in the future to pursue the floating vote by taking
stands on issues rather than by avoiding them. Otherwise, the
floating vote will continue to go to the smaller parties, which
almost by definition take firm stands.
As far as the religious bloc is concerned, it should become clear
to its ranks that without greater unity they will only dissipate
the influence that they have had in the past. The outcome of the
last elections actually represented something of a victory for
the old NRP, despite its further loss of seats. The disaster
that befell Agudat Israel removed much of the pressure on the NRP
from the right, which had forced it to adopt more extreme stances
on questions of religion and state than its accommodationist
orientation required. The old NRP was uncomfortable whenever
Agudat Israel insisted on matters like easier exemption of women
from army service, amending the Law of Return with regard to the
definition of who was a Jew, or insisting on more stringent state
enforcement of public Sabbath observance. Still, the NRP felt
compelled to go along in order to maintain its credibility in the
religious camp (which may or may not have actually been
necessary). Indeed, Agudat Israel was often as interested in
embarrassing the NRP with its proposed legislation as it was in
gaining passage of the legislation itself.
The Shas crisis is a case in point. NRP and Shas are mortal
rivals, as were NRP and Tami before Shas's creation. Likud has a
stake in keeping Shas in the coalition because since 1977 its
electoral strategy has been to keep the religious camp tied to
it, to give it the edge it needs to form a government and to
preserve that alliance for the future. The Likud leadership
understands the key to coalition politics in Israel, namely, that
no government has ever been formed that did not command
majorities in at least two of the three camps. That is why talk
of a government without the religious parties flies in the face
of the realities of Israeli politics, no matter how much strength
the non-religious parties have.
The key to truly effective government under such circumstances
does not lie in the issue orientations of the two large party
blocs but rather in the quality of leadership that they bring to
the government. Israel's situation demands the kind of strong
leadership that characterizes a democratic republic at its best
-- not in the sense of oppressive power but in the sense of a
self-assured leadership possessing moral strength. Leaders of
that caliber will be able to make needed hard policy choices and
then be firm in the execution of their decisions because they
would be capable of going to the people and mobilizing support
for those difficult choices. The leadership of the post-1984
government at times demonstrated that strength, and at times did
not, almost totally without regard to its partisan divisions.
Conclusion
Israel of the mid-1980s was a polity equally divided between two
political blocs. While the early signs of this could be detected
a decade earlier, the stalemate of the 1984 elections verified it
in the most vivid way. Neither of the two major parties could
assemble a majority coalition in the Knesset. The national unity
government tried to bridge this division for purposes of
governance but all too often each party tried to block the other.
At the same time, the mere fact that such a government was
established and functioned for its full term reenforced two
realities. First, necessity can bring about strange bedfellows
and political realities can overcome ideological differences.
Second, despite its internal political divisions, Israel still
enjoys a core of values shared by most of its political parties
as well as the civil society they represent.
Notes
1. See Howard R. Penniman, ed., Israel at the Polls: The Knesset
Elections of 1977 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute,
1979) and Howard R. Penniman and Daniel J. Elazar, eds.,
Israel at the Polls, 1981 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986).
2. See Daniel J. Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
