For me, Israel has long been exhibit 'A' of why a multiparty system would be a bad idea in this country. Multiparty systems are unstable, require cobbling together coalition governments, and give small fringe parties outsized influence. Then, too, there is this nightmare where repeated efforts fail to form a government at all.
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At some point opponents ought to agree to settle the stalemate with a game of chance(flipping a coin) as is occasionally used in the US.
Getting all coalitions to agree and stick to results with so many fragmented political parties wouldn't be easy.
Voters will tire trudging again and again to the polls though,time to move forward.
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Is there any data about how many change their votes from on election to the next? This should be used to find a solution to this — assuming the powers that be want a solution, which seems that they don’t and would be the most telling fact of all—those in power benefit from chaos.
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A PM is literally under substantive corruption charges. What kind of message do Israelis send to their children when voting for a man who is a under investigation? Sad news. What about the next generation? Israelis have shown that the many who keep electing Likud are no better than Palestinians who elected Hamas. The definition of insanity is to repeat failure over and over. With corruption, the next generation receives the message that it is ok to commit crimes as long as the country remains protected. But what if the country could be protected as well? Have some courage in your country, Israel!
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@Dean Rosenthal The many who keep electing Likud ARE better than Palestinians who elected Hamas. Israelis are the 13th happiest people, the 29th highest per capita GNP, the 28th on the Democracy Index. The Palestinians of Gaza are not.
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@Dean Rosenthal; Apparently Israel has their version of the Southern district courts in NY. Aspiring lawyers seeking to burnish their resume for future political office. Investigations alone should not disqualify a candidate. especially if the investigators engage in leaks and other calculated news releases before investigations are completed.
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@Lane I cannot think of a single attorney from the Justice Ministry's prosecutors who went on to a political career.
Academic, judicial perhaps. Politics, this is not the US.
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Like Americans with Trump, Israelis have only to look in the mirror and see who's responsible for the mess they're in.
The parallels between Trump and Bibi are remarkably precise and their supporters constitute a horde of xenophobes and extremist theocratic autocrats who want to impose their religious views on everyone.
While the rules of Israeli elections favor the fragmentation of political power, with disproportionate power in the hands of smaller parties, the conduct of American elections is the opposite: concentrating everything on two parties – one being totally corrupt, dishonest and incompetent and the other being just incompetent.
The result, though, is similar: both countries are run by psychopathic megalomaniacs who care only for themselves and their own grasp on power.
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@Marcy There are no parallels between Mr. Trump and an MIT graduate who devours books in the tradition of Shimon Peres, who was brought up in a party with a political ideology. Blue suits and red ties do not parallels make, except at a very superficial level.
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It is easier to have fancy opinions when bombs don’t land in my yard and bullets do not shatter my windows.
Israel has the power of a strong, enduring but perhaps flawed UN decision made when the scars of the Holocaust were fresh and festering.
It is clear to most fair-minded people who look at the situation more dispassionately that Arab Israelis have some standing too. That sentiment is marred by violence and fear that the Palestinians will have a majority in two to three generations to vaporize Israel as a Jewish state.
BOTH sides need to create an agreement in which communities thrive and pledge to avoid acts of violence at all costs. This will take strong leadership and a candidate who provides vision to the Haredi, secular Jews and Muslims alike.
Israel has a small footprint but a large heart. A negotiated lasting detente with support for all and respect for a Jewish state and a Palestinian state co-existing in peace is the only way to a lasting peace and progress.
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@Stewart On Dec. 2, 1947, just days after the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to partition historic Palestine into Jewish and Arab-ruled sections, the Ulama or chief scholars of Sunni Islam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo– the leading university of the Arab World– issued a fatwa calling on the world’s Muslims to launch a Jihad to destroy the incipient Jewish state. It was reiterated by the Ulama, in April 1948, days before the Egyptian Army and three other Arab armies attacked Palestine, giving the campaign a “religious imprimatur.” The fatwa was reissued later that year.
“It was clear the Arabs had lost the war,” Morris said, but reissuing the Fatwa signaled it was meant “to stand for future years, for future generations, for whatever bout there will be against the Jews.”
As noted in his book and repeated at the conference, Matiel Mighannam, a Lebanese Christian woman who headed the Arab Women’s Organization in Palestine, affiliated with the Arab High Command, told an interviewer: “The UN decision has united all Arabs as they have never been united before, not even against the Crusaders.” She added that a Jewish state had no chance to survive and “All the Jews will eventually be massacred.”
http://www.theseniortimes.com/1948-was-a-holy-war-for-arabs-historian-says/
As long as most Palestinians are devout Muslims (85% of Palestinian Muslims want sharia law.) and as long as the Jewish State controls even one square inch of land, peace is impossible.
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@m1945 There is a large community of Israeli Arabs living in Haifa peacefully; all that is needed is for the Arabs in Judea and Samaria to do the same. In 1930 to 1945
all the Jewish and Arab population were ALL called Palestinians. Arafat claimed the name as an "Arab ONLY" name.
@m1945
It's all about whether you want the incumbent in or out
Today's polling in Israel suggests another tie, with a slight advantage to the right, but with neither side having a majority.
The key to the election is probably which parties manage to get out the vote. The numbers needed to switch several Knesset seats from one side to the other are very small.
There is election fatigue, and Bibi is focused on getting out his supporters because he knows many of them realize he needs to go, but can't bring themselves to vote for the other side. If there is enough apathy among his supporters, the turnout may not be what he needs.
In spite of the apparent tie, many political observers think one of the smaller parties will break with their bloc and enable a coalition to be formed.
The various structural reforms mentioned are unlikely to happen. The Knesset members from the smaller parties have too great an interest in the present system continuing.
It isn't that different from the situation in the States, where the smaller states have disproportionate influence on the Presidential elections and makeup of the Senate. The President is regularly elected with a minority of the popular vote, and a majority in the Electoral College. Does anyone in the US think this will change anytime soon?
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3 structural changes could be made to Israel's absurd party based electoral system to stop repeated elections and increase government stability: 1) Increase the threshold to get into Parliament to at least 5%; 2) Accept a minority government, where the head of the largest party automatically becomes Prime Minister, with the President deciding between 2 parties that get the same number of mandates; 3) make the government serve a full 4 year term unless 75% of the Knesset votes for a no confidence motion. These changes are so easy to make and would give Israel a functional government. Of course, that assumes that's what they want. (Spoiler: they don't.)
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Meanwhile, Abu Mazen is in the 15th year if his four year term, having never faced any manner of a real election. Somehow, Mazen is a billionaire even as his people are impoverished. Mazen continues to appropriate aid to pay stipends to terrorists rather than building up his polity. Somehow, none of this is worth mentioning in the context of peace between Israel and Pakestinians. Maybe, just maybe, a corrupt authoritarian despot that rewards terrorists is not a viable partner for peace.....
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Very interesting situation. Benny and Bibi should go for a walk together and talk things through.
There's a trivial solution to this deadlock. Likud would win in a landslide if anyone other than Netanyahu were at its helm. But Netanyahu, like Trump, is too much of an egotist ever to step down willingly; and so Israel, like the USA, is a social experiment possibly facing its end.
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There is, of course, a solution. Netanyahu could simply step down. Do the honorable and patriotic thing. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that by lingering on, even while indicted, he hurts Israel itself.
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It is a simple formula: Keep voting, as many times as it takes until Bibi gets what he wants.
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Too many parties as the bar for Parliament in too low. Every special interest group gets representation and the "general interest" is not clear.
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@San Ta That bar was never higher before as it is now. Israel doesn't need a two party system, which is the reason why trump is a president now.
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The take-home message from this article is that Israelis want closure of this electoral process and that they want a leader. The mood has less to do with who is elected than not having further stalemates.
Netanyahu and Gantz must agree to sharing the post on whatever terms they can live with. Or they have to agree to one of them stepping down.
The present course is unsustainable.
I keep looking from Gantz’s photo to Bibi’s, trying to discern the difference. Then I try the same trick, looking at their policies. Still no luck.
Help me out, here.
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@Ben Martinez
One has been indicted for corruption.
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@Ben Martinez I'm sure you could see the difference in between center-right and extreme right.
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Israel doesn't need another right wing extremist government. It needs a government ready and able to make a 180 degree turn, back to the liberal democracy envisaged by the founders.
When Israel returns to the respect of international laws and human rights conventions, it will regain the respect and full support of the international community.
Continuing down the current path will lead to endless strife and possible self-destruction.
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@Greg Israel was ranked 30 out of 167 on The Economist's Democracy Index. That's better than Belgium, Greece, Cyprus & at least a dozen other European countries.
Israel has maintained democracy even though it's been under continual attack. By contrast, we Americans locked American citizens of Japanese descent in concentration camps during world war 2 & we confiscated Joe DiMaggio's father's fishing boat because he was of Italian descent.
Even Palestinians think that Israel is a democracy.
“57% say democracy in Israel is good or very good”
http://pcpsr.org/en/node/723
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Voters in Israel (and the USA) learn from history.
Demagogues whether it be one of the first Alcibiades in classical Greece or one of the last Chavez in Venz. will always eventually ruin a country.
Both countries, Israel and USA are facing similar crisis with Netanyahu and Trump.
Vote him out in favor of a more moderate, non demagogue, non allege criminal candidate.
If you don't, in the next conflict in the area, which is all but assured, the West may not be on your side like it was in previous conflicts.
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@Paul The "West"? Which one exactly?
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@Johan Cruyff Thank you for your reply. By the west I mean Europe and USA but you really can include any country outside the Arab world.
Israel has lost a great deal of support from these countries with its policies just like America has with Trump re the rest of the world.
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I am a lot less concerned about the number of elections Israel holds, than I am about the problem of why Palestinians don’t hold any.
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@A. Stanton
They are not allowed. Abbas is in the 16th year of a 4 year term. When election time came it was very evident that Hamas was going to win. That would have made US/Israeli policies difficult, so no election. Also, a census has not been allowed in the West Bank since 1967. How many voters are in the WB?
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@A. Stanton Ask Mahmoud Abbas. He was elected over a decade ago and has steadfastly refused to hold elections since, insisting that there is no time for representative democracy for the Palestinians when he must lead the, "resistance."
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@A. Stanton
THAT IS, election in the West Bank and Gaza by the Palestinians .. elections by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas .. notably, the Palestinians Israelis do vote in Israel's election.
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Take heart, Israeli and Arab voters, everyone is laughing at America, too. Neither of our political systems will be solved by the candidates running for Prime Minister and President in our countries. We don't have a multi-party system in America, but our politicians have broken our two-party system beyond repair.
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@Nan Socolow And that's a bad thing? What the US need is four parties, representing the main divides of people's opinions. And of course, no electoral college.
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Reminds me of a famous, old expression: we have seen the future and it is us.
Is this what liberal democracies have to look forward to? Politicians who have forgone leadership and problem solving in order to serve their own interests....or those of their myopic but powerful self serving backers who dictate how things go.
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