Shalom/Salaam, I hope that so far you all have thoroughly enjoyed the posts so far, and the Middle East is always a tinderbox that the Western media just never could have enough with. For that matter, today I will orient my readers to another aspect of the Israeli media fixture, that is the party system in Israel, a trending topic as much debated and discussed in Israel as in the United States during the election time.
An illustration of the ideological spectrums of all political parties qualified for the popular national election in the State of Israel in 2013. Credit: Haaretz.com
Poster of Mapai Party. Dates unknown. Credit: World Zionist Organization/The Central Zionist Archives
Before you start wondering, I would like to first tackle the question of how to study the state’s party platform when the vast majority of Israeli citizens is made of Jews of many geographic descents, religious Arabs,blue-collar workers mainly from North Africa and Southeast Asia? Leadership in Israel, in fact, is much more diversified and compartmentalized today. Well it is far to say that at the beginning of Zionism state, which refers to the 1950s up until the early 1970s, Israel was governed by one popular party, Mapai, later the Labor Alignment. It’s the legacy and grandfather party of the elite state-founding Ashkenazi politicians, who preserved the old trophies of a secular socialist philosophy that upheld autonomous labor, self-sufficient economy and temperamental politics. At the first decade, another party, Herut, which generally played the oppositional camp until it produced its first prime minister of the country—Menachem Begin. (In Israel, prime minister is roughly the equivalent of the president of the United States, while the president of Israel is roughly equivalent to the global ambassador of the nation like the British Queen Elizabeth II or Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadej. who function largely as a honorary per diplomatic protocol.)
Today, the political spectrum of the State of Israel has drifted much to the right, which meant much more conservative, religious and chauvinistic. As we can see in this convenient diagram, all major parties in the 2013 Knesset (Israeli unicameral parliament) election are located on a coordinates measured by both political spectrum and religiosity. ‘
Benjamin Netanyahu, the president of Israel and the party of leader of the Likud Party
From the chart, the parties included in the current government coalition is in orange and other non-coalition parties are in background blue. UTJ, which stands for United Torah Judaism, and Shas, whose members mostly came from the National Religious Party founded in the 1960s, are both religious parties that unconditionally support Judaism as a linchpin of the common peoplehood of Jewish people and tend to vote conservative. Yisrael Beiteinu, literally Jewish Home in English, along with Habayit Hayehudi, represented the extreme right wing politicians, who are constituted by mostly Ashkenazim and Russian Jews. (Those who migrated to the State of Israel mainly during the early-1990s. Lastly, Likud Party, which was reamed from Herut in the 1970s, remains the largest right-wing Jewish party as of today. Together, these four parties constitutes over half of the Knesset seats (more than 60 out of 120 seats in total), thus granted the government coalition led by Likud because it won most ballots out of popular votes.. Since the establishment of the State, not a single party has ever been even close to dominate the Knesset without forming coalitions from other parties because there were oftentimes more than 10 parties competing in the popular election.
Because the government coalition in this diagram is burrowed fully to the right of political spectrum, three other parties in the milieus—National Union, Otzma Leyisrael, Am Shalem, are not in our discussion today. They were either on the extreme right or central-right with feeble voice. Regardless of the reason, these three parties did not join the government coalition because Likud either repulsed at their “Tea Party” veneer or “Green Party” minority status.
Yair Lapid, a black horse politician who leads Yesh Atid party that won 19 seats in the national election of 2013
Kadima and Yesh Atid are two fairly new centrist parties, because both had so far only run two elections, in 2009 and 2013. Kadima was created by Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel who recently passed away from a stroke that had left him vegetative since early 2005. Sharon previously belonged to Likud Party but splitted with the party leadership in the 2000s after the Second Intifada and groomed his own moderate party. Yesh Atid is similar in political spectrum to Kadima, but it focuses more on the economic health of the state rather than hard political questions such as the Conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Yesh Atid is currently led by Yair Lapid, the incumbent Minister of Economy, who curiously has amplified his definitive political opinions after the latest Knesset election in 2013, mostly on national securities and peacemaking processes with the Arabs.
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An archive picture of Yitzhak Rabin in his office, the former prime minister of Israel between 1974-77 and 1992-95, who was assassinated in 1995 after a peace rally.
Moving to the left, the Labor Party, which lands somewhat forlornly along with Meretz and Hatnuah, today form the majority of Jewish leftists in the national politics, but Labor’s glorious days have long past ever since its first landslide fiasco in 1977 after Menachem Begin from the right-wing Likud Party succeeded the premiership from Golda Meir, who was the last prime minister from the Labor Party unchallenged in Israeli election history. During the 80s and 90s, with the exception of premiership of Yitzhak Rabin between 1992-1995, the political currents in Israel were a harrowing wrestle between Labor and Likud. Rabin, who was arguably the man who came the closest to reaching a final settlement with the Palestinians that would have ended all competing claims between Jews and Arabs in Israel, was assassinated by an ultra-religious nationalist Yigal Amir on Nov. 4, 1995 at the conclusion of a peace rally in a Tel Aviv public square, while until today they are conspiracies around that contended that Rabin was “finished” by a hitman hired by the Likud party which abhorred a permanent peace treaty with the Palestinians.
Meretz and Hatnuah, two largely secular parties on the center-left, are ready coalition partners should any of the three parties won the future elections. In terms of views on homeland defense and peace talks with the Palestinian Authorities, all three parties have stuck to a comparatively much more dovish tone than the parties on the right half of the diagram.
A billboard of the Arab party, Balad, in the largest Arab town Nazareth. Credit: GS
Finally, we are left with the four remaining parties on the far right, which are made up by United Arab List, Ta’al, Hadash and Balad. Notably, this quad packet of Knesset parties are made up almost completely by Arab members in Israeli parliament, with the exception of Hadash, which also include a significant minority of Jewish members in its list because of its communist ideology. It should be dutifully noted that the Arab parties have never even had a close call in a national coalition.
A handful factors have contributed this dearth of Arab representations in Israeli political voice. First, the State of Israel, as indicative as flag design and national anthem, was founded as a Jewish state based on its Zionist state doctrines. Israel has never in its history considered Arab an equal voice in governing the state due to its original design. Second, the four Arab parties were formed much later than the two major parties in the first 30 years of the statehood. Hadash, the oldest among the four Arab parties, was founded in 1977, ominously and coincidentally the year when Menachem Begin made his Likud party proudest during its entire history. Therefore, the four Arab parties started late in Israeli political game when the Labor members, who are colloquially called the peaceniks in common Israeli discourse, had already lost its iron grip on the state government. Third, all four Arab parties advocate for a just and equitable solution to the plight of the Palestinian Arabs and the termination of all discriminatory and supremacist regulatory policies that embrace Jewish majority but alienating Arab minorities within the State of Israel.
A snapshot of the Knesset building of the State of Israel in West Jerusalem. Credit: Harry Chen
For your information, the background of the first chart of the blog is actually a photograph of the Israeli Knesset, that is, rightfully, the Capitol Hill of Israel, a stately architectural marvel I actually visited during this summer political science program in Israel. I included my photo of the Knesset below, which was taken in much haste because a security grew suspicious of me as an unaccompanied male. Near landmarks in Jerusalem, a solitary gentile-looking guy attract quick attentions from securities owing to the seemingly indelible trauma of the Second Intifada and the continual violence between Jews and Arabs day to day in the country.
At the end of the day, a young Asian like me isn’t risk-free either.
