According to exit
poll results conducted on January 22, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the
Likud Beitenu party won the most votes of the 32 political parties running for election in Israel. The elections for the Knesset, Israel’s
unicameral legislature, are based on proportional representation, so each
political party that receives more than 2% of the national vote wins seats in
the Knesset directly proportional to how many votes it received in the
election. Other successful parties include the Jewish Home party, a rightist
party, which won approximately 11-12 seats, and the Labor Party, which won approximately
15 seats. (Remember that these results are based on exit polls and include a
margin of error.) Only 12 out of the 32 political parties won enough seats to
enter the Israeli parliament.
However, the
extravagant success of the Yesh Atid party, a centrist party led by Yair Lapid
that won an astounding 19 seats in the Knesset and came in second place, has
caused the Likud Beitenu party to become especially wary of its position in the
Israeli government. The Yesh Atid party’s success has been attributed to Netanyahu’s
lack of attention to important issues affecting the middle class, such as Israel’s high cost of living,increased peace talks with the Palestinians, and the unfair draft exemption forultra-Orthodox Jews pursuing religious studies.
Since no party has
ever won a majority of 60 seats in the Knesset, the parties often rely on
coalition-building based on ideology. Netanyahu has stayed on the conservative
end of the political scale, but the rise of the centrist Yesh Atid party may
prompt him to change his interests and move closer to the center. Pledging to
create a government with as broad a coalition as possible with a focus on
domestic policy, Netanyahu may find the support he needs in the Yesh Atid
party, which has attracted many Israeli citizens dissatisfied with Netanyahu’s
performance so far. “With his traditional allies of nationalist and religious
parties, Netanyahu could put together a shaky majority of 61 seats, initial results showed. But it would be virtually impossible to keep such a narrow coalition intact” (Huffington Post).
Update: Today’s poll results from yesterday’s election show that the left-wing/centrist coalition and the right-wing each won 60 seats in the Knesset, leaving each group with exactly 50% of the seats in the Knesset. This renders the above statement from Huffington Post invalid, and Netanyahu certainly must act to form a majority as a result. You may view the seat-breakdown at the end of this article.
Moving to the center may increase the number of seats the coalition under Netanyahu holds in the Israeli legislature, but there are concerns regarding the new coalition’s resulting views towards the Palestinians. While Lapid holds a softer view towards the Palestinians in contrast to Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party’s calls for annexing parts of the West Bank, Lapid still believes in keeping Jerusalem intact, despite Palestinian desires to claim the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem for the creation of a new Palestinian state. This coincides with Netanyahu’s continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but certainly contradicts the Yesh Atid party’s goals to further peace talks with the Palestinians.
What do you guys think? Should Netanyahu work to win the support of the newly powerful Yesh Atid party? Or will his actions alienate not only his traditional nationalist and religious party supporters, but those truly wishing for a two-state solution? What do you think of the even 60-60 split in the Knesset between the right-wing and left-wing/centrist groups?
1 comment:
I've always thought that proportional representation within a legislature was an interesting concept because it is so drastically different to the American government's winner-take-all system.
At first glance, proportional representation may seem more democratic because 12 political parties all have some sort of say in the legislature; however, parties still need to gain majorities in the Knesset in order to pass legislation. By creating coalitions, it seems as though the Israeli political parties are just like constituents that must compromise to unify under a large (but definitely more unstable) political party like the Democratic Party or the GOP in the U.S.
In addition, because of the 50-50 split of seats between the left-wing/centrist and right-wing coalitions, Israeli political parties will have to do even MORE compromising to gain a majority. In the end, maybe the smaller political parties represented in the Knesset have less influence than a mere constituent within an American political party. The tie of seats in this election may expose a flaw to proportional representation.
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