Israeli politics is crazy
I’m not too keen on parliamentary systems in general. Too many small parties are given power. The one good thing about parliamentary systems, IMHO, is that they are more responsive than ours and elections can be called if there’s no confidence in the leader. That can also be one of the bad things, though, leading to instability.
Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government due to the holdout from a very small party called Yisrael Beiteinu and its leader Avigdor Lieberman, and now the Israeli parliament has voted to dissolve itself and hold new elections.
A little background here [emphasis mine]:
When Lieberman’s refusal to join Netanyahu’s new coalition forced the Knesset to disband just days after it was sworn in, thrusting the nation into another costly and tumultuous election season, some in the Israeli press revisited the anecdote and wondered what made the politician who caved before Hamas stand firm against Netanyahu, with whom he disagrees on little of substance. Immediately after Netanyahu had won his fifth term as prime minister, back in the halcyon days of last month, Lieberman promised his support, announcing he would not endorse anyone else for the office. Why, then, did he turn his back on Netanyahu at this critical juncture?
To hear the chattering classes in Jerusalem tell it, four explanations are likely.
The first, and most straightforward, holds that Lieberman is truly committed to the policy question that drove him to his latest decision, namely his strong objection to any compromise that allows Haredi men to defer or altogether avoid being conscripted to the Israel Defense Forces. The history of this contentious debate is long, and it dates back to the birth of the state, but partisans on all sides of the question agree on a few cardinal issues. First, the problem may very well solve itself: As Haaretz reported last spring, “in reality, at least in the mainstream of Haredi society, enlistment is no longer a dirty word.” That is in part because the vanguard of Haredi soldiers discovered that it was possible to become a solider and remain true to the Haredi way of life…
With principle out of the way, passion is next on the lineup. Lieberman started his political career as Netanyahu’s right-hand man—his first big job was director of the prime minister’s office during Bibi’s first term. He has since come to develop a Dostoevskyan dislike for his former patron, calling him, on one unforgettable occasion, a “lying, cheating scoundrel.”…This week’s debacle, many in Israel believe, was Lieberman’s ultimate payback, a revenge plot of a scorned underling against his imperious boss.
Then again, there’s explanation No. 3, which sees Lieberman’s move as purely pragmatic. Sensing that Netanyahu’s days may be numbered—all those investigations and possible indictments don’t look too promising—Lieberman might have very well acted out of pure reason when he took the step that might be the one to finally put an end to King Bibi’s storied career. Believe in this theory, however, and numerous hiccups arise, including the fact that Lieberman refused to endorse any of Netanyahu’s rivals on the left…
Unless, that is, you believe in what’s behind door No. 4. The Israeli columnist Akiva Bigman advanced another theory in Yisrael Hayom, arguing that Lieberman, like a grizzly in Denali, was not motivated by anything save for disinterested, instinctual hunger. Craving more political power—the natural state of any politician—he spotted an opportunity to get some and took it, caring little about the immense damage he’d done to the stability of the political system and the state’s coffers.
Even before I’d read that article, I was thinking door No. 4: an opportunity for power was grabbed by a man who didn’t have all that much of it and wanted more. And the parliamentary system gave him the opportunity.
What will happen in the next election? No one knows, and I’m not making any predictions either. What a mess.
Unbelievable.
Actually, I find the resort to elections on cue to be a problematic feature of parliamentary systems. (Britain has tentatively adopted a system of fixed-intervals).
Israel might benefit from a revised electoral system (say, single-member constituencies and ordinal balloting). Israel, Italy, and other parliamentary states might benefit from replacing Westminster systems with contingent systems. In a contingent system, the legislature would have an option to erect a parliamentary ministry, but in the absence of such a ministry the head of state could appoint one which would serve at his pleasure and the ministry could exercise certain prerogatives if the legislature had a contumacious response. We might benefit from that ourselves.
Neo — Agreed as to parliamentary systems’ bad points. I do note that our Presidents normally cycle up and down in measures of voters’ confidence, and in some cases there are wild swings. “OH — X did this! Vote the bustard out! –NO WAIT, now he’s done that, don’t vote him out! OMIGOSH, we just voted in der Hildebeest!!! Heaven save us!”
Art D — More missing marbles this morning, wherefore I don’t really understand your suggestion. :>(
And I’m not expecting the Brits to gracefully resolve their parliamentary difficulties over Brexit. That looks like a train wreck. I wish Boris Johnson (BoJo) all the luck in the world if he steps into that breach.
Even before I’d read that article, I was thinking door No. 4: an opportunity for power was grabbed by a man who didn’t have all that much of it and wanted more.
neo: Which pressed the buttons in my memory banks, since everything there is indexed by Firesign Theatre quotes:
It heard the word power and it responded! Just like we do!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmWFrMq3qNY&t=19m13s
Israel politics is crazy? I’m pretty sure politics is crazy.
Ours is pretty crazy too. It seems weird to me that President is Donald Trump and I voted for the guy. Then there was this whole attempted coup on him by the “deep state.” It’s like something out of a novel. (Maybe Ross Thomas?)
More missing marbles this morning, wherefore I don’t really understand your suggestion.
That, by default, the choice of ministers repairs to the country’s President. The legislature would have the option to set up a parliamentary ministry, but they need not exercise it and, were they to fail, the President’s choices remain in office.
NB, the Wilhelmine constitution in Germany did not include a ministry responsible to parliament, whereas the British practice by the mid-19th century was a responsible ministry bar for brief ‘caretaker’ governments. One might posit a contingent system wherein you might have a parliamentary ministry or a Wilhelmine ministry depending on circumstances. The crisis in Israel today could be resolved for the time being not by another election, but by the President of Israel revising the list of ministers. (Perhaps, in the first instance, by granting a collection of civil servants a leave of absence and appointing them the departmental ministers, and then revising piecemeal). The politicians might set up a parliamentary ministry later, when they’d got their act together.
maybe, but look what they also have to put up with… sort of…
A draft resolution set to be debated this weekend at the California Democratic Party State Convention, obtained by Fox News, accuses the Israeli government of willfully “aligning with the virulent Islamophobia” of white supremacist groups in the U.S. — and links Israel indirectly to the Oct. 2018 massacre of 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Just normal human antics. The so called Jewish State isn’t any more immune to it than the “exceptional” united States.
1. Like Italy and a few other countries, israel’s parliamentary system is not anchored to a system of representation by district. We vote for political parties; there is no such thing as “calling my MP to complain” because MPs get in to parliament based on their position on a party list, not local elections per district. This makes things even less representational and more corrupt, and gives undue power to splinter parties if they eke out more than the minimum votes needed to get into parliament.
2. This is exactly what happened in these elections. Centrist traditional-religious votes were split between several personality-driven splinter parties. Two of these parties failed to get into parliament, and it is likely their votes will now return to the mainstream conservative parties, yielding a more stable government (and less power for Lieberman…)
3. The elephant in the room is the tacit understanding by all that the party headed by Generals Gantz and Yaalon is not ready for prime time – and despite their good showing nobody is pushing for them to try to form a government. This formula has been tried before by the left (which used the military careers of Rabin and Barak to distract voters from the reality of the Oslo peace plan). These center-left “third way” parties bloom quickly – and are heavily hyped by the never-Bibi media – but fade just qs quickly.
These center-left “third way” parties bloom quickly – and are heavily hyped by the never-Bibi media – but fade just qs quickly.
Just to point out that (1) the evolution of electoral preferences in Israel is similar to that of a number of European countries, where the right-left polarity has been replaced with a social-liberal / nationalist polarity and (2) you’ve had a continuously present bloc of votes outside the ken of the usual taxa (Arab, squish, Labor, religious, nationalist) making use of several vehicles over the last 15 years and (3) Yesh Atid is proving more durable than Olmert’s Kadima or Yigael Yadin’s Dash.
israel’s parliamentary system is not anchored to a system of representation by district. We vote for political parties; there is no such thing as “calling my MP to complain” because MPs get in to parliament based on their position on a party list, not local elections per district.
My understanding of the British system is that candidates for MP are chosen by the party and added to a list. There are no primaries and therefore, only loyal party members can even run for Parliament. Farage, for example, has to start his own party to run.
To bring some order and sanity into Israeli politics is an impossible task, like herding cats. No system can do it, but Israeli citizens have inordinate tolerance to disorder and madness, they just accept such things as unchangeable order of universe.
Lieberman can not be thrown away from Israeli politics, as Bibi erroneously hoped. Lieberman will come more powerful from new election, since he was the first to acknowledge the new reality: scarecrow of Leftist takeover of power does not work anymore. The Left in Israel are now so weak that nobody takes them seriously and fears them, so the usual Bibi’s gambit to justify all concessions to ultra-Orthodox by necessity to prevent this takeover now failed. Resistance to apparent diktat of a small minority over society as a whole is now quite popular, and Lieberman is rightly seen as the main leader of this resistance.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/05/31/wow-the-interesting-timing-of-the-israeli-election-do-over/
https://www.meforum.org/58636/best-of-both-worlds-for-netanyahu
Sorry Neo…that “snap election” feature is really a bug. It breeds inherent instability and a lack of cohesiveness in both domestic and foreign policy. I know because here in Oz we had a revolving door Prime Ministership over the course of about 10 years Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard Kevin Rudd (Labour pollies stabbing each other) then Tony Abbott Malcolm Turnbull Scott Morrison (Liberals proving they have knives too)
Morrison just won re-election outright as we all know…but who’s to say 12 months from now he won’t get a shiv from a current friend? Give me a set term & set election dates & I can at least mark the calendar to throw my knife from a distance.
Morrison just won re-election outright as we all know…but who’s to say 12 months from now he won’t get a shiv from a current friend?
We should have shipped John McCain and Jeff Flake to Canberra. They’d have been right at home. Proper punishment for you all having stuck us with Robert Hughes.