CPAP Forum Covers Everything You Need to Know On Israel Elections But Were Too Uninformed to Ask

By Janet McMahon

One month before Israel’s May 17 elections, the Washington, DC-based Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine hosted a forum to discuss “Israel’s Democracy at the Polls.” Ambassador of Jordan Marwan Muasher and Egyptian Ambassador Maher El-Sayed were among the diplomats, journalists and scholars attending the April 16 program. Speakers included Professor Emeritus Don Peretz, whose experience living and working in Israel/Palestine dates back some 50 years; Khalil Rinnawi, director of the Haifa-based Galilee Center for Social Research; Uri Davis, chairman of Al-Beit: Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Israel; and Palestinian author and journalist Fouzi El-Asmar. Michael Warschawski, general director of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, was unable to attend, but his remarks were read by CPAP’s new program director, Judy Barsalou.

Dr. Hisham Sharabi, chairman of the center, noted in his introductory remarks that there appears to exist in the West “the assumption that a Labor victory will result in the resumption of the peace process. But,” he observed, “most Palestinians and other Arabs don’t share that assumption...Both Labor and Likud have declared that they will return no more than 50 percent of the West Bank, and won’t compromise on Jerusalem, Palestinian sovereignty or the return of refugees.”

Sharabi said that for true peace to occur, “Israelis must be willing to give up outdated Zionism and accept Palestinians as equals, and the West must be willing to apply the same principle to Israel” as it currently is applying to Yugoslavia.

Don Peretz informed the audience that his assignment was “simply to cover in 25 minutes the entire history of the Israeli political system.” When Israel was established in May of 1948, he said, this system already existed, based on previous governments—notably Ottoman and British—as well as on “the Zionist party network.”

Noting that Israel is often defined as a “multiparty state,” Peretz observed that it is “one of the most factionalized,” with 10 to 15 parties in the Knesset and 38 parties (down from 50) on the ballot. The Knesset is the country’s supreme authority, according to Peretz. “No one can veto its legislation, which cannot be altered by either the executive or judiciary” branch of government, he said. “But in reality, [the Knesset] is usually controlled by the prime minister’s government in power, which usually initiates legislation.” A majority of the Knesset, however, is required to pass legislation.

Comparing Israel to “a single electoral district with 120 representatives,” Peretz stated that no party has ever won a majority of 60 seats; instead, “30 seats is considered a good showing.” As a result, “all Israeli governments have been formed by coalitions,” Peretz said, describing the eight-party coalition of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a “witches’ brew.” The May 17, 1999 elections, which resulted from the failure of that coalition, are about a year and a half ahead of schedule.

This will be the second election since the passage of the 1992 electoral law authorizing the direct election of the Israeli prime minister. While the intent of this law was “to free the prime minister from the demands of bargaining to form a government,” in fact, Peretz said, “the law has led to greater factionalization, because voters can split their vote between the prime minister and the party list. This has increased the strength of the smaller parties.”

The fact that there were only two candidates for prime minister in the 1996 election resulted from the coopting of other candidates. By promising to appoint them to his cabinet, Netanyahu succeeded in persuading Rafael Eitan and David Levy not to run against him. (“But,” Peretz noted, “his list still came in second” in the Knesset.) This year, Labor candidate Ehud Barak “is trying to do the same thing, and has coopted Levy and a small Orthodox Jewish faction by placing them at the top of his list and promising them government posts,” Peretz said.

The powers of the prime minister “are not defined in any law,” Peretz noted. Until 1996, there was no fixed number of cabinet posts; now there is a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 18 (including the prime minister). Also, before 1996, should a prime minister resign from office, the president of Israel would call on the parties to nominate a candidate. Now, Peretz said, “the president is merely a figurehead.”

Government by Coalition

Peretz characterized Israel’s coalition governments as “based on elaborate, rather detailed agreements,” and predicted that government by coalition would continue. Describing the Israeli political system as “still a work in progress and in flux,” he enumerated the challenges facing the Jewish state: relations between Israeli and diaspora Jews, between Israelis and Palestinians, and with Israel’s neighbors; the role of Orthodox Jews; the type of economic system; and the integration of new immigrants. In the face of these challenges, political parties and ideology as well are “decreasing in importance,” Peretz concluded.

Michael Warschawski’s analysis of the political climate in Israel made note of the “extreme personalization” of the current campaign, in which the candidates for prime minister have become more important than the political parties. With the three Jewish candidates addressing the same public, and the differences among them “negligible,” Warshawski termed the strategy of choice “delegitimizing the other candidates.”

Warshawski described the main conflict in Israeli society today as the one between “the second Israel”—Sephardic and religious Jews—and “the real Israel”—the modern, Western secular elite, which traditionally has supported the Labor Party. Netanyahu’s achievement was to unite all the opponents of Labor. He was “elected against the wishes of the ruling class,” according to Warshawski, and as prime minister “pushed out most of the traditional leadership.”

Warshawski concurred with Peretz that “ideological grounds no longer reflect current reality” in Israel. He predicted that “Likud and Labor will increasingly become minority parties,” and that the May 17 election will result in a national unity government—“because Israel is in a critical situation because of the Oslo process and no leader is willing to make [the necessary] decisions alone.”

Discussing “The Role of the Arab Minority in Israeli Politics,” Khalil Rinnawi divided the history of the Israeli-Arab minority into three periods. From 1948 to 1967, he said, Arabs in Israel “were marginalized in every way—politically, economically, culturally, etc.” Not only did Palestinians living in Israel need time to adjust to the discovery “in a night, or a couple of nights” that they had become a minority in a new political regime, but the military government imposed on them by Israel served to increase their isolation and powerlessness.

The 1970s saw the withdrawal of the Israeli military administration from Arab areas, and “Arabs began to become more involved in Israeli political life,” Rinnawi said, although Arab political influence was still minimal. The beginning of the ’90s brought the institutionalization of the Arab way of life in the political sphere, along with increased awareness of their political role and greater influence on their own situation (but not, however, equality between Jewish and Arab Israelis).

“The consensus among Israelis,” Rinnawi stated, “is that the Arab minority must continue to live marginalized—because Israel, de jure and de facto, is a Jewish state.” Contributing to their marginalization is the fact, according to Rinnawi, that “the Arab minority itself is not well organized.” Their low level of political action, moreover, benefits the Israeli government.

Rinnawi assessed current (April 1999) Arab support for candidates in the May election as 40 percent for Labor’s Ehud Barak; 25 percent for Palestinian candidate Azmi Bishara; 20 percent for Yitzhak Mordechai and his new center party; 10 percent for Netanyahu; and the remaining 5 percent undecided.

Uri Davis proposed to look beyond the May elections at developments within the Israeli body politic that might lead to new opportunities. His particular intention was to “bring the ’48 refugees into discussion.”

Davis first discussed the historic relationship between the Israeli Knesset and other “state instruments” with the “Zionist establishment” comprising the World Zionist Organization, Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund and which is governed by “an identifiable legal structure.” While this Zionist structure is “legally and constitutionally separate from the state of Israel,” a covenant with the government of Israel governs the relations between the state and the Zionist entities. Until the past decade, Davis explained, there was a “close convergence between the political program of the World Zionist Organization and the government of Israel in all priorities of Jewish life (settlement, immigration, etc.).”

“Absentee Property”

Approximately 75 percent of the land of pre-1967 Israel is controlled and registered in the name of the Israeli government, Davis said, estimating that more than half of that land includes “absentee property of 1948 Palestinian refugees.” Private property, evenly split between Jewish and Arab owners, accounts for some 8 percent of the land, and the remaining 17 percent is “technically and legally owned by the Jewish National Fund and the World Zionist Organization.”

Until the last five years or so, Davis told the audience, both the government of Israel and the Zionist organizations were committed to the Judaization of the Galilee and the Negev, and to the development of land “for Jewish citizens only.”

In the mid-’90s, however, the Jewish National Fund announced that it planned to “decouple its legal alliance with the Israeli government,” Davis said, and that the JNF would henceforth administer JNF lands. This means that the political objectives of Israel are no longer identical with Zionist objectives, Davis observed, and cited several reasons for this “seemingly surprising” development. Economically Israel is no longer on the list of developing states—indeed, its GNP is higher than some European countries. Its “strategic decision” to pursue integration into the global economy has led the Jewish state to accept “the logic of privatization and profit”—including privatization of land, which already has begun.

Davis also described social changes within Israel over the past three decades. In 1971, he said, he had protested the establishment of the “Jews-only city of Carmiel in the Galilee” and the resulting denial of a permit to a Druze military veteran who had wanted to build a marble factory on the outskirts of the city. In a letter to Davis, the former director of the Israeli Land Administration stated that “the area is closed to non-Jews.”

In 1998, by contrast, Carmiel Mayor Avi Farmiel was charged with “incitement to racism” for his attempts to prevent Jewish residents from renting or selling their flats to Arabs.

Other developments indicative of the diverging goals of the state and the Zionist establishment include the first appointment of an Israeli Arab to the Supreme Court, a commitment of the Ministry of National Infrastructure to appoint an Arab delegate to the Israeli Land Administration, and the candidacy of Azmi Bishara for prime minister.

Rather than a state for Jews only, then, Israeli society is moving in the direction of a state “for all its citizens, one which will not discriminate by law and which recognizes the important role of its Arab citizens,” Davis said.

In this context, the possible “reapportionment of 95 percent of state domain lands” as the government privatizes could mean that a “larger, improved share” of that land could go to Israeli Arabs. Since much of that land is the property of 1948 refugees, Davis said, there is the danger that the two Palestinian communities could be “pitted against” each other.

The crucial question to be raised, therefore, is “how to negotiate the just demand [for land] of Israeli Arabs.” This question cannot be answered fairly, Davis maintained, unless the refugees’ leadership is brought into the discussion and the state of Israel aspires to be “a state for all its citizens, Arab and Hebrew, and 1948 refugees.”

Palestinian-American journalist Fawzi El-Asmar echoed Hisham Sharabi’s opening remarks, saying, “I don’t think that this election is crucial—it’s something internal. I want the Israeli people to decide what they want and to tell me what they’ve decided.”

He saw no difference among the three Zionist parties with regard to the Palestinian situation. When Yasser Arafat first declared a Palestinian state in 1988, El-Asmar noted, the PLO leader said the land of Palestine belonged to Palestinians and Israelis. “I have not heard the same thing from an Israeli leader,” El-Asmar said.

The Palestinian journalist also questioned the decision to move the Israeli elections from April to May, a move which could only serve to “hurt Arafat and the Palestinian Authority”—and a move which no Israeli political party opposed.

El-Asmar also discussed the U.S. failure to pressure Israel to comply with the Oslo and Wye accords, compared to the American response to the situation in Kosovo. “For me, as a Palestinian,” he said, “I really feel hurt to see this double standard...Nothing will happen [in Palestine] without a firm U.S. stance for the implementation of Wye and Oslo.”

Janet McMahon is the managing editor of the Washington Report.