Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Toward the end of 1997, the Netanyahu Government voted unanimously (with two
abstentions from the National Religious Party) that there would be no further
Israeli retreat from Judea and Samaria until the Palestinian Authority (PA)
fully complied with the terms of the Oslo Agreement. Moreover, a five month
period was to elapse before any redeployment would be undertaken to test whether
the PA was fulfilling its obligations.
On March 10, 1998, however, the Government adopted a four-staged plan in which
"The second step will be the fulfillment by the Palestinians of their obligations
while, at the same time and in parallel, Israel will carry out the redeployments."
This suggests that the PA need only cease violating its obligations incrementally!
As former Knesset Member Elyakim Ha’Etzni pointed out, the five month
period of testing the good faith of the PA was dropped. “Now, retreat
comes at the same time as ‘fulfillment,’ which means, of course,
that retreat will actually be carried out on the ground, while ‘fulfillment’
will consist of [Arab] words and gestures. And since the word ‘redeployments’
is used in the plural, this means that there will be more than one retreat.”
Meanwhile, then head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon reported
that the Palestinians will not fulfill their Oslo obligations even if Israel
carries out a further withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Appearing before the
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yaalon said that the PA does
nothing about the terrorist infrastructure. He said the PA is not worried about
the suspension of the withdrawal talks, and expects that the Americans will,
in his words, "supply the goods."
To further confuse the public and undermine its confidence in Mr. Netanyahu’s
resoluteness, then Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai spoke of the need to establish
mutual confidence with the “Palestinians”! Mordechai thus ignored
the findings of his own Intelligence chief! In fact, he averred that Israel
should yield to the American demand for a13% redeployment as opposed to the
9% originally favored by Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon. That 4% of Jewish
land is all that remained to define the “right-wing” in Israel.
Sharon himself told Jewish American leaders that a "Palestinian State is
inevitable." As for he National Religious Party, it, too, had succumbed
to Oslo. What does all this mean?
To say with Ha’etzni and many others that the Right has ceased to
exist in Israel is to say the obvious. So far as Oslo is concerned, the
Netanyahu Government was indistinguishable from its left-wing predecessor. But
this means that that a Likud-led Government had nullified the results of the
1996 national elections, had betrayed the electorate!
Much the same thing happened in February 2001, four months after the commencement of the Arafat War. Sharon was elected Prime Minister by an overwhelming 63% vote over his rival Ehud Barak, who had pursued a policy of self-restraint against Arab massacres, while offering Arafat, among other things, 95% of Judea and Samaria, including eastern Jerusalem. Sharon’s victory was a clear mandate to put an end to the killing of Jews by the Palestinian (terrorist) Authority, which logically means he was to abrogate Oslo. Instead, Sharon appointed Oslo’s architect Shimon Peres as his Foreign Minister and followed Barak’s semi-permissive policy toward terrorism, a policy that has resulted in the murder and maiming of thousands of Jews under his premiership.
What we see here is the futility of democratic elections in Israel. Why this futility?
Almost all critics of Oslo focus on the lack of Zionist commitment of Israeli
politicians or their timidity in the face of American pressure. But the
character and behavior of politicians depend to no small extent on the design
of Israel’s parliamentary electoral system. In Israel, and contrary
to 74 out of 75 democratic states, the entire country constitutes a single district
in which parties compete for Knesset seats on the basis of proportional representation.
As a consequence, those who become Knesset members, and therefore those
who form the Government, are not individually accountable to the
voters in regional or constituency elections. Which means they do not have to
compete against a rival candidate who could expose their flaws and failings.
This enables the Government to ignore public opinion with impunity.
Here let us recur to David Ben-Gurion.
Israel’s first Prime Minister agreed with a November 4, 1948 Herut Party
statement that making the entire country a single electoral district would impair
democracy as well as coherent national policies. Every voter would have to choose
from a multiplicity of parties, most of whose candidates -- as many as 120 --
would be utterly unknown to him. “The system would cut any connection
between the voter and his representative, who would be dependent on his party
leadership rather than on those who elected him and whom he would not even know.”
The people “would have no influence in choosing the candidates, since
the [party] lists would be drawn up at party headquarters.” (Here one
should not be deceived by the charade of party primaries.)
Moreover, proportional representation “would lead to fragmentation of
the nation’s forces and [multiply] artificial [or frivolous] conflicts.”
“Party fragmentation would result in many parliamentary factions uniting
to form a dominant majority, not on the basis of a common program but merely
to divide up positions of influence and the national budget.”
“District elections alone,” said Ben-Gurion, “could prevent
this [undemocratic and pernicious state of affairs], as the deputy would know
who had elected him and could maintain constant contact with them. To win a
majority, the candidate would have to gain the approval of a majority of voters
in his own constituency and concentrate on the problems that concerned that
majority. Instead of a multiplicity of parties and election lists, a constituency
system would promote national unity and an organic link between the voter and
his legislative representative.”
Ben-Gurion then notes that 21 party lists competed in the elections to the first
Knesset and that 12 won seats in that ersatz assembly (thanks to a 1% electoral
threshold). No party came close to winning a majority. “Thus there came
into being a large number of small parties whose programs held no interest for
the majority of the nation, which was denied its basic right of real choice
of the Government.”
The multiplicity of parties renders it extremely difficult for any Government
to formulate and pursue coherent and resolute of national policies. Or as Ben-Gurion
puts it: “the interests of parties, as conceived by the leadership of
their Central Committees, became paramount.” Not only the Government but
the Opposition suffers from this multiplicity. In fact, the Opposition, he points
out, contains “such contradictory elements as the Communists and Herut,
Mapam and Agudat Yisrael.” (And now Israel has three Arab parties in the
Knesset to compound the irrationality of this “system.”)
Ben-Gurion might also have emphasized that although the existing electoral system
appears most democratic in theory -- it allows for representation of many small
interest groups in the legislature -- excessive diversity can be self-defeating
if only because the welfare of these groups ultimately depends on cabinet solidarity,
meaning a Government capable of pursuing a clear national strategy.
Which means that Israel’s very democratic electoral system has made democratic
elections an exercise in futility!