Elections for the 17th
Knesset
were held in Israel
on 28 March
2006. The voting resulted in a plurality of seats for the
then-new
Kadima party, followed by the
Labour Party, and a major loss
for the
Likud party.
After the election, the government was formed by the Kadima,
Labour,
Shas, and
Gil parties, with the
Yisrael Beiteinu party joining the
government later. The Prime Minister was
Ehud Olmert, leader of Kadima, who had been the
acting prime minister going into the election.
According to the
Congressional Research
Service:
The March 28, 2006, Knesset election results were
surprising in many respects.
The
voter turnout of 63.2% was the lowest ever. The contest was widely
viewed as a referendumon Kadima’s plans to disengage from the West
Bank, but it also proved to be a vote oneconomic policies that many
believed had harmed the disadvantaged. Kadima came in first,but by
a smaller margin than polls had predicted. Labor, emphasizing
socioeconomic issues,came in a respectable second. Likud lost 75%
of its votes from 2003 because Kadimadrained off supporters. Its
decline also was due to Netanyahu, whose policies as
FinanceMinister were blamed for social distress and whose
opposition to unilateral disengagementwas unpopular with an
increasingly pragmatic, non-ideological electorate.
Background
2003 election and later developments
In the
2003
elections, Likud, under the leadership of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had a convincing win by Israeli
standards, winning 38 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament),
with Sharon perceived as tough anti-terrorist leader on the wings
of his 2002
Operation
Defensive Shield. Labour, led by
Amram
Mitzna under slogans for "disengagement" from Gaza, won only 19
seats and did not initially join the new government.
Following
the 2003 elections Likud suffered severe divisions over several
positions taken by Sharon, most notably his adoption of a plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and
troops from the Gaza
Strip
. [202638] This was exactly the position taken by Labour
and denounced as being defeatist by Sharon prior to the 2003
elections, so it caused tension within the Likud party and in
January
2005 Shimon
Peres led Labour into a coalition with Sharon to allow the Gaza
withdrawal to proceed despite opposition from a majority of Likud
members.
Fall of the Likud-led government
As of the fall of 2005, Peres's Labour Party was providing the
votes necessary for the Likud-led 30th Government to maintain its
majority support in the Knesset. In Labour's internal leadership
election scheduled for early November,
Amir
Peretz campaigned for the party leadership on a platform that
included withdrawing Labor from the Sharon-led coalition. Peretz
narrowly defeated Peres in the leadership election on November 9,
2005, and two days later all Labor ministers resigned from the
Cabinet and Labour withdrew its support for the Government, leaving
it without majority support in the Knesset.
Negotiations between Sharon and Peretz set the election date for 28
March 2006. "I'm letting him [Sharon] choose a date in that period
between the end of February and the end of March and whatever date
he chooses is acceptable to me, the earlier the better," Peretz
said at the time. Sharon said: "As soon as it became clear that the
existing political framework was falling apart, I came to the
conclusion that the best thing for the country is to hold new
elections as soon as possible."
Likud split and the formation of Kadima
The impending elections raised the prospect of a leadership
election within Likud, with former Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu expected to challenge
Sharon for the party leadership. In late November, Sharon and a
number of other Likud ministers and Knesset members announced that
they were leaving Likud to form a new, more centrist party, which
was eventually named Kadima. The formation of Kadima turned the
election into a three-way race among the new party, Labor and
Likud, marking a shift from Israel's tradition of elections
dominated by
two major
parties.
Although Kadima was formed primarily of former Likud members, Peres
(having lost the Labor leadership election to Peretz) also
announced his support for the new party, and later officially left
Labor. Peres cited Sharon's leadership skills as a reason for his
party switch.
Polls taken through the end of 2005 showed Sharon's Kadima Party
enjoying a commanding lead over both Labor and Likud.
Party leadership and list selections
Sharon, as founder of Kadima and incumbent Prime Minister, was
universally expected to lead the new party into the March 2006
election. However, on 4 January 2006, Sharon suffered a
hemorrhagic stroke, leaving him in a
coma. On 31 January 2006, Kadima submitted its list of candidates,
with Sharon excluded from the list due to his inability to sign the
necessary documents to be a candidate.
Ehud
Olmert who had become Acting Prime Minister and acting chairman
of Kadima when Sharon became incapacitated, now officially became
the new party's candidate for Prime Minister. Peres was placed
second on Labor's list of candidates. Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni was placed third on the Kadima list,
with the understanding that she would be the senior Vice Premier if
Kadima formed the next government.
In the
Shinui primaries, Tel Aviv
council
member Ron Levintal defeated Avraham
Poraz for the number 2 spot. Poraz, a close ally of
party leader
Yosef Lapid, subsequently
resigned from Shinui, as did most Shinui Knesset members, forming a
breakaway party called
Hetz
(ha-Miflaga ha-Hilonit Tzionit or 'the Secular Zionist Party').
Lapid resigned as party leader on 25 January 2006, and Leventhal
was subsequently elected the new party leader. Neither Shinui nor
Hetz received sufficient votes to win any seats in the 17th
Knesset. Shinui had won 15 seats in the 2003 election and was the
third largest party in the 16th Knesset.
On 30 January 2006 the right-wing
National Union (Halchud HaLeumi), a
coalition of three small parties (
Moledet,
Tkuma, Tzionut Datit Leumit Mitchadeshet),
submitted a joint list with the
National Religious Party. The
merged list is headed by
Binyamin
Elon. The largely Russian immigrant
Israel Beytenu (Israel Our Home) party has
separated from National Union and is running a separate list.
This separation occurred following polls that predicted that, when
running separately, these two major rightist blocs would receive
between 20 to 25 seats (in the previous elections, they had
received only 7), and it turned out to be true: the
National
Union bloc received 9 seats and
Israel Beytenu
received 11.
Likud selected Netanyahu as its leader, over then-Defense Minister
Silvan Shalom. At Netanyahu's
insistence, Shalom and the other remaining Likud ministers resigned
from the Olmert-led government in January 2006.
Polls conducted from January through March showed Kadima still
enjoying a substantial lead, though somewhat reduced from polls
taken under Sharon's leadership.
Key issues
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Fighting Palestinian militancy
During the
al-Aqsa Intifada, more
than a thousand Israelis were killed in Palestinian militant
attacks.
Israel's security policy during that time was
focused on arresting or killing members of the militant
organizations, through frequent military excursions into the
Palestinian
territories
and (somewhat controversially) targeted assassinations, and to curb the movement of
suspected militants - especially would-be suicide bombers - through
the use of checkpoints. This policy won the support of the
Jewish mainstream, but elements in the Jewish left, as well as the
vast majority of the Arab population, vehemently opposed what they
saw as excessive response to the security threat. Some claimed that
Israel's policy was in fact encouraging more violence from the
Palestinian side.Despite the decrease in violence during 2005 and
2006, or perhaps because of it, popular support for the security
policy remained high among the Israeli public, which continued to
fear suicide bombings and
Qassam
rocket attacks.
During the 2006 electoral campaign, the center and right parties
vowed to continue the relentless fight against the Palestinian
militants. Even
Labor, which was
traditionally known for its dovish views, put "combating terrorism"
at the top of its agenda on the Conflict. Opposition to the current
security policy, especially the use of targeted assassinations and
the existence of checkpoints on Palestinian soil, comes mainly from
Jewish left parties such as
Meretz and from
the Arab parties.
Solutions to the conflict
In the
wake of the disengagement plan,
the political field in Israel split into two roughly distinct
groups: those who are in favor of withdrawing from most or all of
the West
Bank
(unofficially nicknamed "Blues"), and those who
wish for that area to remain under Israeli control (so-called
"Orange"). In particular,
Ariel
Sharon and his faction left
Likud to form
Kadima because of their support of ending
Israeli control over the West Bank. However, the two groups are
also divided internally as to what practical steps need to be taken
during the next few years.
- Meretz supported bilateral negotiations
as the only path towards peace.
- Labor and Kadima both advocated further negotiations, but the
supposed non-existence of a partner for peace on the Palestinian
side (following Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian
elections) brings them to strongly consider "shaping Israel's
permanent borders" through a unilateral withdrawal from most of the
West Bank, leaving in place the large settlement blocs and the Jewish
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
These borders will be marked by the completed separation barrier. Kadima leader
Ehud Olmert used the term "Convergence Plan" (תכנית
ההתכנסות).
- Yisrael Beytenu supported
continued Israeli control of most settlements, but offers to cede
some Israeli Arab cities and uninhabited territories to the
Palestinian Authority in exchange.
- Likud advocated an expansion of the
separation barrier to include more territory on the Israeli side,
and continued Israeli control of the Jordan Valley, the whole of
Jerusalem and the settlement blocs.
- National Union-National Religious Party vehemently
opposed any more unilateral withdrawals, and supports the
strengthening of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
- Herut – The
National Movement and the Jewish National Front, two fringe
nationalist groups, supported a massive population transfer of the Arabs under
Israeli control - both Palestinians and Israeli citizens - to
neighboring Arab countries as a solution to the conflict. While
Herut supports "voluntary transfer" through the creation of a
compensation mechanism, the Front does not rule out forced
transfer.
Economic and social issues
Since Israel's establishment, the political scene has been
dominated by security and peace issues. The major parties were
mainly divided by the different approaches with regard to the
Israeli-Arab and
Israeli-Palestinian
conflicts.
The 2006 elections mark the first time a major party - the Labor
Party - has placed economic and social issues on top of its agenda.
This is mainly attributed to
Amir
Peretz's surprise victory over
Shimon
Peres in the November 2005 Labour leadership election; Peretz
had left the party a few years earlier to form the socialist
One Nation, which had only
recently merged into Labour.
Labour's
social democratic
approach, which includes promises to raise the
minimum wage and allocate a
pension for every worker, now stands in sharp
contrast to the
neo-liberal agenda
promoted by
Likud leader
Binyamin Netanyahu. Serving as Finance
Minister from 2003 to 2005, Netanyahu led a policy that encouraged
economic growth and lower taxes at
the expense of Israel's long-running welfare mechanism. This has
alienated him from many
Likud supporters,
which traditionally hail from the lower and middle classes. In the
campaign, Netanyahu claimed to have done this to "save the
Israeli economy from collapse."
In addition to Labor, the orthodox religious
Shas, which has always claimed to champion the poor in
Israeli society, also attacked Netanyahu's policies during the
campaign, as did a number of small (and often new) socialist
parties.
Israel as a Jewish and democratic state
Relations between Jewish Law (Halacha)
and the state
From 1948 to 2003, religious parties played a part in every
coalition formed in Israel.
Zionist
religious parties focused on maintaining the balance between
observants and seculars in issues such as
education,
Kashrut, keeping
the
Sabbath and
matrimonial law, while
Haredi parties demanded funds for religious
scholars and the continued exemption of their followers from
military service (decided on by
David
Ben Gurion in 1951.) All of this alienated many secular
Israelis, who felt their personal freedoms were being infringed
upon and that they were unfairly carrying most of the burden. This
led to the rise of
Shinui, which at the
2003 elections won
15 out of 120 seats and joined
Ariel
Sharon's coalition. Shinui failed in making significant changes
to the status quo on religious issues, and quit the government in
2005 after Sharon decided to transfer funds to the orthodox
United Torah Judaism party. An
internal quarrel caused most Knesset members from Shinui to form a
new party (
Hetz); both
parties ran in the 2006 elections, although neither of them
received any mandates.
Shinui, Hetz,
Meretz,
and
Ale Yarok wish to promote what they
see as key secular and democratic principles:
- Allowing businesses to remain open and public transportation to
operate during the Sabbath;
- Abolishing the Orthodox monopoly on conducting marriage and
divorce between Jewish couples (which in fact
prevents many couples from getting married in Israel) by
instituting civil marriage, including
for homosexuals;
- Allowing the public sale of pork (forbidden
under Kashrut laws);
- Committing Orthodox religious scholars to military
service.
The various religious parties, both Zionist (
National Religious Party) and
Haredi (
Shas,
United Torah Judaism) strictly oppose
these changes. They wish to see Israel's Jewish character
strengthened through further enforcement of the
Sabbath and changes in the educational system.
Relations between Jews and Arabs
Israeli Arabs constitute roughly 20%
of the population in Israel. Many Israeli Arab groups claim
continued institutional and social discrimination against them in
Israel. Because they are not Jews and many identify ethnically with
Palestinians their identity often
clashes with their citizenship in the Jewish state. There are large
disparities in general living standard and education between
Israeli Arabs and the non-Arab Israeli population; they also have a
lower participation rate in the workforce. Discrimination and a
lower proportion of females in the workforce are often cited as
reasons for this. See
Israeli
Arab.
The Arab parties, the largest of which are the
United Arab List,
Balad and
Hadash (a Jewish-Arab communist party, with mostly
Arab composition and electorate), advocate abolition of all forms
of ethnic inequality, and the establishment of a democratic
bi-national state.
Procedures
See also: Elections in
Israel
Elections to the Knesset allocate 120 seats by
party-list proportional
representation, using the
d'Hondt
method. The
election
threshold for the 2006 election was set at 2% (up from 1.5% in
previous elections), which is a little over two seats.
After official results are published, the
President of Israel delegates the task
of forming a government to the Member of Knesset with the best
chance of assembling a majority coalition (usually the leader of
the largest party.) That designee has up to 42 days to negotiate
with the different parties, and then present his government to the
Knesset for a
vote of confidence.
Once the government is approved (by a vote of at least 61 members),
he/she becomes
Prime
Minister.
List of participating parties
| Party |
Ballot
letters
|
Seats
before
election
|
Leader |
Notes |
| Kadima |
כן |
14 |
Ehud Olmert |
Centrist, new party (split from Likud) |
| Labour-Meimad |
אמת |
21 |
Amir Peretz |
Social democratic |
| Likud |
מחל |
29 |
Binyamin Netanyahu |
Conservative |
| Hetz |
חץ |
9 |
Avraham Poraz |
Anti-clerical, liberal, new party
(split from Shinui) |
| Shinui |
יש |
2 |
Ron Levintal |
Secular |
| Shas |
שס |
11 |
Eli Yishai |
Ultra-Orthodox religious, Mizrahi |
| United Torah Judaism |
ג |
5 |
Yaakov Litzman,
Avraham Ravitz
|
Ultra-Orthodox religious, Ashkenazi |
| National Union-National Religious Party |
טב |
10 |
Binyamin Elon |
Nationalist, mostly Zionist
religious
Joint electoral list composed of the National Union and the National Religious Party
|
| Yisrael Beiteinu |
ל |
3 |
Avigdor Lieberman |
Mostly Russian immigrants |
| Meretz-Yachad |
מרצ |
5 |
Yossi Beilin |
Social democratic |
| United Arab List-Ta'al |
עם |
3 |
Ibrahim Sarsur |
Arab, Islamist |
| Balad |
ד |
3 |
Azmi Bishara |
Arab, anti-Zionist |
| Hadash |
ו |
2 |
|
Jewish-Arab, Communist (based on Maki), anti-Zionist |
| Tafnit |
פ |
|
Uzi Dayan |
New party, anti-corruption |
| Ale Yarok |
קנ |
|
Boaz Wachtel |
Advocates legalisation of marijuana
and ecological issues, legalising same-sex marriage |
| Brit Olam |
ה |
|
Ofer Lifshits |
|
| Gil |
זך |
|
Rafi Eitan |
Retiree (pensioner) rights |
| Organization for
Democratic Action |
ק |
|
Agbariyyah Asama' |
Communist |
| Green Party |
רק |
|
Pe'er Visner |
Environmentalist |
| HaLev |
פץ |
|
Eliezer Levinger |
Consumer rights |
| Arab National Party |
קפ |
|
Muhammad Kanan |
Arab, anti-Zionist |
| New Zionism |
צה |
|
Ya'akov Kfir |
Advocates rights of Holocaust
survivors |
| Jewish National Front |
כ |
|
Baruch Marzel |
Jewish nationalist, Kahanist |
| Lev LaOlim |
פז |
|
Ovadia Fathov |
|
| Herut – The
National Movement |
נץ |
|
Michael Kleiner |
Nationalist |
| Lekhem |
ז |
|
Yisrael Tvito |
|
| Leeder |
ף |
|
Aleksandr Radko |
Russian immigrant, related to Liberal Democratic Party of
Russia |
| Oz LaAniyim |
פכ |
|
Felix Angel |
Socialist |
| Atid Ehad |
זה |
|
Avraham Negusah |
Ethiopian and American immigrants |
| Justice for
All |
קז |
|
Yaakov Shlosser |
Men's rights |
| Tzomet |
כץ |
|
Moshe Grin |
Nationalist |
Note: traditional
left-
right divisions in Israel are different
than in most countries, being mostly based on the different
positions with regard to security and the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
For example, the left-wing
Meretz-Yachad mainly advocates negotiations
with the Palestinians along the lines of the
Geneva Initiative, while the right-wing
National Union is opposed to
any territorial concessions, yet both parties have strong histories
of tabling social/welfare laws.
Pre-election opinion polling
Numbers in the table below are seats, out of a total of 120, as
predicted by opinion polls prior to the election.
As the
electoral threshold
stands at 2%, it is impossible for a party to receive only one seat
in the Knesset.
Note: Most Israeli pollsters lump the "Arab" parties together, so
that the listed number is the total number of seats that the three
main Arab lists (Raam, Balad, Hadash) are expected to obtain. In
the event that one or more of the three lists does not pass the 2%
threshold, the representation of these parties will be one to three
fewer seats than listed by the polls.
1 National Union and Yisrael Beiteinu together have 7
seats.
2 Dahaf - published in
Yediot
Aharonot (and/or its affiliate site
Ynet) with the remark "The votes of the
undecided were assigned to parties on the basis of additional
questions."
Results
Other parties that did not pass the minimum threshold (2%, 62,741
votes) to enter the knesset:
The
turnout was the lowest in Israeli
legislative election history, 63.6% of
eligible voters,
compared to 68.9% in
2003 and 78.7% in
1999. The turnout of 62.5% in 2001 prime-ministerial
election is the lowest in nationwide elections.
Results by city
Immediate impact and coalition formation
For the second time in Israeli history (previously in 1999), no
dominant party sits in the Knesset, only two medium (Kadima and
Labor) and small-sized ones. Following the election Olmert stated
that he prefers entering into a coalition with Labor, and that
Peretz is a "suitable partner."
On 2 April both Gil and Meretz recommended to Katzav that Olmert
become Prime Minister. The next day, at a joint appearance, Olmert
and Peretz announced that Kadima and Labor would be coalition
partners and that Peretz would advise the President to tap Olmert
as Prime Minister
[202639].
On 6 April President Katzav formally asked Olmert to form a
government officially making him Prime Minister-designate. A
coalition government was formed
consisting of
Kadima,
Labour,
Shas and
Gil. Olmert refused to accede
to Peretz's demands for the Finance ministry, who was forced to
accept the Defense ministry instead.
In October 2006 with the coalition shaken after the
2006 Lebanon War, Olmert brought the
right-wing
Yisrael Beiteinu into
government as well. However, they left the coalition in January
2008 in protest at peace talks with the
Palestinian National
Authority.
See also
References
- [http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/66767.pdf Israel:
Background and Relations with the United States
- The official turnout is based on the number of eligible voters,
however, that number is somewhat misleading since the count of
eligible voters includes a significant number of Israeli citizens
who in fact cannot vote. This consists mainly of a large number of
citizens residing or travelling abroad on the day of the election
(and are thus prohibited from voting, unless they are members of
the diplomatic corps who are allowed to vote abroad; otherwise they
must travel to Israel on election day if they wish to exercise
their right to vote). It also includes some deceased voters who
have yet to be removed from the voter registration rolls. All
Israeli citizens are automatically registered to vote, and thus in
Israel there is no distinction between registered voters and
eligible voters, as there is in the U.S., for example. Moreover,
the rules defining who is allowed to vote by absentee ballot are
much more restrictive than those in the U.S., for example. When
these factors are taken into account the actual voter turnout is
about 5% higher than the figure cited above.
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