Israel maintains democracy in otherwise unstable region

It’s politics as usual in Israel. Early last week,
Israel’s Labor Party left Ariel Sharon’s unity
government in a dispute over budget allocations.

Sharon was then forced to make a decision: he could either
invite fringe right-wing parties to join his government or he could
call for early elections. On Wednesday, Sharon reluctantly went
with the latter approach, all the while admitting that elections
are the last thing that Israel needs.

As in any political story-line, the plot thickens. But first
some background. As a parliamentary democracy, Israel’s
electoral system differs from the Jeffersonian democracy of the
United States. Israel’s political system is neither
bi-cameral nor is it bi-partisan. Israel has a uni-cameral
parliament (the Knesset), with 120 seats spread amongst 19
different political parties. Israel’s two largest political
parties are the right-leaning Likud party (of which Sharon is a
member), and the left-leaning Labor party (of which former Prime
Minister Yitzchak Rabin was a member).

The Knesset also has Arab members and Arab parties. Since no
single party has ever held a majority of the 120 seats in
Israel’s 54 year history, all Israeli
“governments” are formed by a coalition of parties.
Nineteen months ago, Ariel Sharon was able to organize the largest
such coalition in Israel’s history with over 80 members. The
departure of the Knesset’s largest party, the Labor Party, from
Sharon’s government forced him to call for early elections
likely to be held on January 28, 2003.

And this is where it gets interesting. One of the consequences
of the Labor Party’s departure from Ariel Sharon’s
government is that he now has to fill important positions vacated
by members of the Labor Party, including the coveted defense and
foreign minister positions. For the post of defense minister,
Sharon nominated Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defense Force’s
Chief of Staff until four months ago. For the position of foreign
minister, Sharon invited his rival in the Likud Party, and former
prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, who has been on a hiatus from Israeli politics since
1999, has made no secret of his wanting to return to the Knesset.
But it doesn’t stop there: Netanyahu has publicly stated that he
intends on challenging Sharon for the Likud Party’s
leadership, and the prime minister’s position that would likely
come with it. You heard me right.

Netanyahu will be representing Ariel Sharon and the Israeli
government to the rest of the world while at the same time
campaigning against Ariel Sharon for the leadership of the Likud
Party. This is the equivalent of Colin Powell announcing tomorrow
that he intends on challenging President Bush for the Republican
Party’s presidential nomination in 2004.

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? The Israeli government
could never function! Actually, nothing could be further from the
truth. In a region where dictatorships and theocracies are
commonplace, Israel has developed and maintained one of the
strongest democracies in the world.

Regardless of who will be elected as Israel’s next prime
minister, the fundamental policy of the Israeli government will not
change: securing the Jewish state while at the same time keeping
the door open for negotiations with the Palestinians. Netanyahu
showed his commitment to peace when he (with Ariel Sharon) signed
the historic Wye River Accords with the Palestinian Authority. And
to this day, Ariel Sharon continues to hold high-level negotiations
with Palestinian diplomats ““ sometimes sending his own son as
his personal emissary.

What the Israeli government (and the rest of the region) really
needs right now is a partner in the Palestinian people. I think it
is insulting to the Palestinian people to have a thug like Yasser
Arafat dictate their policies.

The time for peace in the Middle East has come. But before there
can be peace, there has to be an end to Palestinian terror, and
there has to be a complete reformation of the Palestinian political
system.