Israeli Democracy Under Stress 9781685856465

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Israeli Democracy Under Stress

An Israel Democracy Institute Policy Study

Israeli Democracy Under Stress edited by

Ehud Sprinzak Larry Diamond

Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder & London

Published in the U n i t e d States of A m e r i c a in 1993 by L y n n e R i e n n e r Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, B o u l d e r , C o l o r a d o 80301 and in the U n i t e d K i n g d o m by Lynne R i e n n e r Publishers, Inc. 3 I lenrietta Street, C o v e n t G a r d e n , L o n d o n W C 2 E 8 L U Published for the Israel D e m o c r a c y Institute P.O.B. 4702 J e r u s a l e m , Israel 91040 © 1993 by Israel D e m o c r a c y Institute. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Israeli democracy under stress / edited by E h u d Sprinzak and Larry D i a m o n d . (An Israel D e m o c r a c y Institute policy study) Includes bibliographical r e f e r e n c e s and index. ISBN 1-55587-378-2 (hardcover, alk. p a p e r ) 1-55587-380-4 (pbk., alk. p a p e r ) 1. Israel—Politics and g o v e r n m e n t . 2. Democracy—Israel. 3. Bureaucracy—Israel. 4. Israel. K n e s s e t — R e f o r m . 5. Elections—Israel. I. Sprinzak, E h u d . II. D i a m o n d , Larry Jay. III. Series. JQ1825.P359I87 1993 320.95694—dc20 92-33569 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this b o o k is available f r o m t h e British Library.

Printed and b o u n d in the U n i t e d States of A m e r i c a T h e p a p e r used in this publication m e e t s t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s of the A m e r i c a n National S t a n d a r d for P e r m a n e n c e of P a p e r for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

In Memory of Avner Yaniv

Contents

Foreword Arye Carmon 1 2

Introduction Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond Democracy as Paradox Larry Diamond

PART 1 3 4

6 7 8

9 10

21

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POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

The Electoral System, Government, and Democracy Vernon Bogdanor Israeli Democracy and Democratic Reform in Comparative Perspective Arend Lijphart Rights and Democracy: The Court's Performance Pnina Lahav Israel's Political Economy Ira Sharkansky

PART 3

1

HISTORICAL ORIGINS

The Origins of Israeli Political Culture Myron J. Aronoff The Historical Origins of Israeli Democracy Yonathan Shapiro

PART 2 5

IX

83 107 125 153

POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES

Elite Illegalism in Israel and the Question of Democracy Ehud Sprinzak The Politics of Provocation Revisited: Participation and Protest in Israel Gadi Wolfsfeld vii

173 199

viii 11 12

Contents

Trends in the Commitment to Democracy: 1987-1990 Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar and Yochanan Peres The Israeli Public and the Intifada: Attitude Change or Entrenchment? Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar

PART 4 13

14 15

16

17

18

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POLITICAL C U L T U R E A N D SOCIAL C L E A V A G E S

Democratic Politics and Culture in Modern Israel: Recent Trends Yaron Ezrahi Religion and Democracy in Israel Charles S. Liebman Political Education in the Midst of a National Identity Crisis: The Compatibility of Judaism and Democracy as a Pedagogical Theme A rye Carmon Class, Ethnic, and National Cleavages and Democracy in Israel Sammy Smooha The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Israeli Democracy Yoram Peri

PART 5

221

255 273

293

309 343

CONCLUSION

Directions for Reform Larry Diamond and Ehud Sprinzak

361

About the Contributors Index About the Israel Democracy Institute About the Book

375 379 384 385

Foreword Arye Carmon

"Israeli Democracy Under Stress" was the title of a conference held by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, in June 1990. The three-day gathering was aimed at developing practical recommendations for educational, legal, and institutional changes that could improve the functioning of democracy in Israel. This volume is an outcome of that conference. At the time of the conference, reaching an "Age of Reform" was a farfetched vision. The years that have since passed, however, could be described as dramatic, dynamic, and filled with intensive, sometimes radical changes in the political climate surrounding democratic institutions and values in Israel. Indeed, the character of Israeli democracy has changed in more ways during the past two years than in the previous decade. While there is still much to be done in order to strengthen democratic institutions and reinforce democracy's ideational underpinnings, it seems that the period of stagnation and political stalemate in Israel has ended. The first indications of this appeared during the final stages of the Twelfth Knesset (Israel's parliament): the largest political party underwent internal restructuring by introducing new ways of selecting its candidates; the national medical system, to a large extent a manifestation of the state's old, social-democratic concept of statehood, has undergone drastic reform in the direction of privatization; and the election results of June 1992 indicate that public sentiment is playing a new, hitherto unknown role in Israeli political life. The wheels of reform have started spinning, and Israel has apparently crossed the threshold into that "Age of Reform." During the same period, IDI, the first action-oriented policy center in Israel, evolved from its embryonic stage into an established and well-respected entity. Equipped with comprehensive analyses of various aspects of Israeli democracy developed during the conference, IDI has endeavored to make its mark, and has become an external counterpart of the reform process in the Knesset. The deliberations of the conference and the analyses presented in this ix

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volume have helped to develop the Institute's basic guidelines and operating principles. The most prominent of these is the view that Israeli democracy and political culture are those of a polity in the making. It has been a little over four decades since the Jewish nation's first experience with the responsibilities of political sovereignty. Israel's political culture has no source of political tradition. It has had to grope with the challenge of modeling the traits, norms, and values of that political tradition from scratch. The Knesset, more than anything else, symbolizes Israel's sense of being a novice in the exercise of political sovereignty. The nation's legislative and political arm could be described as a novel experience. Elected members of Knesset (MKs) roam the parliamentary corridors without a tradition of accumulated parliamentarian experience or a clear tradition of political ground rules. Unlike most of its counterparts in other developed democracies, this central institution lacks many support mechanisms, and its members are isolated f r o m experiences that other parliaments have accumulated and share with one another. It is this fact, together with what has been described above as the operating guidelines of the Institute, that has helped to define IDI's mission to provide its services to the Knesset and the Israeli people. As a policy-oriented institute that endeavors to strengthen democratic institutions and values, IDI has had to confront fundamental questions. How are changes to be effected? Is it feasible, or indeed desirable, to impose a normative framework—that is, to support a radical course of action? Would it not be preferable to intervene gently in molding social political processes by using a step-by-step, long-range strategy? Clearly, Israel's political system must be reformed, and, as mentioned above, initial steps have already been made. The major concern is no longer whether to reform, but which direction and traits reforms should take. In the last two years, and particularly since the government crisis of spring 1990, public sentiment has been angrily aroused. This sentiment and its resultant pressure have endangered some of the major facets of representative democracy. The public's desire for change is coupled with deeply seated tendencies to populism. IDI polls have shown, for example, that over 55 percent of Israelis are willing to replace democracy with the rule of a "strong man." Responding to the public's sentiment, the Knesset enacted a number of what we call "populist" acts. "A change for the sake of change—a change at any price" became the slogan of the day. Proposals for introducing presidential elements into the system have underscored this threat. Israel's political shock absorbers have operated effectively, and the democratic structure in Israel seems to have been healthy enough to absorb these blows thus far. However, serious and professional assistance for the

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legislators, provided by academics and first-rate practitioners, as well as through comparative perspectives, all within the framework of an autonomous "think tank," might, in the long run, prove to be an important and viable instrument for navigating reforms in the right direction. One should not forget that in the process of crystallizing its democratic institutions, Israel has had to cope with existential challenges: the continuing threat to the Jewish State's existence; the need to absorb unprecedented waves of immigration; economic isolation and pressures; and difficult social tensions. These challenges have created a deeply cleaved and heterogeneous society, laden with conflict and lacking any consensual underpinning—a society polarized over its very raison d'état. With this in mind, sensitizing decisionmakers to both the need for reform and the appropriate directions for reform is of the utmost importance. T h e Age of Reform has become a metaphor for describing the substance and intentions of IDI's Political Reform Program. This is both a descriptive and a normative term. Descriptively, it implies a series of structural reforms that touch upon every important sphere of the country's public life. Normatively, it expresses the desire and hope that the limited institutional reforms currently being discussed in Israel should crcate a momentum for a comprehensive reexamination of Israel's entire public domain. The concept of an Age of Reform first emerged at an international conference on Israeli democracy convened by IDI in March 1988. The deliberations at that conference made it clear to most of the participants (some one hundred world-renowned academics from seven countries) that many of the immediate strains on Israeli democracy were products of deeper systemic causes than originally assumed. The conclusion was that a longrange "corrective" approach to the challenges of the Israeli political system was needed, requiring years of research and extensive public education. Consequently, in 1989, IDI became involved in a very intensive effort to reform the Achilles' heel of Israel's public domain—the electoral system. The more the IDI International Forum on Electoral Reform explored the various options involved, the more it learned about the intricate interdependence of the various elements in Israel's public life. If there is one conclusion shared today by all the Forum's members, it is that electoral reform alone is not likely to produce a profound change. By breaking the long pattern of institutional stagnation, electoral reform, as well as other reforms (e.g., democratization of Israeli political parties), could act as a catalyst for a host of other political and social changes in Israel. This conclusion has become central to the Institute's operation. IDI researchers and associates believe in a step-by-step approach. When the J u n e 1990 workshop at the Hoover Institution was planned, we sought a broad intellectual underpinning to substantiate this approach. This vol-

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ume aims to present that underpinning to a broader readership. The Israel Democracy Institute's Political Reform Program, which is, in effect, a policy support system, is a programmatic consequence of the Hoover workshop and has become the centerpiece of IDI programs. Focusing on political reform in Israel, the program strives to provide the best possible professional assistance to lawmakers and decisionmakers in the Knesset, the government, and other central agencies. The proposed programs should become a partial equivalent to services rendered to members of the U.S. Congress by their aides, by the versatile wealth of the Library of Congress, and by many public policy think tanks in the United States. Following are some of the goals of the Political Reform Program: • To provide lawmakers and decisionmakers with the best available information, analysis, and alternative recommendations pertaining to numerous aspects of political reform • To establish on-line computerized data services in the relevant agencies to assist in the legislation and decisionmaking processes • To broaden the views of lawmakers and decisionmakers among the Knesset members and high-ranking officials in government and private agencies, by making resources from experts of parliamentary systems and parliamentarians from other countries available to them • To educate decisionmakers and the public at large about the importance of changing the stagnated political system and the stalemated bureaucracy, both for the future of democracy and as a basis for a flourishing economy The program already has a number of projects on its agenda, as described below. Electoral Reform The electoral reform currently under consideration includes the introduction of regional constituencies into the prevailing system of proportional representation. Issues raised and carefully studied by such a reform are the functioning of the Knesset under the new system and the effects of the suggested reform on accountability in Israel's political life. Should new legislation be introduced to institutionalize the relationship between a Knesset member and his constituency? Should the forces of the "political market" be allowed to work freely? What about the Knesset committees that have failed to provide an effective check on the executive? Should

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these committees be given "teeth" so that Knesset members can supervise the central government ministries and thus represent the voters better? Should other structural changes be proposed to improve the functioning of the Knesset? These and other questions pertaining to the Israeli legislature are the subject of a comparative study of several democratic parliaments.

Democratizing Israeli Political Parties One of the badly needed areas of reform in Israel is that of the political parties. Many parties in Israel, especially the older ones, have not changed their structure and modes of operation since the prestate period. Recently, the Labor Party, winner of the 1992 elections, underwent an internal reform by introducing a new way of selecting its candidates to the Knesset. The entire rank and file of the party were given the opportunity to participate in the selection. IDI assisted the party throughout its reform process. IDI is also involved with the introduction of a new, more open system of selecting candidates within the Likud Party. This IDI program will evolve on several dimensions: the relationship between the individual party member and his representative, the selection of candidates to public office, and the development of new party models to introduce internal democratic procedures into Israel's parties. Appropriate general and internal party legislation to implement these changes will also be considered.

Continuing Reform in Local Government The only political areas in Israel in which significant reform has already been achieved is that of local government. In 1975, a Knesset law introduced direct election of mayors, changed the rules of the game, and improved the quality of the heads of local government overnight. But there are still problems involving the municipal councils, local party politics, and the municipal bureaucracy. More important is the structural problem of the relationship between the central and local governments. Israel is highly centralized, and the local authorities are completely dependent on centralized government bureaucracies, both legally and financially. For instance, every local ordinance must be approved by the minister of the interior. Similarly, over 50 percent of the local authorities' budgets are derived in various ways from the central government. This is an unhealthy relationship, with too many loopholes for political corruption. Good studies of the reform needed in this area have been conducted. Unfortunately, their recommendations have not been implemented. The

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purpose of our project is to reexamine the previous studies and evaluate their accomplishments and shortcomings. It analyzes the current dependence of local government on the central government—politically, bureaucratically, and financially—and recommends changes. Finally, it will suggest legislation and other mechanisms to enhance community and local initiative and development.

Israel's Political-Economic Complex Academic analysis, numerous proposals, and many discussions have been devoted to economic reform in Israel. However, while economists, businessmen, and well-wishers agree that there is a need for major economic reform, not many fully comprehend the need to focus first on changes in specific areas within the political structure as a necessary precondition for achieving that reform. It is with this in mind that IDI has targeted two areas in which economic reform is undermined by political considerations and interests: the budgeting process, and the integration of the Israeli capital market into the world economy. In November 1992, IDI held an international conference of experts on "The Political-Economic Complex of Israeli Democracy." This conference proved to be a milestone in the analysis and promotion of political and economic reform. Its goal surpassed the mapping and analysis of these areas. In it, concrete policy recommendations, options for change, and tangible political marketing methods for implementing suggested changes were presented and discussed.

Depoliticizing Public Administration In the last decade, Israelis have witnessed unprecedented politicization of the public administration. The process has become so intense that the state comptroller issued a devastating report that led to police investigations of government officials. The politicization of the administration is just another facet of the Israeli system of government and the role played by the political parties in nominations, budget allocations, and policy execution. Between the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1980s, there was great progress, including legislation aimed at keeping politics out of the public administration. A decline in this trend in the 1980s was caused by several political changes, including the establishment of the national unity coalition, which introduced an Israeli version of the "spoils" system. IDI's research will concentrate on proposing various means, procedural as well

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as legal, to prevent politicization of the state administration and the public sector, particularly government corporations.

Reducing Bureaucracy and Red Tape In addition to its intense politicization and huge size, Israel's public administration suffers from overbureaucratization and red tape, both of which make the life of an Israeli citizen unbearable. Almost every private initiative in Israel requires a license, the signature of at least two clerks, and the payment of some tax. An Israeli who wants to open a shop or a small business may, on occasion, spend months in government offices before his application is either approved or rejected. To buy an apartment in Israel is relatively easy, but to have it registered in one's name is a nightmare. The idea of a service-oriented "civil service" has not been very popular in Israeli bureaucracy. The national bureaucracy has also been a deterrent for potential investors and well-intentioned entrepreneurs. Israeli bureaucracy may, in fact, be one of the reasons why the economy has been consistently mismanaged. No single research project of the kind proposed here could cope with this problem of bureaucratization, which stands in the way of Israel's modernization. A preliminary critical survey may, however, define the issue in more precise terms and delineate parameters for a much larger study and public action.

Defending the Legal System In the highly politicized Israeli public sphere, the legal system, and particularly the Supreme Court, has always been a highly regarded independent institution, defending the rule of law and citizens' freedom. However, over the years, even the legal system has been exposed to pressures and difficulties. A1986 crisis, which led to the unprecedented dismissal by the government of the attorney general, exposed the fact that the constitutional safeguards of the rule of law in Israel are flawed and depend on the goodwill of the politicians. The lack of a written constitution in Israel and the want of a comprehensive bill of rights seem to make the efficient functioning of the legal system more difficult. The fact that there has been little political interference in the domain of the judiciary so far is no guarantee that such action will not take place in the future. The main issue here is referred to in Israel as the "legalization of politics"—namely, sensitive political and administrative issues are increasingly being referred to the Supreme Court. The research project, focusing on the defense of the legal system, will

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examine this critical question from both the legal and political points of view. Some more mundane problems involve the small number of judges and courts, and the inability of the justice administration to respond to growing demands for justice in a reasonable time. The suggested research will examine the legal system in its entirety and suggest ways and means to secure its continuous ability to function. With the above projects and with its commitment to a nonpartisan professional mode of operation, IDI has become a meaningful facilitator in introducing its Age of Reform concept to Israeli political culture. This book represents an important step in mobilizing the ideas and analyses needed to inform and guide the reform process. Arye Carmon President, Israel Democracy Institute

Introduction Ehud Sprinzak and Larry

Diamond

This book was conceived during the late 1980s, at a time of growing stress and crisis in Israeli government, politics, and society. This stress reflected not only bitter and debilitating divisions in the polity but a disturbing atmosphere of stagnation around the Jewish State, a sense of collective fatigue and decline of public spirit. Cynicism abounded in politics, both in the making and remaking of political deals and in the reactions of Israeli citizens to this horse trading. There were few signs that Israeli leaders understood the tremendous risks and possibilities at stake. Since the first drafts of these chapters were presented and discussed in 1990, however, significant changes have occurred in the nature and direction of politics in Israel. In 1991, the threshold for election to the Knesset was raised by that body from 1 to 1.5 percent—a very modest change, but the first since the creation of the Jewish State four decades previously. In March 1992, the Knesset adopted a partial electoral reform plan providing for direct popular election of the prime minister (beginning with elections to the Fourteenth Knesset after 1992). While this initiative was opposed by many reform elements who favored a different approach to breaking the chronic political stalemate, it nevertheless was a substantial change with potentially great consequences for national politics and governance. The amendment to the Basic Law: Government providing for direct election also forbids the offering of a government job to someone who has switched parties, making for a more stable parliamentary politics. Also in March 1992, in its waning days, the Twelfth Knesset passed three very important additional reform laws. One, passed as a Basic Law, assures every citizen the freedom to work in any occupation. Another Basic Law deals with the "Dignity of Man and His Freedom." This law explicitly authorizes the Supreme Court to overturn any law that violates human rights, and thus grants the Court power to act, de facto, as a constitutional court. Together, these two laws strengthen the foundations of liberal democracy in Israel and represent further incremental progress toward constructing a constitution for the state of Israel, though much remains to be done in that task, as we discuss in the Conclusion to this 1

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volume.1 The third law, on political parties, requires for the first time that political parties establish written constitutions and that they adhere to them. The spirit of reform was also reflected in the June 1992 election for the Thirteenth Knesset. In preparation for that contest, the Labor Party adopted a system of nationwide "primary elections" to choose its candidate for prime minister and its slate for the Knesset, and Likud is now contemplating a similar reform in its own nominating procedures. Furthermore, the 1992 election reflected a changed political climate (in part because of the immigration of 400,000 Russian Jews) and, with the effect as well of the increased electoral threshold, produced a more decisive outcome, with a clearer governing mandate for the leading party, a reduced number of parties in parliament, and somewhat diminished leverage for small religious and extremist parties. At this writing, a host of new reform initiatives are now on the agenda, many the work of the IDI, as outlined by Arye Carmon in his foreword. These trends are encouraging; finally, it appears that Israel has entered the "Age of Reform" we believe is necessary to deepen, renovate, and revitalize its democracy. Nevertheless, the initial premise of our undertaking still holds in large measure. While very promising, the reforms enacted to date are only partial, and may fall well short of expectations because so many other elements of the system remain in place. Israel remains a democracy under stress and in need of renovation. Most of its public institutions have not changed in a long time. Political, economic, and social structures that had been hastily created to meet the needs of the little over half a million Jews who gained independence more than forty-four years ago still dominate the life of over five million Israelis. It is no surprise that most of these structures have been inefficient, obsolete, and expensive to maintain. Israel is exceedingly political, too centralized, and too bureaucratized. There are many excuses for the stagnation of Israeli society. Very few nations have had to cope with existential challenges like those faced by the young Jewish State: the creation of a nation-state after two thousand years of exile and persecution and making the desert bloom, the persistent threat of annihilation by its vastly more numerous neighbors, the consequent need to invest a massive proportion of its resources (financial and human) in defense, the absorption of huge numbers of penniless immigrants from diverse cultures, the Arab boycott and the nation's economic isolation, and the decades-long hostility of the Communist and Third World blocs. However, this volume asks not only how can we explain Israel's public stalemate, but, also, what can be done about it? This book stems from a conference, "Israeli Democracy Under Stress," held at the Hoover Institution in June 1990, and cosponsored

Introduction

3

by the Israel Democracy Institute. It convened in response to a growing concern among Israeli and non-Israeli academics regarding the functioning of Israeli democracy and the lack of reform initiatives. The meeting was carefully planned in advance with a book in mind, and the authors were asked to address specific aspects of Israel's strained political society. In addition to broad analyses and systemic explanations, all authors were asked to ponder the question of political reform and were encouraged to make concrete policy recommendations. There was one unplanned element that greatly fertilized the conference deliberations: the unexpected March-June 1990 crisis of Israel's unity government. The crisis brought to an end the strange arrangement between Israel's two largest parties, Likud and Labor, according to which the parties had equally shared executive power with a mutual veto on critical matters. That arrangement itself had created a situation of increasing ungovernability and stalemate, as U.S. diplomats discovered when they had to shuttle between Labor and Likud party leaders in discussions sometimes as delicate as those that sought to bridge the divide between Arabs and Israelis. The rupture of the coalition accord in 1990 was initiated by the leaders of the Labor Party, who decided they could no longer live with the militant positions of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir concerning the peace process. Able to solidify a bare majority of Knesset members (61 out of 120) for a vote of nonconfidence, the Laborites were certain of their ability to form an alternative government under Shimon Peres, with the right in opposition. They believed they were finally in a position to regain control of the government, revitalize the peace process that had been frozen by the immobile 1984-1990 unity coalition, and lead the nation to a new era of peace and prosperity. However, in the ensuing negotiations, Labor discovered that it could bring the coalition down but it could not form an alternative government. The cynical behavior of Israel's small ultraorthodox parties, which voted against the Likud but refused to support a Labor-led coalition, created an unprecedented political crisis. For nearly three months the government was at a complete standstill. There was only one item on the agenda of political Israel: ruthless horse trading to assemble a coalition government. In their scramble for power and jobs, both Likud and Labor leaders allowed themselves to be used and humiliated. They were forced to crawl to the doorsteps of the ultraorthodox parties, outbidding each other with incredible offers in exchange for political support. When a new coalition was formed in June 1990 by Shamir, leaving Peres and his colleagues in opposition, it was clear that the Labor Party had not only miscalculated, but it had failed miserably. In fact, the three-month crisis was unprecedented in only one sense: It starkly exposed the malfunctioning of the Israeli system of government

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and, more than ever before, made most Israelis aware of the problem. But almost everything that took place between March and June of 1990 had happened before: coalition horse trading; political blackmail and extortion by small extremist parties; shamelessly open political bribery; blatant and obsessive partisanship by the nation's top policymakers; complete disregard for matters of national interest, such as the state of the economy or the absorption of Soviet Jews; and cynical and paternalistic attitudes toward the Israeli public. What was special about the 1990 spring crisis was that it happened on a larger and more intense scale. The spiritual gurus of the ultraorthodox parties—anti-Zionist rabbis in their eighties and nineties—were made the ultimate judges of Israel's national interest. Hundreds of millions of government dollars were readily committed as coalition bribery to tiny parties. Top ministerial and bureaucratic positions were offered to inexperienced and corrupt MKs in exchange for their votes. Several especially unscrupulous MKs used the opportunity to split from their mother parties, instantly tripling and quadrupling their price in the political supermarket. Painful though it was, the March-June 1990 crisis was instrumental in identifying the malaise in Israeli politics. Israelis who first wondered about the narrow issues of distorted coalition politics started to ask harder questions about their system of government and its ability to make rational decisions on critical questions such as peace, security, and the economy. Questions previously asked by a few isolated critics now became the talk of the country: How can a twenty-five-member cabinet, with an institutionally weak prime minister and politically powerful and independent ministers, reform the nation's faltering economy, cut Israel's huge bureaucracy, and absorb the massive Soviet immigration? Is it fair and democratic to allow a religious minority, whose sons do not serve in the army, to milk the public cow, or pass legislation strongly opposed by the nation's majority? Is a structurally weak prime minister really able to lead the nation toward a peace that, inevitably, will require unpopular but necessary concessions? Is the Israeli system of pure proportional representation, which offers little scope for accountability to voters, really democratic? The participants in our 1990 conference, all highly qualified social scientists, did not need the government crisis to form an opinion about the nature and problems of Israel's body politic. They had largely been aware of the structural constraints of the Israeli regime, but the 1990 crisis made the discussion highly tangible, salient, and even political. Several of the participants had become active in the very angry protest movement that emerged from the crisis and were involved in the making of immediate and specific demands for electoral reform in Israel. Others, who held different views, were worried about the populistic image of the protest and

Introduction

5

its demands, and they fiercely debated their colleagues. Thus what was planned as an academic conference became, in addition, a lively debating forum. This volume deals with Israeli politics and society, but it is not just another collection of descriptive essays on Israel in the 1990s. Most of the contributors share a certain vision of liberal democracy, and they examine Israel's polity and society against this critical yardstick. For the most part, the authors agree that Israel is indeed a democracy—no small historical achievement given the extraordinary challenges it has had to confront and the absence of democracy in the rest of the region. However, Israel's democracy is not functioning well, and is in fact paying an increasingly heavy price, politically, socially, and economically, because of the stresses and shortcomings of its political system. Having identified the Israeli system as a democracy under severe stress, or an incomplete democracy, we search for possible innovations and reforms that can strengthen, improve, and invigorate Israeli democracy. While some of the chapters are vehemently critical, others simply survey the troubled area and point out the existing contradictions. While some are explicitly prescriptive, others are only implicitly so. The chapters in this volume cover the entire spectrum of Israel's public life and are all concerned with the question of democracy. In addition to students of Israeli society, for whom we hope to offer new perspectives, this book is also addressed to those interested in comparative problems of democracy and democratic development. The problems it highlights—a fragmented party system, a deeply divided society, an unsuitable electoral system, an overgrown state sector, unstable and ineffective government, insecure liberty, an ambivalent political culture—are being experienced today by many democracies, both new and old, from India to Poland, from Turkey to Brazil. The one thing common to all of them—and even to more established democracies like Japan and the United States, with their own glaring problems of campaign financing—is the need for reform. These theoretical and comparative problems of democratic functioning form the central concern in Chapter 2, written by Larry Diamond. Diamond shows that all democracies face stresses and paradoxes, and some of these are intrinsically difficult to resolve. Popular participation, and the quest for consensus, for example, may seem natural goals of democracy, but they often come at the cost of weak elites and low effectiveness. A stress on genuine representation of all population groups and interests may produce a political system so fragmented as to be ungovernable, Israel's democracy (with its "pure" proportional representation) being a case in point. This tension between representativeness and governability is one of four paradoxes of democracy that Diamond exam-

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ines. The others are the trade-offs between elite choice and popular participation, between conflict and consensus, and between consent and effectiveness. Diamond reminds us that there are many forms of democracy and that no single static set of institutions can guarantee its success. Most functional democracies work not simply because an appropriate institutional balance has been identified and adopted, but as a result of a long historical experience with turbulent or incomplete democracy, during which the institutional, cultural, and social foundations of effective democracy gradually evolve. Although elite commitment to democracy and its civic values is critical for the success of democracy, the revitalizing activity of nonelite citizens groups is also required to counterbalance the oligarchic nature of elites and hold the state accountable.

Historical Origins The chapters by Myron Aronoff and Yonathan Shapiro introduce our substantive consideration of Israeli democracy by surveying the history of Israel's culture and institutions. Both chapters show that the founding fathers of Israel acted generally within a democratic milieu but did not spend much time clarifying their conception of democracy or refining the appropriate institutional framework for the new Jewish State. Intensely preoccupied by their past memories, as well as by the Eastern European ideologies of their time, they responded to other pressures rather than the question of democracy or the nature of good government. Such ideas as normative pluralism or minority rights were not part of their agenda. This negligence, both Aronoff and Shapiro imply, was to have a very high cost for the regime in later years. Myron Aronoff, who has long studied the political anthropology of Israel, shows in Chapter 3 that the founding fathers of the Jewish State were less occupied by the idea of democracy than by the need to establish the continuity between the ancient past and the contemporary context. This they have done from the perspective of their respective ideologies, socialist Zionism on the one hand and Revisionist Zionism on the other. A highly polarized and polemical debate between political protagonists within the Zionist paradigm has established the parameters of permissible discourse, muting or marginalizing the voices of some groups, such as Orthodox Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The boundaries of Israel's political culture were not set by a debate about the constitutional character of the regime or by the nature of Israeli democracy so much as by strange national rituals involving ancient sites and their meaning, the commemoration of the dead, and other ceremonies involving nationalism and Jewish ethnocentrism.

7

Introduction

In Chapter 4, Yonathan Shapiro shows that the Russian immigrants who started the Zionist polity in Palestine, and who were profoundly influenced by Russian revolutionary socialism, did not introduce liberal democracy, but procedural democracy. Their "majoritarian" democracy implied the belief in the ultimate hegemony of the majority, and a conviction that almost any act of the ruling socialist oligarchy was legitimate if it went through the formal democratic procedures. This idea was closely tied to the notion of ethnic and integral nationalism. The entire Israeli political culture was shaped, according to Shapiro, by Mapai (presently the Labor Party), which dominated the life of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine). The majoritarian conception of democracy espoused by Mapai was highly instrumental in the party's monopolization of political and economic power within the prestate Zionist enclave. Political Israel, according to Shapiro, did not recognize in its formative years the liberal interpretation of democracy that regards individual and minority rights as normative foundations of the regime. It was not sensitive to encroachments against the rules, nor did it appreciate the virtue of effective opposition as a mechanism for generating counterelites and counterideologies. This resulted in an uncritical acceptance by the public of the prevailing dominant ideas. The entire Israeli political culture was shaped, according to Shapiro, by a dominant political party whose ideas of democracy were incomplete at best. Political Institutions Vernon Bogdanor, Arend Lijphart, and Pnina Lahav deal with Israel's most central democratic institutions, the party and electoral system and the judiciary, exposing their structural strains. Approaching the subject from a historical perspective in Chapter 5, Bogdanor traces the evolution of the nation's electoral system and its impact on the executive and legislature. He shows that Israel's extreme form of proportional representation was an excellent system for a small voluntary organization, the Zionist polity in Mandatory Palestine, but has become dysfunctional for a complex nation-state. Several of Israel's most outstanding regime ills stem directly from this obsolete electoral system. Three such weaknesses are particularly damaging: the extreme rigidity of the list system of proportional representation, and its lack of accountability; the absence of territorial electoral districts; and the low threshold (recently raised from 1 to 1.5 percent) needed to gain representation in the Knesset, which makes it possible for small factions to form parties, win a place in the Knesset, and bargain for entry into the government, especially when, as during the 1980s, no party is able to win a commanding plurality of the

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vote. Bogdanor also addresses the low governability of Israel as a result of the constitutional weakness of the prime minister, who is only first among equals, is highly dependent on his powerful coalition ministers, and is hardly ever in a position to hire and fire them in order to impose a unified policy. Bogdanor's proposals for institutional reform consist of three complementary elements: reform of the rules for electing the Knesset, direct election of the prime minister, and introduction of the referendum. Given the highly plural and segmented nature of Israeli society, Bogdanor recommends retaining the basic principles of proportional representation (PR) while ironing out the defects in the current system. Two changes seem particularly desirable: raising the threshold to 3 or 3.5 percent, thereby eliminating very small parties, and introducing territorial constituencies for Knesset members to provide direct voter-representative interaction. While much reform interest in Israel has centered on the German model, which fills half of the parliamentary seats from party lists and half from constituency elections in single-member districts, Bogdanor views single-member districts as unsuitable for Israel (and finds other problems in the German model). Instead, he sees the Swedish system of multimember districts (prevalent in most of the smaller democracies of Western Europe) as more appropriate for Israel, because such a system will facilitate the creation of natural constituencies, encourage candidate choice, and provide better representation of women and minorities. Bogdanor strongly supports direct election of the prime minister, which he argues would produce some separation of powers between the executive and the legislature, strengthen the authority of the chief executive, and induce moderation by compelling the two principal candidates in a run-off election (most likely from Labor and Likud) to compete for the "floating vote in the center." Minor changes and reforms in the position of the prime minister, Bogdnar maintains, are unlikely to be effective; only a change in the political context of the Israeli executive would bring real improvement. Bogdanor's third reform proposal is the introduction of the referendum into the Israeli political system. The referendum would provide legitimacy to critical decisions of war and peace. It would help to resolve potentially divisive and draining political conflicts that are nevertheless not central to the political system. It would also help to adapt the system to a mass political culture that has become distinctly more participatory and less deferential than that experienced by the founding fathers. Addressing the question of democratic reform in Israel from a comparative perspective, Arend Lijphart arrives in Chapter 6 at rather different conclusions from those of Bogdanor. Lijphart's comparative analysis of twenty-four Western democracies places democratic regimes on two

Introduction

9

institutional continua: majoritarian versus consensual and unitary versus federal. Each of the four ideal types is a principle of organization out of which stem a myriad of institutions and procedures. Lijphart's central thesis is that the institutions of a particular democracy and its location on the larger map are not accidental. They reflect distinctive historical, social, and cultural attributes of each country. The quality and stability of democracy depend in part on a proper fit between the country's political institutions and its underlying cleavages and characteristics. Democratic reforms should seek to enhance this fit, or to correct specific defects without radically upsetting it. Sweeping constitutional reforms, which may seem appealing in theory, could do more harm than good if they introduce institutions that fit poorly with the country's cultural, historical, and territorial features. Lijphart shows that Israel's institutional features broadly fit its circumstances: As a highly divided society, its governmental structure is heavily consensual rather than majoritarian; as a small country, its institutions are unitary rather than federal. To switch, as Bogdanor proposes, to the majoritarian framework of a directly elected prime minister, with its "winner-take-all" character and its potential for executive-legislative deadlock, would be precisely the wrong strategy for Israel, Lijphart maintains. Instead, he suggests modest reforms "to try to move [the Israeli system] closer to the center of the conceptual map of democracy by moderating its multipartism and its extreme P R system and by trying to make its cabinets less unwieldy and more stable." Rather than direct election of the prime minister, Lijphart favors the "constructive vote of no confidence." This would somewhat strengthen the executive in that a prime minister could only be removed from office by a vote of no-confidence that, at the same time, elected an alternative prime minister. In other respects, however, Lijphart's proposed reforms resemble those of Bogdanor. raising the minimum electoral threshold up to 3 to 5 percent (or higher) in order to reduce the number of parties and potential coalition partners; opening up Israel's currently very rigid, "closed-list" P R system so as to allow voters some choice in who actually gets elected from each party list; instituting a number of multimember districts instead of the current single, nationwide district; and adopting a written constitution to better entrench the rules and rights of the democratic system. It is precisely this problem of democratic rules and rights—in the absence of a written constitution and bill of rights—that occupies Pnina Lahav in her historical review of Israel's Supreme Court. She argues in Chapter 7 that in spite of the widespread belief that the Court is hyperactive in shaping the Israeli polity, the Court has typically either sided with the leadership or its decisions have been quickly reversed by statutory means. More innovative action in extending civil and political rights has

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been inhibited not only by the conservative and formal style of the Court for long periods of its history, but by the restrictive legal traditions Israel inherited from the colonial regime and by the supremacy of the nation and collectivist values in the Zionist ethos. The Court, according to Lahav, has been modestly successful in bringing about a measure of legality in the everyday actions of the administration and in fostering a liberal conception of rights. Its historic 1953 decision in Kol Haam v. Minister of the Interior significantly constrained the government's power to shackle the press, and a number of landmark decisions expanding civil liberties followed. However, in the absence of a constitution, the record has been uneven, with the Court "allowing much administrative abuse" of civil liberties, especially in the area of national security. In this arena, the Court has done rather little to rein in the problem of "elite illegalism" that is analyzed by Sprinzak in Chapter 9. The most disappointing aspect of the Court's performance, in Lahav's view, has been the double standard it has applied to the occupied territories, where "the Court has sanctioned the most blatant violations of rights." This pollutes the legal culture of Israel and "breeds cynicism about a rule of law that gives one set of rights to Jews and another to the Palestinians." A strong bill of rights, Lahav feels, is a clear imperative for reform but also a difficult political struggle; the bill of rights considered by the Knesset in 1988 did little to reduce executive discretion in national security matters, and yet it was still rejected. < The pursuit of reform has been equally difficult in the realm of state control over the economy, which is addressed by Ira Sharkansky in Chapter 8. Sharkansky provides a somber picture of Israel's overpoliticized economy. Among Western democracies Israel scores very high on most measures of government involvement in the economy, and on the politicians' control of state bureaucracies and companies, which reached new heights with the national unity governments of the 1980s. Israel, Sharkansky shows, has paid a high price for this extensive politicization of both governance and the economy. Since 1973, per capita economic growth has averaged barely 1 percent a year, dragged down by high taxes and inflation, persistently large budget and trade deficits, massive foreign indebtedness, and the financial losses of inefficient state companies. As Smooha indicates in Chapter 16, during the last twenty years Israel's relative economic standing in the world has sharply declined, even to "the edge of the developing world." Massive amounts of U.S. aid and foreign loans have masked the full extent of the deterioration. Sharkansky attributes Israel's overpoliticization to several factors: the connections between the nation's collectivist political tradition and the primacy of political ideology; the lack of a written constitution and bill of rights; and the political consequences of Israel's system of proportional

11

Introduction

representation, in which the need to distribute ministries and patronage to different parties and factions makes it formidably difficult to control government spending. It is this nexus between Israel's political and economic problems that renders both sectors so resistant to reform: The political and the economic systems have together given rise to a vast array of powerful beneficiaries whose vested interests would be undermined by reform in either sector. Thus they have repeatedly frustrated reforms aimed at modernization of the system and the introduction of objective criteria of professionalism, profitability, and efficiency. For these reasons, Sharkansky is somewhat pessimistic about the chance for major economic reforms in Israel. While economic issues are always high on the public agenda, they seldom take precedence. "One or another issue connected to security usually seems to lead the government's concerns, and the high outlays for security are important in reinforcing the government's involvement in the economy. When an economic issue attracts the attention of the media and the politicians, it is often one that adds to the government's involvement in the economy." Nevertheless, one important implication of Sharkansky's analysis is that if fundamental economic reform is to be achieved, it will probably first require reform of Israel's governmental—and especially electoral—system. Political Behavior and Attitudes In examining the attitudes and behavior of Israeli elites and nonelites toward the law and public interest, Ehud Sprinzak and Gadi Wolfsfeld expose some disturbing features of Israeli democracy. Sprinzak argues in Chapter 9 that one feature of Israel's incomplete democracy is the "illegalism" of its elites—their instrumental attitude toward the law and toward the idea of the rule of law. The root cause of this phenomenon, Sprinzak argues, is the cultural background of the nation's founding fathers, all of whom came from Eastern Europe and the Jewish Ghetto without awareness of legalism as a norm and principle of good government. Following Shapiro's analysis of the incomplete democracy of Mapai, Sprinzak argues that the formative years of the Jewish polity in Palestine, in which partisan considerations prevailed over national interests, had an irreparable impact on the nation's political culture. These considerations were responsible for the inability of the 1948 Constituent Assembly to produce a written constitution or put the system under a binding legalistic umbrella. The lack of a constitution and other checks left the Knesset in full control of legislation in Israel, and the majority party in supreme command of the Knesset, and thus the country. In tracing the evolution of Israel's elite

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illegalism from the Mandate period to the present, Sprinzak challenges the popular belief that the system's maladies began only in recent years. He maintains that some of the nation's most outrageous scandals are directly related to the belief of the Israeli politicians that he who makes the rules can just as well break them. A strong advocate of a written constitution, Sprinzak is highly critical of Israel's political elite, and finds no justification for the perpetuation of its illegalistic practices. What was understandable in the 1920s—when the founding fathers had no idea of liberal democracy and the rule of law, and when the circumstances of the Israeli polity were much more tenuous and fragile—is unacceptable in the 1990s, when the state is long established and nearly every high school student learns about the rule of law and the principle of legalism. Gadi Wolfsfeld's findings demonstrate in Chapter 10 a similarly ad hoc and uninstitutionalized character to the political behavior of the Israeli masses. Wolfsfeld, who has spent many years studying Israel's extraparliamentary politics, argues that popular political action in Israel is based more on cynicism than trust. He writes about "the politics of provocation," a cultural syndrome in which direct action becomes the predominant means by which ordinary citizens make demands on the political system. Partly due to their correct perception regarding the illegalism of their own leaders, and partly due to the unresponsiveness of the nation's parties and representative institutions to the citizens, Israelis often take to the streets to protest. Rather than lobby the legislature or seek redress in the courts, they demonstrate, denounce, and, on occasion, take the law into their own hands. Relating this behavior to the theory of "blocked opportunities," Wolfsfeld explains the politics of provocation by the Israeli belief that politicians are more likely to respond to pressure than persuasion, and that institutional means of political access are either inaccessible or worthless for the average citizen. Part of this owes to the absence of electoral means for representing territorial constituencies in the Israeli Knesset; thus citizens are generally unable to identify a legislator who personally represents them. However, Wolfsfeld also explains the high volume of political provocation by the relative lack of risk involved, given the leniency of the authorities and their unreadiness to enforce the law. The great attraction of the media, as well as the general perception that direct action works, provide additional reasons for Israel's intense extraparliamentary and extralegal politics. Wolfsfeld's conclusion is that only electoral reform involving direct representation of the people, and accountability, can temper the politics of provocation and its destructive effects. Israeli attitudes toward democracy and related issues are examined in Chapter 12 by Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar and Chapter 11 by Yaar and Yochanan Peres. The surveys they analyze, conducted between 1987 and

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13

1990, shed light on a special crisis period in the life of Israel—the intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. However, the authors attempt to answer several larger questions: Is Israel as democratic as its collective self-image of "the only democracy in the Middle East" suggests? Is the Israeli citizen truly committed to democracy and the democratic idea, as is expected from Israel's declaration of independence and many other cherished documents? The Yaar and Peres findings in Chapter 11 are encouraging on one level, but quite discouraging on another. They show that in spite of the undemocratic nature of the countries of origins of most Israelis, there is a very broad recognition and commitment to the principles of democracy and to democracy as a symbolic system. Over 80 percent of the Israelis say they believe in values associated with democracy and think that the minority should be treated equally and be granted all democratic rights. Yaar and Peres tell us that there is clearly a positive cultural substructure for democracy in Israel. The problem, as Yaar and Peres reveal, is that this abstract commitment to the democratic system is significantly eroded when "a price tag" is put on democracy (i.e., when the need to maintain a democratic system in Israel means constraints over the power of the government to control the Arab minority or to maintain national security). Many Israelis are not as positive about democracy when they think of the Palestinians, the security needs of Israel, or the actual performance of their leaders and their system of government. Thus 22 percent would prefer to see in Israel a nondemocratic government with which they agree rather than a democratic government whose policies and opinions differ from their own; 28 percent believe that both systems are bad. Nearly half crave strong leadership and do not care a great deal about its democratic fitness. The study by Yaar and Peres provides a general background for understanding the present regime in Israel and the growing impact in national politics of the extreme and religious right. It explains, for example, the ability of the Knesset to pass laws that prohibit open contacts between Israelis and Palestinians if the latter happen to be members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It also provides good background for Yaar's chapter (12), which deals with the impact of the Palestinian uprising on the positions of Israelis. Yaar shows in Chapter 12 that the intifada did not change the fundamental polarization of Israeli public opinion, a fact of life generated by the outcome of the Six Day War. Rather, it intensified the polarization. Most Israelis have become entrenched in their previous positions vis-à-vis the Arabs and the territories, with the doves becoming more dovish and the hawks becoming more hawkish. Yaar's findings about the intifada reveal a serious skepticism toward pluralist democracy, particularly among Israel's right and extreme right, which support a narrow and

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limited conception of democracy. These data reaffirm the famous 1984— 1985 Van Leer studies, which first identified the rift between the abstract and actual commitment of Israelis to democracy. Although Yaar does not identify a concrete threat to Israeli democracy at present, he provides an unsettling picture of its fragility, limitations, and shortcomings.

Political Culture and Social Cleavages The deeper cultural and intellectual underpinnings of Israeli democracy are explored by Yaron Ezrahi, Charles Liebman, and Arye Carmon. Ezrahi writes in Chapter 13 about Israel's culture and civil society—art, literature, science, journalism, and organizational and intellectual life. He questions whether Israeli society generates and sustains cultural forums that uphold liberal democratic values and practices. Ezrahi's implied assumption is that liberal democratic politics depend not only upon appropriate legal and institutional arrangements but also upon a host of cultural traditions or forms, as well as a strong civil society independent of the state. Drawing upon the Enlightenment traditions that inspired Western liberalism and socialism, Zionism achieved, during the prestate period, a precarious but workable balance between the particularistic quest for the Jewish State and the universalistic values of progress, individual freedom, and social justice. However, the strong historical affinities between the cultural and political "missions" of Zionism (and the lack of any intrinsic ambivalence toward Jewish power in modern Jewish history and culture) made it difficult, Ezrahi maintains, for individualistic culture to question or challenge statist and collectivist impulses. With the founding of the Jewish State, and particularly in the past two decades, the initial balance between universalism and particularism has eroded as religious, nationalist, and ethnocentric forces—manifesting antiliberal values—have become increasingly prominent in Israel's politics, culture, education, and even science. This erosion has been quickened by the "growing dependence of Israeli academic and scientific institutions upon public financial support." But it is not unrelated to the objective (especially security) pressures on the Israeli state: "Israeli political leaders have discovered that their appeals to the common tribal identity... are much more potent for mobilizing the sacrifices and solidarity of the majority of the citizens than appeals to more general values, such as liberal or socialist ideas of the good society." Indeed, like Sammy Smooha (Chapter 16), Ezrahi (Chapter 13), believes that a "Jewish state," promoting a national Jewish culture, is "incompatible with . . . the basic norms of democratic civic culture." Voluntary organizations do not check or attenuate these statist trends

Introduction

15

because many of them are also dedicated to promoting narrow religious and ethnic values. Ezrahi suggests several cultural strategies that can challenge ethnocentric religious national culture and generate more open, pluralistic orientations: literary, theatrical, and intellectual works that subvert "the symbolic sanctuaries of established culture"; cultivation of the culture of the self, of the voice and consciousness of the individual as distinct from the collective; cultures of alienated individualism present in other liberal democratic traditions; and the culture of critical rational discourse in science, academia, and the mass media. Such critical discourse, however, cannot flourish without some "economic independence of cultural enterprises and mass media that are autonomous from the state." Ezrahi's strong emphasis on individual over collective values and universalistic over particularistic norms provoked considerable debate at the conference that gave rise to this book. Some participants, including some of the contributors to this volume, maintain that Israel—founded as a Jewish state in a Zionist cultural and historical tradition—has certain collective national attributes and purposes that it cannot abandon without radically changing its character as a state. As Charles Liebman argues in Chapter 14, a Jewish state (like any other ideological state) necessarily involves "some ultimate vision of the good society and the good citizen." It implies some limitations on democracy (to preserve the Jewish nature of the state), but these are fundamentally reconciliable, he believes, with the basic tenets of liberal democracy. Liebman's chapter explores the interaction between the Jewish religion and democracy in Israel. He documents a disturbing trend toward the ascendance of highly particularistic and nationalistic visions of Judaism in Israel, with religious intellectuals and secular thinkers losing influence to an increasingly traditionalistic rabbinical elite. He also shows a growing convergence between ultra-Orthodox Jews (who were historically hostile to Zionism) and ultranationalists (who previously tended to be secular). Yet as the religious parties have become more politically powerful in Israel, attracting some nationalistic but nonreligious voters, they have also had to temper their religious demands in politics for fear of a backlash. Liebman concedes that there are some elements of a democratic culture—such as tolerance and respect for the opinions of others—that are not encouraged by Judaism, and that some religious schools in Israel reject democracy as a Greek notion alien to the Jewish system of values. However, Liebman points to alternative interpretations of Judiasm—ethically universalistic and politically liberal—that affirm the essential compatibility between democracy and the Jewish tradition. An incompatibility between the halakha (Jewish law) and the formal properties of democracy does not have to exist because both are subject to interpretation. Democ-

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racy cannot be reconciled with a theocratic state, Jewish or otherwise. "But if by democracy we mean majority rule, individual liberties, and minority rights guaranteed by law, within a set of parameters that are derived from a reasonable understanding of Judaism and the Jewish tradition, then democracy and a Jewish state are not incompatible, although accommodating these two values may require painful compromises for those committed in good faith to only one or the other value," writes Liebman. This debate over the proper balance between the universal and the particular, and the stresses in Israeli democracy that surround it, underscore for Arye Carmon (Chapter 15) Israel's failure to define a clear conception of democracy in a Jewish state and to convey it coherently through political education. Like Liebman, Carmon believes that Israel can and must "balance the universalist premises of democracy and the particularist traits of the Jewish experience." Like Ezrahi, he worries that the early, prestate balance has been lost under the relentless cultural pressure of orthodox religious conceptions of Jewish identity. His concern is to restore this balance by legitimizing "a plurality of definitions and characterizations of national identity, of 'Jewishness.' " This in turn requires "a pluralism of educational philosophies" and a frank recognition of the need for political education. Carmon believes that the major blunder of Israel's educational history was committed in the 1950s, following the introduction of the "neutral" Ilinuch Mamlachti (statist education), the statist system of education, with its "aggressively homogenizing measures." This was done in order to depoliticize Israel's educational system, which for years had been tainted by ideological and partisan thinking, and in this regard statist education was crowned with success. But the victory proved to be Pyrrhic. The educational system had been freed not only from ideological thinking, but from normative thinking of any kind as well. Teachers and educators have systematically shunned controversial issues involving moral judgment and have encouraged their students to do the same. Being educated by a value-free approach, Israel's children have been left defenseless against antidemocratic and illiberal thinking. From Carmon's perspective, it is no wonder that the schools have been unable to transmit liberal values of tolerance of diversity and respect for opposing views. If such values are to be strengthened in Israel, the secular schools must be given a central role in the task of political socialization and values education. Secular thinkers and institutions must articulate "a full-fledged secular definition of Jewishness"; otherwise, the void will continue to be filled by Orthodox symbols alone. Together, these imperatives imply that the secular school system must begin to address

Introduction

17

through the curriculum such questions as the nature of citizenship in the Israeli nation-state, the rights and duties of individual citizens, the collective identity of the nation-state, and the relationship between that national identity and ethical, cultural, and religious types of identity. A comprehensive educational strategy must be developed, one that would find the common denominator between Judaism and democracy and make it possible for students to identify with both. Israel's internal social, ethnic, and national cleavages, and their relation to the nation's democratic ethos, are examined by Sammy Smooha in Chapter 16. Smooha's major contention is that while the nation has not yet solved its social and ethnic problems, its claim to be a democratic country is most seriously challenged by the great inequality between Israeli Jews and Arabs. He argues that the most fundamental concern of Israel's citizens, after national security, is the opportunity structure in the country as compared to the West. As a result of Israel's failure to reach Western economic and developmental standards, the opportunity structure in Israel is quite limited and not expanding. Israel is a middle-class society, yet in spite of some leveling, social stratification has sharpened and crystallized over the years. However, since there is still considerable social mobility, "it is more correct to depict the system as differentiated by strata than by classes with distinct interest, consciousness, organization, or struggle." Class consciousness has not risen as a result of the increase in inequality since the early 1950s, and inequality remains a nonissue for several reasons: continued social mobility, a large supply of cheap Palestinian labor, an extensive welfare system, the internal social contradictions of the major parties, the unique role of Histadrut (General Federation of Labor), the intense salience of other cleavages, and "the huge and constant import of capital from abroad," artificially inflating living standards and opportunity structures. The ethnic conflict between Israel's Oriental and Ashkenazic Jews is more visible and intense, and involves real gaps on two scores: education and economic status. Smooha's findings about education show that while Ashkenazic sabras (youngsters born in Israel) overtake their parents, Oriental sabras do as badly as their parents. These ethnic educational gaps are reflected in the occupational structure. The conflict is also present, however less so, in the standard of living. The most crucial material gap is in the quantity and accumulation of wealth. These diverse ethnic gaps converge to create a persistent system of ethnic stratification, despite interventions to close the gap. It is evident that the magnitude, persistence, and the circumstances of formation of ethnic stratification among Jews represent a serious problem and a mark of failure of Zionism and the Jewish State, officially committed to full ethnic integration. Smooha shows

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that although Oriental Jews have made significant headway in Israeli politics, Ashkenazis remain politically dominant. In addition, cultural gaps persist. Orientals and Ashkenazim may share the core culture of Israel, but there are major differences in the subcultures. Thus "the potential for ethnic conflict [remains] appreciable." Israeli democracy's real paradox, however, is the system's structural discrimination against Arabs. Israel, according to Smooha, is not what most students say it is, a consociational or majoritarian state. It is unique in the Western world as an "ethnic state," explicitly "identified with and designed to serve one of its constituent population groups." Its institutions, symbols, and heroes are "exclusively Jewish," and Jews have privileged access to its resources. Moreover, polls show this preferential treatment enjoys wide support among Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs constitute both an ethnic and a national minority, but they only enjoy a status of ethnic minority. Their national sentiments, which reject the Jewish-Zionist character of the state, are nearly totally ignored. Their civil rights are more constricted. An Arab student at school is expected to study Zionist history and Israeli literature, to identify with the Israeli flag, and to ignore and forget all the components of his Arab identity that the Israelis consider a security risk. Smooha maintains that Israel can eliminate its democratic paradox only if it de-Zionizes itself or formulates a new Zionism that would take into consideration the national consciousness of its Arab citizens. While most of the authors in this volume remain strongly committed to Israel as a Jewish state, there is considerable agreement that the legal and social impediments to equal rights for Israeli Arabs diminish the quality of Israeli democracy and must be addressed. Yoram Peri pushes the analysis of national cleavages into the international arena, examining in Chapter 17 the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict on Israeli democracy. He argues that the major force that has shaped the boundaries of Israeli democracy, and its political system, is national security: the wars, the subconventional warfare, the military government in the occupied territories, and the subjective dimensions of the security threat, mostly known as Israel's siege mentality. Weighing the cost to Israel's democracy of its conflict with the Arabs, Peri analyzes Israel's "religion of security" in a manner that could be applied to any religion. Once a sphere of life is included under the rubric of security, it is automatically excluded from the rules governing civil society. Following this distinction, Peri argues that three separate legal systems exist in Israel: the system under which most Israelis live; the system applied to the Arab citizens of the state, which include certain restrictions; and the military government under which the 1.7 million Palestinian Arabs of the occupied territories live. Clearly distinguishing among the three, Peri concludes that Israel's security constraints impose a heavy burden on its democracy.

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The Age of Reform? The chapters in this book depict a democracy that is in many respects genuine, vibrant, and full of potential, but that has not been functioning effectively to address the mounting problems facing Israeli society. On virtually every front we have considered in this book, substantial reforms are needed. The cultural commitment to democracy and the democratic values of tolerance and moderation need to be refurbished and nurtured in the school system. Critical currents in the culture need the space and financial autonomy to question established assumptions. The disparities between Ashkenazic and Oriental Jews and especially between Jews and Arabs in Israel need to be more focefully addressed. A much more concerted approach is needed to economic reform, reducing state patronage, corruption and waste; privatizing most state industries, and closing those that cannot compete; pruning back state regulation and taxation; reorganizing Histadrut; reducing dependence on international aid; and moving boldly to develop new industries that will integrate Israel more aggressively into an increasingly information-based global economy. Such reforms are necessary to improve the quality of life in Israel. Many are urgently required if Israel is to be able to absorb successfully the several hundred thousand Jews that have already emigrated from the former Soviet Union, and the hundreds of thousands more still to come. These various reforms may even be necessary for the viability of democracy itself in Israel in the long run. But as this book repeatedly argues, the most urgent and overriding priority is political reform. Only with comprehensive, but carefully directed, changes in the structure of political institutions can Israel break the logjam on these and other issues, including the most important of all: war and peace. Only with democratic innovations in the party system, electoral system, and constitutional structure can Israel make its politicians more accountable to the electorate and ensure the basic liberties fundamental to democracy. Electoral and other political reforms will not (in themselves) guarantee a better society or a more stable democracy; as we indicate, reforms carry their own risks and limits. However, electoral reform—streamlining the process of government formation, enhancing accountability to voters, and reducing the blackmail potential of minor parties—can enhance governability and thus make more possible a host of related reforms. The successful achievement of comprehensive political reforms, which has eluded two generations of Israeli democrats, would also have an important symbolic impact, giving momentum and encouragement to the reform agendas in many other economic and social arenas. This is why we believe, as we argue in the Conclusion, that political reform must be the rallying cry and driving wedge of Israel's Age of Reform—a period that we believe can be a golden age for democracy in the Jewish State.

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Note 1. A l t h o u g h the law on the " D i g n i t y of M a n and His F r e e d o m " was adopted as a b a s i c law, in contrast to the new B a s i c Law: F r e e d o m o f O c c u p a t i o n , it was not " e n t r e n c h e d , " that is, it did not contain the proviso requiring a privileged majority (61 K n e s s e t m e m b e r s ) to amend. T h u s , although it is called a " b a s i c law," it does not include the e l e m e n t that grants this appellation practical m e a n i n g .

Democracy as Paradox Larry

Diamond

T h e conditions for stable democracy constitute one of the oldest themes of concern in political philosophy and social science, dating back at least to the classical Greek thinkers. Aristotle argued that democracy is more likely to occur where the middle strata are large, and oligarchy and tyranny where the population is overwhelmingly poor. His arguments about the developmental and class conditions for democracy have been reflected in one of the most prominent currents of modern social science analysis about democracy. T h e writings of Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu heavily influenced the founders of the American democratic experience in their emphasis on the restraint of state powers through the institutionalization of checks and balances. In the subsequent two centuries, the constitutional and institutional requirements for stable democracy have formed another theme of continual concern to both architects and scholars of democracy. Turning to the young American republic for clues to the development of democracy, the rule of law, and personal freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the impact of voluntary associations as mediating institutions and countervailing forces to the central government; the division of powers in a federal system; and the relative socioeconomic equality that fostered political participation. His concerns for the broad spread of democratic values and behavior among citizens, and for the social and political organizations that foster them, have resonated in rich empirical traditions analyzing how political culture, political participation, political institutions, and civil society affect democracy. Particularly with the flowering of empirical political science and the birth of many new democracies in the two decades following World W a r II, there emerged a huge literature on what can broadly be termed "the conditions for democracy." Some authors, writing in a structural-functional theoretical tradition, conceived of necessary conditions for democracy, as Seymour Martin Lipset suggested with his title, " S o m e Social Requisites of Democracy." 1 Lipset's crucial requisites were socioeconomic development and political legitimacy. Gabriel Almond and Sidney V e r b a argued the need for a democratically balanced and restrained

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political culture, a "civic culture," 2 while Samuel Huntington emphasized the imperative of political institutionalization.3 Rabushka and Shepsle focused on the phenomenon of ethnic pluralism, arguing that "democracy . . . is simply not viable in an environment of intense ethnic preferences." 4 Others focused not on a single variable or cluster of variables, but on a broader field of causal interaction in which a number of factors were identified as facilitating or obstructing, but not absolutely necessary for, stable democracy. The generalizations in Robert Dahl's classic, Polyarchy, and in more recent empirical work such as that by Bingham Powell, generally have this more probabilistic flavor. 5 As I will argue below, and as is amply demonstrated in a recent twenty-six-nation comparative study of democracy in developing countries,6 it is in terms of probabilism rather than necessity that we must think when considering the prospects for democracy. With the exception of democratic legitimacy and loyalty (at least initially among the political elite), it is difficult to argue that there are any necessary conditions for democracy. Democracy has developed in a wide range of cultural and structural circumstances. It has successfully operated under a great diversity of institutional arrangements, and it has failed under a similar diversity of constitutional forms. Of course, it is the relationship between the social structure and the political institutions that is most important, but even when we generalize about these relationships, we either lack the evidence to argue for their absolute necessity or have the evidence to show there are exceptions to the rule. Most of all, the study of concrete historical experiences of democratic emergence, persistence, and breakdown demonstrates the fundamentally political nature of the democratic challenge. It is not difficult to identify, from the wealth of accumulated theory and evidence, formidable social and cultural obstacles to democracy: authoritarian cultural values, deep ethnic divisions, acute socioeconomic inequality, widespread poverty, weak social organization. But none of these should be viewed as an inherently insuperable obstacle to democracy. Each lengthens the odds that democracy will be successfully initiated and maintained, but the key variable is how these factors are mediated and managed by political elites and the institutions they construct. Rather than speaking of necessary conditions for democracy, we are better off conceiving of democracy as a complex phenomenon determined by the interaction of many factors. Virtually none of these may be essential, but to the extent several prominent foundations of democracy are absent, other positive factors (e.g., political leadership, innovative institutions, democratic civic groups) may need to be unusually powerful. Because the presence, stability, and quality of democracy are the products of many factors interacting, it is difficult to generalize about what

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serves the interest of democracy in all countries. Each country represents a distinctive mix of culture, history, resources, size, ethnic and religious cleavage, class structure, state structure, social organization, and economic development. All of these factors must be weighed when considering the most appropriate political institutions for a country. They may call for a federal or unitary structure, more or less decentralization of power, perhaps special provisions for public accountability, a parliamentary or presidential system, a proportional or majoritarian electoral system, and thus a party system of many narrowly based parties or two or three broad, dominant ones. There is another reason why it is impossible to present a general formula for democratic success, and this inheres in the contradictory nature of democracy itself. By definition, a democratic political system encompasses meaningful electoral competition for power, widespread political participation, and extensive civil and political liberties. 7 These elements of democracy and their varied institutional expressions seek to ensure that government will be representative of popular interests, responsive to popular demands, accountable to public scrutiny, and subject to popular consent, while also governing stably and effectively. But these features and purposes of democracy clash with one another, generating a number of paradoxes or contradictions. The most fruitful way to comprehend "the conditions for democracy" is to appreciate how they interplay in these often paradoxical ways. This chapter begins by briefly stating four paradoxes of democracy that complicate the challenge not only of consolidating new democracies but also of maintaining and improving established ones. Each paradox will be considered in some detail.

Four Paradoxes of Democracy Perhaps the most sweeping irony of democracy is that its very name means "rule by the people," but its survival depends very heavily—and especially at moments of birth and crisis, quite disproportionately—on the values, behaviors, choices, and skills of the political elite. Democracy is served by a strongly organized and politically involved citizenry. But it is typically brought into being by the actions and decisions of a small number of party and institutional leaders, and similarly its destruction or deterioration into crisis is typically the product of bad choices, intransigent styles, and undemocratic actions of a relatively small (sometimes tiny) number of political leaders. Democracy requires broad citizen participation; but it disproportionately depends on elite democratic commitment, responsibility, and skill. Democracy also requires that elites work with one another constructively. But if they work with one another too closely and exclu-

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sively, they may freeze out meaningful popular involvement. This bears on the second paradox, between conflict and consensus. Democracy is, by its nature, a system of institutionalized competition for power. Without competition and conflict, there is no democracy. But any society that sanctions political conflict runs the risk of that conflict becoming too intense, of society becoming so conflict-ridden that civil peace and political stability are jeopardized. Hence a second paradox: Democracy requires conflict—but not too much; competition, but within carefully defined and universally accepted boundaries. Cleavage must b e tempered by consensus. A third tension or contradiction sets representativeness against governability. Democracy distrusts the concentration of power in the hands of a few, and so subjects leaders and policies to mechanisms of popular representation and accountability. But to be stable, democracy—or any system of government—must also govern efficaciously; it must formulate workable policies capable of relieving, if not solving, the most pressing problems facing a society.8 Doing so requires some measure of what Alexander Hamilton called "energy." Government must be able to act, and at times it must do so quickly and decisively. It must not only b e responsive to interest-group demands, it must be able to resist them and mediate between them as well. This requires a party system that can produce a reasonably stable and efficacious government, one that represents and is responsive to competing groups and interests in society, b u t not so purely that it is paralyzed or captured by them. Representativeness requires that parties speak to and for these conflicting interests; governability requires that parties have sufficient autonomy to rise above them. This leads to the fourth contradiction, between consent and effectiveness. In the modern age, democracy does not embody rule by the people but rule with their periodic consent. Because it rests on the consent of the governed, democracy—much more so than any other form of government—depends on popular legitimacy for its stability. Democracy must be seen by the people as the best and most appropriate form of government for their society. Such legitimacy involves a deep value attachment, but this develops only over time, and partly as a result of effective performance. Democracy will not become or remain valued by the peopl e unless it deals effectively with the society's social and economic problems and governs with some measure of order and justice. If democracy does not work, people may prefer not to be governed through their own consent; they may choose to not put up any longer with the pain and confusion of political choice. And herein lies the paradox: Democracy requires consent. Consent requires legitimacy. Legitimacy requires effective performance, which may be undermined by the reluc-

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tance of political leaders to pursue necessary but potentially unpopular policies. From these four paradoxes follow a number of implications for the development, consolidation, maintenance, and reinvigoration of democracy. Elite Choice Versus Popular

Participation

Considerable evidence continues to support the thesis that democracy is correlated with relatively high levels of socioeconomic development, as manifested in per capita wealth, industrialization, communication, urbanization, and education. There are strong theoretical reasons, and also a growing accumulation of historical evidence, to suggest that this correlation is also to some extent causal, that development over time gives rise to a more differentiated, complex, pluralistic, and organized society whose citizens are more politically aware, assertive, resourceful, and efficacious, yet tolerant. Lipset himself noted the considerable accumulation of evidence, even by 1960, showing education to be strongly correlated with tolerance for opposition and minorities and belief in democratic values. 9 Almond and Verba and, subsequently, Inkeles showed that education enhances political awareness, information, opinions, and skill; the sense of personal political efficacy or competence; political trust; and participation in both organizational life and electoral politics. 10 The broad facilitating contribution of socioeconomic development to democracy through the medium of increased citizen political awareness and information, as well as increased organizational density and pluralism in society, is clearly apparent in the recent experiences of Taiwan and South Korea. 11 Indeed, throughout Southern Europe, Asia, and Latin America in recent years, the increased levels of education and resources, and the rise of autonomous middle-income groups, have been important factors in facilitating and pressuring for democratization. All of this evidence accords well with the Tocquevillian image of democracy as buttressed by widespread citizen involvement and organization. Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence documenting how numerous and autonomous intermediary associations serve democracy by balancing and limiting the power of the state; providing multiple channels for articulating interests; generating new opinions and fostering the spread of ideas and information; training people in political (including leadership) skills; increasing citizen political interest and efficacy, and so stimulating participation in formal politics. 12 O'Donnell and Schmitter's influential study of democratic transitions recognizes the important role played by a resurgent, articulate, vigorously mobilizing civil society in pressing forward the democratization of authoritarian regimes. 13 However, both the O'Donnell/Schmitter work, as well as many others,

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find the decisive impetus for democratic transition to come from the political divisions and coalitions, and the choices, actions, skill, and timing of contending political elites in the regime and opposition. 14 Quite often historically, democracy has emerged as the result of "a prolonged and inconclusive political struggle" among elites. Rustow has shown that democracy is chosen by elites, at once or incrementally, not necessarily out of any intrinsic commitment but as the best and safest institutional means for managing their divisions. Only with its practice over a long period of time do the values and habits of democracy become embedded in an elite and eventually broad societal consensus. 15 The disproportionate influence of political elites is also evidenced in the breakdown of democracy, as is demonstrated in the seminal comparative study edited by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan. 16 These case studies show the large measure of political miscalculation, inflexibility, temporizing, indecision, ineptitude, and semi- and disloyal acts on the part of governmental and political party leaders that contributed crucially to the deterioration and breakdown of democratic regimes. Linz emphasizes the crucial importance to democratic stability of loyalty to the democratic system on the part of political party elites (especially those in the opposition). This loyalty encompasses readiness to defend the constitutional system against antidemocratic movements; strict commitment to operate within democratic procedures; unflagging opposition to the rhetoric or use of force in the contest for power; respect for the rights of opposing parties and interests to speak, organize, and contest for power; and a posture of responsibility in opposition that does not sabotage or gratuitously obstruct the parliamentary process and the operation of government. These principles express many deep insights and powerful historical lessons that are worth probing further for the purposes of this volume on Israeli democracy under stress. Disloyal and semiloyal stances toward democracy need not necessarily take the blunt form of violence against antagonists. Linz argues: Blanket attacks on the political system rather than on particular parties or actors, systematic defamation of politicians in the system parties [i.e., democratically loyal parties], constant obstruction of the parliamentary process, support for proposals made by other presumably disloyal parties with disruptive purposes... and joint actions with them in crisis situations and in toppling governments without any possibility of constituting a new majority are all typical actions of disloyal oppositions Strife between parties, efforts to discredit opponents, and the characterization of other parties as representatives of narrow interests in conflict with the public interest are normal, natural, and legitimate actions within the democratic process. Style, intensity, and fairness in conducting these actions mark the distinction between loyal and disloyal oppositions. Typically, disloyal oppositions picture their opponents col-

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lectively as instruments of outside secret and conspiratorial g r o u p s . . . . In addition, certain other characteristics define semiloyalty, foremost of which is the willingness of political leaders to engage in secret negotiations . . . for cooperation in government with parties they themselves . . . perceive as disloyal [Another] indicator of semiloyal b e h a v i o r . . . is a willingness to encourage, tolerate, cover up, treat leniently, excuse, or justify the action of other participants that go beyond the limits of peaceful, legitimate patterns of politics in a democracy Ultimately semiloyalty can be identified by a basically system-oriented party's greater affinity for extremists on its side of the political spectrum than for system parties closer to the opposite side. 17

T h e essential message qf this perspective is that democracy requires from party and governmental elites a commitment to its rules and constitutional procedures that transcends all substantive goals, including the acquisition and retention of power. It requires from elites if not always wisdom and skill, then at least a minimum of democratic responsibility and loyalty. This is also a major conclusion of Dahl, who identifies the belief among political activists in the legitimacy of democracy as one of the most important factors affecting its stability. 18 This is not to say that the beliefs and behaviors of the citizenry at large do not matter, but rather that those of political leaders matter more, often much more. T h e actions, choices, and rhetoric of political elites can, for one thing, powerfully shape the public climate of political values and expectations. Certainly institutional arrangements powerfully shape the "rationality" of elite choices, as do socioeconomic conditions. But both of these factors are the products of previous elite choices and policies. Even within the constraints of structural circumstances and popular expectations and demands, elites have scope to take a shorter or longer time perspective on what is in their rational interests, and to construe those interests more or less broadly, m o r e or less responsibly, vis-à-vis the political and governmental challenges facing them and the country. T h e emphasis on the pattern of interaction among political elites in making and unmaking democracy has been most explicitly and heavily emphasized in the recent work of Michael B u r t o n and John Higley. Postulating three types of elite structures—"disunified," "ideologically unified" and "consensually u n i f i e d " — t h e y assert that only a consensually unified national elite "produces a stable regime that may evolve into a modern democracy." 1 9 T h e two defining features of a consensually unified elite are that "its members (1) share a largely tacit consensus about rules and codes of political conduct amounting to a 'restrained partisanship', and (2) participate in a more or less comprehensively integrated structure of interaction that provides them with relatively reliable and effective access to each other and to the most central decision-makers." 2 0 This corresponds in important respects to Dahl's argument that the

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emergence of a system of "mutual security" among contending elites is a crucial step in the development of stable democracy. 21 Further, it reproduces some of the leading concerns of democratic theorists about the elements of political culture necessary to sustain democracy: moderation, tolerance, willingness to compromise, restraint of partisanship, respect for opposition, and commitment to the rules of the game (see below). One of the two paths through which, historically, elites have become consensually unified, Burton and Higley argue, is through an "elite settlement," in which (all major) "warring national elite factions suddenly and deliberately reorganize their relations by negotiating compromises on their most basic disagreements." 22 If one relaxes some of their conditions (e.g., suddenness and speed), their concept has much affinity with the elite pacts among economic actors and among political actors (as well as between civilian, democratic actors and the military), which O'Donnell and Schmitter view as a common and often crucial element in the transition to democracy. They define a pact as "an explicit, but not always publicly explicated or justified, agreement among a select set of actors which seeks to define (or better, to redefine) rules governing the exercise of power on the basis of mutual guarantees for the vital interests of those entering into it." Below I will enlarge on their usage to denote as well an agreement on the basis of guarantees for the overall national interest. Either usage invokes these key elements in the O'Donnell-Schmitter conception: pacts involve a relatively small number of negotiating groups or institutions; they (temporarily) reduce competitiveness and conflict; they attempt to control the policy agenda, even in ways that may reduce accountability to wider publics; and they involve an agreement among actors "to forgo or underutilize their capacity to harm each other." 23 The "elite settlement" concept also bears some resemblance to Arend Lijphart's model of "consociational democracy." 24 Although the latter phenomenon is much more circumscribed in its features and conditions, marking the resolution, with very specific structural arrangements (grand coalition, proportionality, federalism, minority veto), of deep, cumulative cultural cleavage, it shares the crucial property of deliberate elite conciliation to overcome or manage seemingly irreconciliable differences. As with the cognate concepts of elite pacts and settlements, consociational bargains come about as the result of negotiations and agreements among a fairly narrow circle of elites at the apex of the political and social system, and the development of trust among the bargaining elites is a crucial condition for success of the project. The problem with consociational bargains or elite settlements or pacts, however, drives to the very essence of their paradoxical relationship to democracy. Their narrow, elite basis, and their dependence on the capacity of party and organizational leaders to bring their constituencies

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along with them in hierarchical fashion, gives to the political orders they produce rigid, exclusive, self-interested, and unresponsive qualities. Their inability to adapt to changing social and demographic realities, as in Lebanon, and to widen their political base to incorporate broader segments of the populace and newly emergent social and political elites, can lead to profound, even fatal, political crises. Where, as in Colombia, a consociational bargain provides to the leading parties an assured and exclusively shared distribution of power and resources, the benefits of the pact in enhancing state capacity and moderating political conflict may ultimately be outweighed by the costs to popular involvement, competition, and legitimacy. The narrow, conservative character of the pact may also prevent needed socioeconomic reforms, further damaging legitimacy. 25 Democracy cannot survive unless it finds mechanisms of managing, moderating, and restraining conflict. Some basis of elite consensus on the rules of the game is a minimum and absolutely necessary condition in that regard. But if these mechanisms do not merely manage conflict but permanently hollow or suppress it, democracy will lose its substance and most likely its legitimacy as well. This is one way of expressing the paradox that pits consensus against conflict. Conflict Versus Consensus Perhaps the most basic tension in democracy is between conflict and consensus. Democracy requires division and opposition, but within a framework of cohesion and consensus. It implies dissent, but also consent. It requires citizen action but also citizen allegiance to government authority. It demands that citizens care about politics, but not too passionately. In their classic book, The Civic Culture, Almond and Verba trenchantly identified this tension: Without some meaningfully structured cleavage in society, it is hard to see how democratic politics can operate. If democracy involves at some point a choice among alternatives, the choice must be about something Too much agreement would mitigate against the enforcement of elite responsiveness. Yet if cleavage went too far,... a democratic society... would probably be in danger of its existence. The issues of politics would cut so deeply, be so keenly felt, and especially, be so fully reinforced by other social identifications of the electorate as to threaten democracy.26 This is why they call the democratic political culture a "mixed political culture." It is composed of both active and passive or detached citizens. Even among politically active citizens, it balances the role of participant

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(agent of political competition and conflict) with the roles of the subject, who passively accepts and obeys state authority, and the member of "parochial" networks of family, social, and community life outside politics, which sufficiently involve the citizen so that the struggle for power is not the be-all and end-all of his existence. This balance serves governability and political order by giving citizen action an "intermittent and potential" character and limiting the politicization of social life.27 There are other closely related elements of a democratic political culture: tolerance of opposition and dissent, and of cultural and idelogical differences; respect for the dignity and autonomy of all persons and belief in individual rights; a willingness to cooperate, accommodate, and compromise with political opponents; trust in fellow political actors and in the general social environment, which facilitates bargaining and accommodation; an emphasis on pragmatism, flexibility, moderation, civility, and restraint in one's partisanship; and, of course, belief in the legitimacy of democracy and commitment to its procedures. 28 As noted above, such a democratic culture is fostered by education, the spread of autonomous associations, and overall socioeconomic development. However, there is a great deal of historical evidence to support Rustow's argument that the development of democratic culture is as much the result as it is the cause of the effective functioning of democracy. 29 From the successful practice of democracy, politicians and citizens learn the value of participation, tolerance, and compromise—indeed, the efficacy and intrinsic desirability of democracy itself. The trick, then, is for democracies to survive long enough and function well enough for this process to occur. But this returns us to the paradox. To survive and function well, democracy must moderate conflict. If the cultural mechanisms for doing so take root only after some (perhaps much) experience with democracy, how can conflicts be contained in the meantime so that political cleavage and competititon do not tear the society apart? The three principal lines of cleavage involve class, ethnicity (including religion and region), and party. I have suggested above that the challenge of moderating party cleavage falls heavily upon political elites and their choices and behavioral styles. It is also significantly shaped by constitutional and electoral structures, as we will see when considering the next paradox. Let us consider briefly here class and ethnic cleavages. The problem of class cleavage presents a paradox within a paradox. For democracy to be stable, class cleavage must be moderate. For class cleavage to be moderate, economic inequality must be moderate, too. Severe inequality tends eventually to generate political alienation and class-based or extremist mobilization, with the potential for intense and violent polarization of politics. To avoid this, to achieve a moderate degree

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of inequality, some socioeconomic reform is necessary. At a minimum, this will encompass prudent investments in education, health care, housing, child nutrition, and other social services, consistent with the country's level of development, and financed by a fair, efficiently administered, but not incentive-stifling, income tax. In some cases, moderating class cleavage may require more thorough-going reform, including land reform. But this may ignite the bitter resistance of entrenched elites. And herein lies the rub: To moderate class conflict in the long run, a political system may need to risk aggravating it in the short run. There is no obvious way out of this conundrum. Democracy often gains a purchase in tenuous and conflict-ridden contexts only by ruling certain issues off the agenda. But at some point, democracy may only remain viable if difficult issues of inequality and exclusion are confronted. By its very nature, democracy permits only incremental reform rather than revolutionary change. Opposing interests must somehow be reconciled. Land may need to be redistributed, but only after its owners are fairly compensated and given opportunities to reinvest their assets in other productive enterprises. Wages may need to be increased, but only at a pace that will not threaten severe damage to corporate profits and economic growth. For only with economic growth can inequality be reduced in a way that permanently reduces poverty. Getting reform on the agenda requires that disadvantaged and excluded economic groups organize and mobilize politically. If reform is to be adopted without provoking a crisis that might destroy democracy, the costs to privileged economic interests of overturning democracy must be kept greater than the costs of the reforms themselves. This requires not only realism and incrementalism on the part of those groups pressing for reform, but sufficient overall effectiveness, stability, and guarantees for capital on the part of the democratic regime so that privileged economic actors will have a lot to lose by turning against it. There are few true laws in social science, but one that can be confidently stated concerns ethnicity: Ethnic cleavages do not die. They cannot be extinguished through repression or assimilation. However, they can be managed effectively so they do not threaten violence or civil strife, so that people of different groups are able to live and work with one another while still maintaining their ethnic identities. Consociational democracies rest on four principles for managing ethnicity politically within a democratic framework: autonomy for each ethnic group over its own affairs, typically through federalism; proportionality in the distribution of resources and power; protection of minority rights, particularly through the device of mutual veto powers; and sharing of power at the center in a "grand coalition" cabinet. 30 Such systems have been criticized by Donald Horowitz as having

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generally failed outside Europe because of their dependence on elite conciliation, which cannot cope with the deeper, more comprehensive and commanding pull of ethnic ties in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Therefore, Horowitz appeals for a strategy of conflict management that seeks to crosscut and temper, rather than accept and preserve, ethnic divisions, and thus emphasizes structural incentives for political leaders to rise above and reach below the big ethnic divisions.31 Horowitz articulates five structural mechanisms available to democracies for reducing ethnic conflict. First, democracies can proliferate "the points of power so as to take the heat off a single focal point." Federalism is the classic instrument for this, but strong local government can play a role here. Second, through such means as devolution of power and reservation of offices on an ethnic basis, intra-ethnic conflict may be fostered, thus, it is hoped, reducing "the energy available" for conflict between groups. Third, inducements may be generated for interethnic cooperation, especially through the electoral system. Fourth, policies can encourage alignments based on interests other than ethnicity, such as social class or territory. This follows from the thesis that crosscutting cleavages reduce the intensity of conflict (and is exactly the opposite of the consociational strategy of taking ethnic solidarity as a given and negotiating power-sharing and mutual security arrangements among ethnic elites). Finally, attempts can be made to cut deeper by "reducing disparities between groups so that dissatisfaction declines." 32 Federal systems encompass all these mechanisms. More generally, they give each major ethnic group (if they are territorially based) some control over its own affairs, and some chances to gain power and control resources at multiple levels. This points to another virtual law: the impossibility of stable democracy in a society where ethnic cleavages are deep and power is heavily centralized. There are compelling, independent reasons why decentralization of power and strong local and/or state government promote the vitality of democracy, but these are especially striking imperatives in divided societies. Representativeness

Versus

Governability

The management of conflict depends not just on political behavior and choice but on constitutional and electoral structures. These, too, involve difficult trade-offs and choices. Governability requires sufficient concentration and autonomy of power to formulate and implement policies with energy and dispatch. This generally conflicts with the need to hold power accountable to popular scrutiny, representation, and control. There are some respects, however, in which vigorous public accountability may strengthen the capacity to govern and the effectiveness of

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government. This is most clearly seen with regard to political corruption. Widespread government corruption is poisonous to democracy. It impedes economic growth by misdirecting the flow of capital and resources, and by distorting investment decisions and economic competition generally. Although some theories years ago argued that corruption could enhance political legitimacy by dispersing material benefits, these are typically concentrated in a narrow stratum—the political class of elected and unelected officeholders and their business cronies. This political class becomes fabulously rich at the expense of the population and the legitimacy of the entire democratic system.33 Moreover, where the prospect of corrupt enrichment becomes an important motive for the pursuit of office, the democratic process becomes distorted into a naked struggle for power rather than a contest over policies. This raises the premium on political power to a point where it is likely to overwhelm any commitment to the rules of the democratic game, and thus to corrupt the essence of the democratic process: free, fair, and peaceful elections. A heavily statist economy exacerbates the problem by giving public officials not only a wider share of society's resources to appropriate, but also numerous opportunities to collect rents from the state's regulatory activities. Separate and apart from its inducement to corruption and economic inefficiency, statism in itself raises the premium on controlling the state, and hence on winning elections, with the same democratically destabilizing effect. 34 Yet there are always, in any society, numerous opportunities for corruption in public life, and the only remedy is accountability. This requires a vigorous, free, and open press, investigating and exposing official corruption; a vigilant, alert, and organized citizenry, monitoring the political process and the conduct of public officials; and an assertive, rigorous, independent legal system, equipped to prosecute and punish official misconduct. These are at least some of the ways in which accountability serves governability. They involve checking and limiting the power of the state, especially the executive branch, in order to prevent abuses. But there are trade-offs. If power is too checked, too limited, and too diffused, government may be left hamstrung. Each country must find its own way of resolving this universal tension as best it can. Juan Linz has argued that parliamentary systems may be preferable in most developing countries because, inter alia, they make the executive branch more accountable before the legislature, avoid the rigidity and winner-take-all features of presidentialism, and at the same time serve governability by preventing the potential deadlock that can arise in a presidential system when the presidency is controlled by one

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party and the legislature by others. 35 But here, too, there are no pat formulas, and some countries may be better served by the more decisive character of presidential systems, by the greater stability of presidential cabinets, and by the possibility that presidentialism provides to elect a single, overarching national leader in ways (and with rules) that induce the recruitment of broad constituen36 cies. As noted above, a vigorously organized civil society enhances not only the accountability but the popular depth, representativeness, and vitality of democracy. However, this is not to say that a plethora of popular interest groups is an undiluted blessing for democracy. Democratic governments and parties must have some autonomy from group demands if they are to make and implement tough decisions. If political parties are too weak or too penetrated by other social groups; if the bureaucracy is a captive of such parties or interests; if the elected government cannot stand above, reconcile, and at times resist interest group pressures, then that government may be unable to formulate workable policies. Indeed, its weakness could produce a regime-threatening crisis of confidence. The relationship between party systems, electoral systems, and constitutional structure introduces another profound tension between representativeness and governability. In principle, the purest way to represent diverse social groups and interests, especially in deeply divided societies, is through proportional representation (PR). In fact, where social cleavages are multiple, deep, and politically mobilized, to obstruct their representation through the party system (by abandoning P R ) would be to risk political alienation, turmoil, and violence that could threaten democratic stability.37 The purer the form of PR, and the lower the minimum percentage of the vote required for a party to enter the parliament, the more significant parties there will tend to be and the more parliament will tend to mirror in its political composition the balance of social, cultural, and ideological interests in society.38 This may make the system more representative but less governable and even less accountable, for three reasons. First, if none of the parliamentarians are elected from (manageably sized) territorial districts, none of them are individually accountable to any clearly identifiable portion of the electorate, other than the party bosses or electors who put them on the party list of candidates. Second, with the fragmentation of the party system, voters may keep getting virtually the same coalition governments, with minor shifts in cabinet portfolios, no matter how the vote may change between parties. Thus it becomes difficult to truly change policy and to "throw the rascals out." This may enhance stability of policy, even as it leads to frequent changes in government (as in Italy), but at the cost of denying voters clear electoral choice. Third, in a situation of evenly balanced large parties and numerous

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small parties, the latter derive vastly inordinate bargaining leverage or "blackmail" potential in negotiations to form a government. This leads either to an undemocratic concession of power and resources to these (extremist) fringe groups or to a "national unity" coalition government so divided that it cannot act. The latter conundrum (and also the first) have increasingly crippled democratic politics in Israel. In such circumstances, a political system may be made more stably democratic by making it somewhat less representative. Thus West Germany, reflecting on the polarization and instability of the Weimar Republic, set an electoral threshold of 5 percent of the vote for a party to enter the Bundestag, and got a stable system comprising two dominant parties plus one or two minor ones. Reflecting on the political fragmentation and polarization that brought down its democracy in 1980 for the second time in twenty years, Turkey adopted in 1982 a 10 percent threshold and other changes that have also produced a much more consolidated party system. A bipartisan electoral reform commission in Israel has produced a wisely balanced proposal that, while retaining PR, would set the threshold at 3.5 percent and elect, as in Germany, half the members of parliament from territorial districts and half from national party lists.39 There are, of course, more drastic mechanisms for streamlining the party system, such as the single-member-district, plurality method of electing legislators and the presidential system. Either one tends strongly to reduce the number of parties, and the two mechanisms together form a natural recipe for a two-party system. But we have already mentioned the problems with presidentialism, and in a situation with more than two parties enjoying significant electoral support—such as Britain in the last parliamentary election or India since independence—the plurality method of election by district can magnify a party's national electoral plurality into a staggering parliamentary majority. This may produce not governability so much as an imbalance and arrogance of power that is undemocratic in principle and quite damaging to democracy in practice. 40 Part of the riddle of democracy is that its paradoxes are not often resolved by blunt and simple alternatives. Consent Versus

Effectiveness

Democracies, especially new democracies, suffer from a special problem with regard to government performance: Popular assessments of how the government has done tend to take the short view. Democratic governments everywhere—in the industrialized world every bit as much as the developing one—are thus constantly tempted to trim their policies to fit the electoral cycle. This usually makes good political sense (in the short

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run), but, unfortunately, it does not make for good economic policy. When we are talking about performance, it is primarily economic performance that counts. An authoritarian regime like that of Pinochet in Chile is not dependent on popular consent and can therefore afford politically to make its populations suffer bitter economic pills of austerity and structural adjustment for many years in search of long-term payoffs. Chile's economy is booming now, but at what price in human suffering, poverty, unemployment, and political repression over the past fifteen years? It is widely recognized that many of the new and emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the developing world urgently need to implem e n t s w e e p i n g s t r u c t u r a l r e f o r m s to g e n e r a t e p r o d u c t i v e and internationally competitive economies. This is true as well for Israel, whose deepening economic stagnation has been traced to the debilitating effects of excessive state ownership, regulation, taxation, and expenditures, as well as severe wage rigidities. 41 All such economically afflicted democracies face a sharp political dilemma: How far, how persistently, and how courageously will their governments tread on the path of economic reform when the costs and pain may be devastating in the short run and the gains, while profound, will probably not become widely apparent until well after the next election? In such circumstances, the pursuit of economic reform, so intimately linked in many cases to the consolidation or improvement of democracy, may require or at least be facilitated by the negotiation of some kind of agreement or "pact" between the major political parties and social forces on: 1. The broad direction and principles of structural economic reform that each of the major parties and groups will support, no matter which one(s) come to power 2. Political appeals and strategies—in particular an irresponsible but tempting politics of outbidding—that all parties renounce 3. Sacrifices that all social forces will share, including demands they will mutually postpone, during the critical and highly unstable period of economic adjustment and democratic installation or adjustment 4. A method for ensuring that the burdens of adjustment are shared more or less fairly and eased by relief measures (a social "safety net") for the most damaged groups, such as the considerable number of workers rendered jobless by structural reforms The pact may be as narrow as to agree on certain principles of long-term economic policy or as far reaching as to produce a broad

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coalition government or sharing of power and patronage (for a period of time) in order to pursue and implement the policy consensus. I have already reviewed the costs and benefits of such a long-term power-sharing arrangement. One possible model of an economic pact is the one that was negotiated by elites in Venezuela in 1958 that facilitated the successful and enduring restoration of democracy there. The parties negotiated not only a "prolonged political truce" to "respect the electoral process and share power in a manner commensurate with the voting results," but also a "Minimum Program of Government." In specifying the broad outlines of the country's major economic policies and programs, this Minimum Program depoliticized potentially contentious economic issues before they could enter into national debate and electoral politics.42 What reforms and principles might constitute the broad parameters of a new economic policy consensus for such troubled democracies? The past four decades of global economic development have furnished invaluable lessons for distinguishing the kinds of policies that work from the kind that do not. 4j Broadly speaking, market-oriented economies develop while state-socialist economies fall behind. Internationally open and competitive economies work; closed (or at least rigidly and persistently closed) economies do not. Economies grow when they foster savings, investment, and innovation, and when they reward individual effort and initiative. Economies stagnate and regress when bloated, mercantilist, hyperinterventionist states spin "a structure of inflexible favoritisms for different groups, curtailing change, experimentation, competition, innovation, and social mobility." 44 Furthermore, economies that invest in the human capital of the poor by meeting their basic human needs develop a continuing momentum of growth. Those that effectively prevent half or more of the population from acquiring the skills to partake in and benefit from development ultimately founder. Democratic development, like democratic culture, requires some considerable measure of balance, moderation, and respect for all interests. Markets must be sufficiently open, flexible, and competitive to generate increases in savings, investment, and rates of return. This requires getting or keeping the state off the backs of producers, though the state must be sufficiently involved to ensure that there is adquate investment in human and physical capital, and that development is responsible to environmental and other community interests. Taxes must be substantial enough (and sufficiently fairly and efficiently collected) to provide revenue for these essential purposes, but they must also be limited and designed so that they operate "in ways most neutral to the incentives to save, invest, and efficiently allocate resources." 45 Around these general principles lies much variation, and also much

38

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complexity. Countries develop with differing types and mixes of state involvement in fostering indigenous enterprise (and even temporarily protecting it). Countries fall behind when the state becomes the dominant producer and employer, or an enduring protector of inefficient economic actors, whether capital or labor. Perhaps the most important lesson from our own comparative study is very simple, but very commonly neglected: Whatever the exact shape of a country's policy, it can only work if it is pursued consistently and pragmatically. Drastic shifts between radical, populist, redistributive policies and radical, neoliberal, austerity policies are bound to invite the kind of economic misery and crisis—with constant capital flight, faint or even negative investment, international indebtedness, stagnation or depression, and catastrophic hyperinflation—that now threaten the future of democracy in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. This is not the inevitable fate of developing democracies. Some have achieved steady economic growth through stable, prudent policies that have made it possible for entrepreneurs at all levels to save, invest, profit, and reinvest with some confidence in a predictable future. Most notably perhaps, Colombia's eclectic, pragmatic economic policies have produced continuous economic growth with low inflation in the three decades since its democratic transition. 46 The sixteen-year National Front agreement between Colombia's two major political parties, providing for a sharing of power and, again, depoliticization of key issues, helped to foster this pragmatism and continuity by insulating the state's economic policies from partisan and ideological conflict. However, the decisive lesson of developmental experience is neither that economic reform is possible only in authoritarian contexts nor that every afflicted democracy requires a formal political pact. Rather it is that "reform is most likely when political elites are temporarily or permanently freed from political constraints." 47 This can follow from the accession to power of a new government with a firm majority, in a climate where previous policies have not only failed but been clearly discredited. Or it can follow from the revision and professionalization of the state's economic policymaking institutions in ways that better insulate them from partisan political pressures and conflicts. This raises, more generally, a related but distinctive tension or paradox, to which we have already alluded, with regard to the state bureaucracy. Democracy implies popular control over the state and state responsiveness and accountability to popular concerns. This means that state bureaucrats must ultimately be answerable to elected politicians, including the people's legislative representatives. If the bureaucracy is too detached from or paramount above politicians and interest groups, major principles of democracy will be violated. However, if the bureaucracy is too much subject to popular consent and political control, it will not be

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able to function effectively in implementing painful but necessary policies. Each democracy must find its own way of reconciling this tension, and reach its own judgment about the degree to which it may be willing to sacrifice more bureaucratic effectiveness in order to achieve greater bureaucratic accountability. However, in a world where economic growth is increasingly dependent not only on policy continuity but also on subtle, complex, and rapid adjustments to assure monetary stability and international competitiveness, democracies may find the need for innovations (perhaps like the Federal Reserve System in the United States) that provide the sensitive economic policy institutions of the state with some considerable political autonomy. Relative bureaucratic autonomy and continuity serve other ends of democratic governance as well. They constitute an important check on the absolute and arbitrary power of politicians, while limiting the role of corrupt or at least potentially corrupting political patronage. Bureaucratic professionalism may help "to ensure citizens at least a minimum of neutrality in the application of the law and a minimum of probity in the conduct of the administration, as well as a basic continuity in the functioning of the state that compensates for the instability of political leadership in many democracies." 48 To return to the economic dimension in conclusion, democracies do not, inherently, perform worse economically than dictatorships. Very probably, they do not inherently perform better, either. Policy choice and implementation are more important factors. Nor are democracies inherently more unlikely than dictatorships to manage fiscal and monetary policy responsibly and to adopt needed policy reforms. Whether they do so or not depends heavily not only on sociopolitical conditions at the mass level but on the strength and autonomy of political institutions and on the wisdom and skill of political leaders, both in formulating policies and in constructing effective coalitions behind them. Toward the latter goal, the importance of educating the public and various interest groups about the substantive imperatives of reform should not be overlooked. Finally, to conclude, it is important that organized groups in civil society take the initiative to educate themselves, and not just in pursuit of their immediate short-term interests. It is true that all modern democracies are elite dominated and that elites matter disproportionately in making and unmaking democracy. But as Almond and Verba observed, the democratic citizenry of a "civic culture" retains a considerable reserve potential for political action. There are times in the life of a democracy when its arteries become so occluded, its political elite so trapped in the short-term "rationality" of electoral and institutional parameters, that democratic renewal can only be achieved with the concerted education and mobilization of ordinary citizens around broad systemic reforms.

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There are times when democracy can be revitalized only by bringing the practice of democracy much closer to its classical idea. That this is possible—and I believe it is—in an age of elite domination and popular fragmentation is perhaps the greatest paradox of all.

Notes I am grateful to Jonathyn Hartlyn and my colleagues at the Journal of Democracy, Marc Plattner and Philip Costopoulos, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1. American Political Science Review 53 (1959), pp. 69-105. 2. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963). 3. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968). 4. Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1972), pp. 62-92. 5. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971); G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability, and Violence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982). 6. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Vol. 2, Africa; Vol. 3, Asia; Vol. 4, Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988 and 1989). 7. More formally, I will mean here by democracy a system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful and extensive competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties) for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of force; a highly inclusive level of political participation in the selection of leaders and policies, at least through regular, free, and fair elections, such that no major (adult) social group is excluded; and a level of civil and political liberties—freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to form and join organizations—sufficient to ensure the integrity of political competition and participation. This definition is drawn from Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries,\ols. 2-4, p. xvi, and is essentially what Dahl designates as "polyarchy." 8. In this sense, the efficacy of a regime is to be distinguished from its effectiveness—"the capacity actually to implement the policies formulated, with the desired results." See Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 20-22. It is the combination or interaction of efficacy and effectiveness that analysts often have in mind when they consider the overall effectiveness of regimes. 9. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 39^t0. 10. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; Alex Inkeles, "Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries," American Political Science Review 63, no. 4 (1969).

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11. See, for example, Tun-jen Cheng, "Democratizing the Quasi-Leninist Regime in Taiwan," World Politics 61, no. 4 (July 1989), pp. 480-486; and Sung-joo Han, "South Korea: Politics in Transition," in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Asia, pp. 293-294. 12. Lipset, Political Man, p. 52; Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Introduction: Comparing Experiences with Democracy," in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), pp. 21-23. 13. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 48-56. 14. See as well the other three volumes of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule edited by O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead. 15. Dankwart Rustow, "Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 (April 1970), pp. 352-363; see also Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 36-39. 16. Linz and Stepan, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. 17. Ibid., pp. 30-32. 18. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 129-140. 19. John Higley and Michael G. Burton, "The Elite Variable in Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns," American Sociological Review 54 (February 1989), p. 17, italics in original. See also Michael G. Burton and John Higley, "Elite Settlements," American Sociological Review 52 (June 1987), pp. 295-307. 20. Higley and Burton, "The Elite Variable," p. 19. 21. Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 33-40. 22. Burton and Higley, "Elite Settlements," p. 295. 23. O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, pp. 37- 38. 24. Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), and Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977). 25. Jonathan Hartlyn, "Colombia: The Politics of Violence and Accommodation," in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, pp. 308-320. 26. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, p. 491. Their quote is from Bernard Berelson. 27. Ibid., pp. 17-21,473-493. 28. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; Dahl, Polyarchy, pp. 128-162; Lipset, Political Man, pp. 39^0,45-52,64-79; Sidney Verba, "Conclusion: Comparative Political Culture," in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 512—60; Alex Inkeles, "National Character and Modern Political Systems," in Francis L. K. Hsu, ed., Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1961); and J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 239-245. 29. See, for example, Larry Diamond and Juan J. Linz, "Politics, Society, and Democracy in Latin America," in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, pp. 10-12. 30. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, pp. 21-44. 31. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of

42

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California Press, 1985), pp. 568-576. 32. Ibid., pp. 598-599. 33. Larry Diamond, "Class Formation in the Swollen African State," Journal of Modern African Studies 26, no. 1 (March 1988). 34. Thus Gaetano Mosca, decrying at the turn of the century the tendency for the state to "absorb and distribute a larger and larger portion of the public wealth," observed: One of the most important reasons for the decline of the parliamentary system is the relatively huge numbers of offices, contracts for public works and other favors of an economic character which the governing class is in a position to distribute . . . and the drawbacks of that system are greater in proportion as the amount of wealth that th e government or local elective bodies absorb and distribute is greater, and the harder it becomes, therefore, to secure an independent position and an honest living without relying in some respect or other upon public administration. (The Ruling Class: Elementi di Scienza Politico [New York: McGraw Hill, 1939], p. 145) 35. Juan J. Linz, "The Perils of Presidentialism," Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 51-69. 36. Such possibilities for presidentialism in multiethnic societies are considered by Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, pp. 636-639. 37. Powell, Contemporary Democracies, pp. 123-132. 38. Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 150-168. 39. Israel-Diaspora Institute, "Electoral Reform in Israel—An Abstract,'' Tel Aviv, Israel, February 1990. In this German model, the voter casts two ballots, one for a constituency representative and one for a national party list. Seats are filled first with the candidates who won in the constituencies, and then with the number of candidates from each party's national list that will give each party a proportion of parliamentary seats equivalent to the proportion of the vote it won in the second ballot, for party lists. The Israeli proposal differs from the German one in that the German constituency representatives are elected by plurality vote in single-member districts, while the proposed Israeli system would elect three members from each of twenty territorial districts. 40. Although the Congress Party never won a majority of the popular vote, its electoral pluralities, in the face of fragmented opposition, often translated into 60 or 70 percent or more of India's parliamentary seats. This anomaly facilitated the abuse of political power by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and by elected prime ministers in Sri Lanka before the recent switch to proportional representation in that country. 41. Alvin Rabushka and Steve H. Hanke, eds., Toward Growth: A Blueprint for Economic Rebirth in Israel (Jerusalem: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1988). 42. Terry Lynn Karl, "Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela," in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, pp. 210-215. 43. The following summary reflects the comparative evidence from our study of democracy in developing countries and also draws from Nicolas Ardito-Barletta, "Democracy and Development," The Washington Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Sum-

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mer 1990), pp. 161-171. 44. Ibid., p. 162. 45. Ibid., p. 163. 46. Hartlyn, "Colombia," pp. 310-311. 47. Stephan Haggard, "Democracy and Economic Growth." Paper presented to the U.S. Agency for International Development Seminar on the Democratic Pluralism Initiative, Washington, D.C., June 15,1990, p. 23. 48. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Democracy in Developing Countries: Facilitating and Obstructing Factors," in Raymond D. Gastil, ed., Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 1987--88 (New York: Freedom House, 1988), p. 248.

PART L HISTORICAL ORIGINS

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The Origins of Israeli Political Culture Myron

}.

Aronoff

Modern nations . . . claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so "natural" as to require no definition other than self-assertion. —Eric Ilobsbawm1

It has been said that culturally Israel is a product of the wedding of the kasbah and the shtetl. The former symbolizes the stereotypical way of life of North African Jewry (and the Jews living in the Arab world in general), and the latter represents the equally stereotypical way of life of Eastern European Jewry. It should be noted that neither of these two traditions were noted for their democratic principles or practices. However, both were characteristically participatory and representative, albeit oligarchic in structure. Since the Eastern European Zionists created and dominated the political institutions of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine prior to independence) and during the building of the state, their cultural traditions—both traditional and modern, religious and secular—had a greater influence on the nascent Israeli political culture. Given patterns of immigration and birthrates, the descendants of Middle Eastern Jewry have made a stronger impact in the last two decades. Shlomo Avineri has pointed out that the dual culture of the decomposing Jewish kehila (traditional community) and the revolutionary antiauthoritarian traditions of Eastern Europe combined in shaping the contours of Israeli political culture. In their rebellion against the kehila of their parents, the Zionist pioneers were nonetheless strongly influenced by this culture, as were the political institutions and culture that they constructed.2 They were even more consciously influenced by nationalism and socialism that dominated the political debates of the countries from which they emigrated. In spite of the relative unimportance of democratic symbols and myths in early Israeli political culture, the chalutzim (pioneers) established democratic political structures that combined elements of majoritarian and consensus democracies. Peter Medding analyzes the tension between 47

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the two tendencies in the unique Israeli hybrid that moved from a predominantly consensual form in the Yishuv to one that increasingly adopted majoritarian features after independence. However, even in the latter period, it continued to operate in a social context that retained many attributes identified with the consensus model, such as multidimensional social and issue cleavages, multipartyism, a proportional representation electoral system, and coalition cabinets. 3 Medding skillfully shows that the founding of the political order was piecemeal in response to urgent institutional requirements, and that nothing has proved more permanent or crucial in its ramifications than such "temporary" decisions as that to retain the proportional representation system of elections. Among the more serious long-term ramifications that developed from this piecemeal process were oligarchic organizational patterns and a political culture supportive of an Israeli variant of democratic centralism. The seeds of unresponsiveness were thereby sown and contributed to many of the problems the country currently confronts. I return to these issues in my conclusions. The modern state of Israel asserts the historical link of the Jewish people to a land from which it had been exiled for nearly two millennia. As a conspicuously new construct, creating the impression of constituting a natural community has been a monumental challenge for the new state. Perhaps the primary goal of Israeli political culture has been to make the continuity of the ancient past with the contemporary context a taken-forgranted reality. The right to statehood for the Jews based on this historical link has been challenged by many both within and without its borders. Therefore, the challenge to inventing the Zionist tradition has been a daunting one. Zionism has constituted the dominant paradigm of Israeli political culture since its inception in the early Yishuv. It aims to establish the legitimacy of the contemporary state by creating a credible claim to continuity with the biblical past. This has been accomplished primarily through the use of symbols, myths, and rituals that were interpreted differently according to the ideological perspectives of competing political movements and parties. This competition has not only determined which ideological interpretation was ascendent or dominant at different periods, but also which views were marginalized or silenced. This preliminary examination of some of the sources of Israeli political culture focuses on the analysis of selected symbols, myths, and rituals of the emerging state.4 Such an examination must begin with an appreciative critique of the important pioneering work of Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya. 5 Their contribution through their perceptive analysis of four major versions of the Zionist vision, particularly as they relate to traditional religion, provides a foundation for all future work on the subject.

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Unfortunately, their view of culture is a static one that significantly impairs their analysis. It fails to capture the dialectical tension between processes of institutionalization and constant challenge to the taken-forgrantedness of socially constructed reality. Unlike Roy Wagner, who conceives of the invention of culture as a "dialectic through which meaning is and must be continually invented," Liebman and Don-Yehiya present a reified view of culture: 6 T w o contradictory processes take place concurrently in all societies and cultures. On o n e hand, patterns of collective behavior b e c o m e habitual and the collective meanings ascribed to them undergo a process of institutionalization or reification during which they tend to b e c o m e taken for granted as they c o m e to define reality for m e m b e r s of the society. O n the other hand, the process of reification ( o r conventionalization) is never completed. D u e to the impossibility of achieving perfect socialization and the unequal distribution of status and power ( a m o n g other factors), there are always individuals and groups who call into question the taken-for-grantedness of the dominant cultural myths and offer competing definitions of reality. 7

Paul Ricouer stresses that "social imagination is constitutive of social reality," and he suggests all systems of legitimation exceed their authority and produce credibility gaps. 8 This is what Max Gluckman 9 called the "frailty in authority." Consequently, I suggest that political culture is inherently subject to challenge, particularly in contemporary pluralistic contexts. Liebman and Don-Yehiya also fail to distinguish between the general political culture that they call civil religion and the more specific ideological interpretations by the various political movements that constitute competing visions of a shared overall symbolic universe. 10 Whereas they recognize that traces of all approaches existed among different groups in every period, they identify each different historical period with a different dominant civil religion. Thus, Labor Zionism was dominant in the Yishuv, statism (mamlachtiut) was the dominant civil religion of the new state until approximately 1967, and, they claim, the new civil religion achieved dominance thereafter (a claim I emphatically refute). 11 I suggest that Zionism constitutes the root cultural paradigm of Israeli political culture; I elucidate this point in further detail below. "Within the general Zionist framework, socialist Zionism, revisionist Zionism, statist Zionism, and religious Zionism (through the different political movements and parties identified with them) have competed with one another for power and the right to claim their version to be the true interpretation of the Zionist vision." 12 This debate sets the parameters of legitimacy in Israeli politics. Those who do not accept or even reject its major tenets (e.g., Arabs and non-Zionist Orthodox Jews) have been

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historically politically marginalized.13 From the beginning of the modern Zionist movement, there have been deep divisions between groups with competing ideological interpretations of many fundamental tenets. Therefore it is particularly remarkable that the Labor movement was able to establish the dominance of its ideological version of Zionism and, with varying degrees of success, to marginalize competing versions within the Zionist camp—not to mention its ability to deny legitimacy to world views that rejected the civil religion of the emerging state. For example, the voices of the Palestinians and the Orthodox Jews of the old Yishuv were successfully muted in the dominant political debate. I suggest that the major consequence of the polarized political conflict within the Zionist camp was to establish the parameters of permissible discourse as well as the privileged voice of Labor within it. The identification of the majority of the young nation's intellectuals with what informally emerged as the official interpretation helped to establish the hegemony of this interpretation as the dominant one.14 The old adage that history is written by the victors is as applicable to internal political struggles as it is to confrontations with outsiders. As George Orwell said in 1984, "Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past." 15 Zionism contains conflicting, even contradictory, principles that have been interpreted differently by competing groups in changing circumstances to justify their goals and to give legitimacy to their interests. This dynamic, after all, is the essence of cultural production and reproduction. It is exemplified in Ben-Gurion's statement: "Two basic aspirations underlie all our work in this country: T o be like all nations, and to be different from all nations." 16 The tension between such contradictory aspirations contributes to the dynamics of Zionist discourse. The perception of Jewish life in the diaspora as abnormal and undesirable is a basic underlying assumption of all versions of Zionism. The negation of the diaspora was a far more prominent feature of socialist Zionism in the Yishuv and even of statism during the first two decades of the state than of the so-called new Zionism that several scholars associate with the Begin era.17 Even-Zohar 18 points out that influencing the invention of a native Hebrew culture in Palestine was "the creation of a new Jewish people and a new Jew in the Land of Israel." He argues that the most important motive for the adoption of Hebrew and its Sephardic pronunciation stemmed from their role as cultural opposites to the stereotypes of diaspora culture against which the Zionists rebelled. These stereotypes in fact had an enduring influence on Hebrew language and literature. Similarly, the soldier pioneer who heroically sacrificed his life for his country was the

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mirror opposite of the Zionist perception of the prototypical Jew of the diaspora. The desire for national normality is a widely shared aspiration. Those who share this goal interpret the biblical prophecy of Balaam, "Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations," 19 as a curse. However, others consider it an affirmation of Israel's "chosenness." Those who adhere to the latter interpretation deny that the Jewish people can be a normal people. Many reject the idea that it is desirable for Israel to become like other nations. For example, religious nationalists like Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) condemn trends of growing secularism and materialism as Hellinization. Such significantly different orientations shape partisan disputes and interpretations of reality. The powerful, widely shared aspiration to create a nation that would be "a light unto the nations" also logically contradicts the aspiration for normality. Even among those who argued that the Jewish State should adhere to unusually high standards of moral/ethical behavior, there was strong disagreement whether traditional religious, socialist, or humanist values should be the standard/ 0 Both secular and religious ideologies considered Israel the fulfillment of messianic redemption. Not only do different groups adhere to differing and even contradictory interpretations, but individuals and groups hold such views simultaneously. Just as individuals compartmentalize logically conflicting notions in order to ameliorate cognitive dissonance, cultures contextualize myths in an effort to reconcile contradictory messages. As conditions in society change, leaders interpret the meaning of myths in a manner appropriate to the changing context and their changing goals. The core myths of all cultures are multivocal and lend themselves to conflicting interpretations with even contradictory ideological messages. Nurith Gertz has suggested that the myth of David and Goliath, a myth of the few versus the many, has provided a structure of meaning that has linked the past in Israel from the years of early settlement to the present. 21 Her analysis of political speeches, election propaganda, and literary and journalistic texts traces the varying treatments of the theme in different historical contexts. 22 Whereas all Zionist parties shared common assumptions, each interpreted the various Zionist myths through its ideological perspective. In the process of appropriating and transforming them, they made national myths into party myths and the Zionist heroes into party heroes. As Gertz has pointed out, "The heroes of the past who populate national myths are thus portrayed as the vanguard of the respective contemporary movements." 2 3 Similarly, contemporary leaders and policies were given legitimacy through their symbolic association with mythical heroes. For example,

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Ben-Gurion was frequently associated with one of his favorite biblical characters, Joshua, who led the Hebrews into the promised land. I contend that through their competitive interpretations, political parties also helped establish the authenticity and centrality of the myth in the public mind, thereby elevating shared Zionist symbols in spite of partisan differences. A good example of this is illustrated by the Tel Hai legend. Yael Zeruvabel describes this narrative as a national myth that highlights the theme of collective death and rebirth and "sanctified a new beginning in Jewish history and the emergence of a new type of Jew, ready to fight for his land and die for it."24 The main theme of the myth was the break with the past, and the emergence of a new Hebrew. The defenders of Tel Hai symbolized both the revolt against the Zionist image of the "ghetto Jew" and a heroic defense against "Arab marauders." Zeruvabel traces how the death of six Jewish settlers on March 1,1920 (the eleventh day in the Hebrew month of Adar), who were defending a small northern settlement, was incorporated into a narrative emphasizing commonly held Zionist values of self-defense and self-sacrifice for the national cause. The Tel Hai myth also dramatically illustrated the theme of the few against the many since the settlers were vastly outnumbered and surrounded. The importance of the myth in Israeli political culture is symbolized by the fact that Tel Hai Day (the eleventh of Adar) is one of only four anniversaries of historic events officially sanctioned as a state holiday.25 Yoseph Trumpeldor, a former officer in the Czarist army who had lost an arm in combat, was a uniquely appropriate candidate for elevation to folk hero as the New Hebrew Man.2 His reputed dying statement, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country," could not have been more appropriate if it had been deliberately invented for the national myth. In fact, Gertz suggests the Tel Hai scenario (including such heroic dying statements) fit into a common literary formula of what she terms the literature of the periphery at the time.27 Ironically, although in a later, more skeptical era a counterfolklore emerged and popular opinion regarded this statement as having been invented, Zuravabel suggests that historical evidence tends to support its authenticity.28 The competing political camps manipulated the Tel Hai myth for partisan advantage. Revisionist interpretation stressed military activism, heroism, and sacrifice as the central values of the myth, while Labor emphasized the pioneering aspects of settling and working the land, and a restrained defense policy. Labor's interpretation, which linked settlement with defense and institution building, was on the ascent during the 1920s and 1930s. The Labor position on Tel Hai culminated fifteen years after the fall of Tel Hai in the "wall and tower" {choma umigdat) policy of establishing facts.29 Thus each party selectively interpreted appropriate

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aspects of Trumpeldor's life, work, and death to validate its ideological vision and interests. Liebman and D o n - Y e h i y a suggest that for the Socialists, who had yet to represent the A r a b as "the other" 01* as an enemy, the myth also reflected the problematic relationship of the Zionists to the Arabs. 30 Zeruvabel's analysis of the oral and written literature inspired by Tel Hai aimed at the political socialization of children illustrates the impact of partisan conflict concerning the interpretation of historical events. I would stress that the struggle over the interpretation of this national myth was part of a wider struggle, which established Zionism as the dominant paradigm of the political culture of the Yishuv. Labor's victory gave it a privileged voice within that political culture, helping it to establish political as well as ideological dominance in the face of Revisionist, liberal, and left-socialist alternatives. 31 Labor's victory also firmly established the position of the settlers (eventually the kibbutznikim) as the vanguard of the Zionist movement. A subsidiary theme derived from the Tel Hai myth was incorporated into Israeli political culture; the notion that it is indeed good to die for one's country. A p r o p o s of this theme, I have written: T h e primary rite of passage that initiates one into full membership in the Zionist civil religion is service in Z a h a l (the Israel D e f e n s e Forces). It is the single most important test, particularly for males, for individual and group acceptance in the mainstream of Israeli society governed by Zionist civil religion. T h e type of unit in which one (or members of one's group) serves, and even the proportion of casualties suffered by the members of one's group are seen to be proof of the extent of one's commitment and the centrality of the group in the mainstream of society. T h e fact that kibbutznikim disproportionately served as officers and in elite units that suffered high casualties was always cited as evidence of their vanguard role in the Zionist venture. M o r e recently, in interviews conducted during the war in L e b a n o n this writer was told by leaders of nationalist religious Jews and of Eastern Jews that the higher rates of casualties suffered by their respective groups was evidence of their having moved to the forefront of the national (Zionist) struggle. 32

Conversely, those groups and social categories that do not serve in the army, particularly A r a b s and ultra-Orthodox Jews, are marginalized. This is also true, but to a lesser extent, of those persons (such as women) w h o serve in noncombatant roles. In essence, it is the "ownership" of military casualties that provides the most dramatic claim on centrality in Israeli society. Consequently, while the funerals for the fallen are their final rites of passage, for the groups that claim them, their annual memorial ceremonies are an ongoing source of legitimacy as well as celebrations of national solidarity. Zeruvabel notes another aspect of the commemoration of heroic

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action, the reference to the number of casualties involved by the numerical naming of places she calls "numerical commemoration." 33 For example, a main street in a town where I lived was named the street of "the five" to commemorate the five residents of the town who died in the 1967 War. 34 Memorialization of the dead is a leitmotiv in Israeli culture that is rooted in Jewish religious tradition as well as in the cultures of several countries from which Jews immigrated to Israel (particularly countries in Eastern Europe). In fact, it has become so extensive and central to the political culture that I suggest it has evolved into a national cult of memorializing the dead. Memorialization of those who died in Israel's wars has led to the construction of a vast number of war memorials and shrines throughout the country and an equally large number of rites of commemoration for individuals. Annual rites are held by each of the underground military organizations, various units of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), and collectively for all of the fallen.35 Regularized rites institutionalized by the IDF are held at thirty-nine military cemeteries throughout the country and at two major monuments the day before the celebration of Israel's Independence Day. 36 Every local Jewish community in the country has a Yad L'Banim (Memorial to the Sons), which usually serves as a community center, but which also memorializes those who died either in Israel's wars or fighting the ongoing battle against terrorism. There is also a central memorial for all Druze who died in battle. Since these facilities are fully utilized by youth and citizens of all ages, such individuals are constantly reminded of the sacrifice members of their community made for the nation's defense. There is yet another type of memorialization derived from Jewish tradition that is a significant but infrequently noted aspect of Israeli political culture. This involves the ceremonial reinternment in Israel of the remains of individuals and groups who had been buried abroad. The patriarch Jacob was the first recorded Jew to have had his remains reinterred in the land of Israel. 37 Burial in Israel also has deep resonance for religious Jews because it guarantees that the souls will be in the holy land on the day of messianic redemption and is necessary for the conservation of souls on the Day of Judgment. David Ben-Gurion, a self-avowed secular Jew, was responsible for the reinternment of the remains of the early Zionist socialist thinker Moses Hess in the region of the Kinneret. 38 This symbolic postmortem aliyah honored the memory of a thinker whose major Zionist work, Rome and Jerusalem, anticipated and expressed with considerably greater intellectual distinction ideas that later appeared in Theodore Herzl's more widely known The Jewish State. Through this ceremony, sponsored by the Histadrut in 1935, the Labor movement honored the first socialist Zionist thinker as their intellectual forefather.

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During the statist period, the remains of Theodore Herzl were transferred to Israel in 1949 and, in an elaborate state ceremony, were buried on a mountain in Jerusalem that bears his name. Mount Herzl subsequently became a sacred site where other greats of the nation are buried. 39 Herzl's grave site became a national shrine during the period of mamlachtiut's dominance. Another notable case of reburial involved the founding leader of the Revisionist movement, Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky was buried in the United States in 1940, and his will requested that he be reinterred by the government of the Jewish State when it came into being. However, Ben-Gurion refused Menachem Begin's repeated requests that the government of Israel provide an official state funeral for the reburial of Jabotinsky, just as it had done for Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. Ben-Gurion's response was that just as the Histadrut had sponsored the ceremony for Hess, so Jabotinsky's political heirs should sponsor the ceremony honoring him. Ben-Gurion's successor, Levi Eshkol, gave Jabotinsky a full-dress state funeral and reburied his remains in an honored spot on Mount Herzl on the twenty-fourth anniversary of his death in 1964.40 This ceremony symbolized both the normalization of relations between Labor and the political descendants of the Revisionist movement, and the beginning of the latter's political rehabilitation and legitimization. This process culminated in celebrations of Jabotinsky's one hundredth birthday, sponsored by the government headed by Menachem Begin, from October 22,1980, to July 22,1981 (corresponding to the dates of Jabotinsky's birth and death according to the Jewish calendar). 41 The most dramatic contemporary illustration of this phenomenon of reburial was the state funeral sponsored by the same Begin-led government for the remains reputedly belonging to the fighters and followers of Shimon Bar Koziba (popularly known as Bar Kochba), who led the second Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 132-135. These remains, discovered by noted archeologist Yigal Yadin in March 1960, were reburied on May 11,1982. I have previously argued that this ceremony was part of an unsuccessful attempt by Begin to establish the Likud's political dominance and the ideological hegemony of what some scholars have called a New Zionism closely identified with Begin's political leadership of the state. 42 The debate over the appropriateness, meaning, and significance for contemporary policy of this controversial ritual reaffirmed a shared Zionist rhetoric at the same time that it expressed polarized ideologies and conflicting policy alternatives. The fact that secular scholars like Professor Yigal Yadin and Yehoshafat Harkabi (both of whom played major military roles in their

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earlier careers) engaged in public debate with the prime minister and the chief Ashkenazic rabbi over their contradictory interpretations of the consequences and implications of events that took place two thousand years ago implies that they shared an underlying Zionist/Israeli world view that made the debate over such a root cultural paradigm possible, intelligible, and meaningful. The minutes of the Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies (MCSC) is replete with scores of requests annually for state recognition and support for the reinternment of the remains of various individuals and categories of people (e.g., illegal immigrants who died in British transit camps in Cyprus and Mauritius, the victims of illegal immigrant ships that sank [the Rafiah, Mifkora, Pisces, and Masada, among others], and the ashes of Jews of the Lithuanian Brigade, to name but a few). During the term of the M C S C from February 9 to D e c e m b e r 16,1981, for example, thirty-five of the seventy-six decisions taken dealt with such requests and related issues of memorialization. H o w do we account for the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, and what does it m e a n ? The core myth on which Zionism bases its legitimacy is the eschatological notion of exile and redemption. It is both a "root m e t a p h o r " that provides categories for conceptualizing the order of the world, and a "key scenario" that elaborates mechanisms for social action. 43 "The prophetic promise to the children of Israel of an end to exile in the Diaspora by a return to Zion is the central principle that motivates and legitimates Zionism. It is interpreted as a historic right (or duty) by the secularists and a religious right (or duty) by the religious Zionists." 44 The operational Zionist key scenario derived from this core myth is "the ingathering of the exiles." "Since Zion (Eretz Yisrael, or the biblical land of Israel) is the key symbol identified with Zionism, aliyah (literally 'ascent,' associated with spiritual ascent to the Temple in Jerusalem or the bimah where the Torah is read in the synagogue), the Zionist term for immigration to Israel, is the primary rite in the civil religion for Zionists born abroad. This is considered to be the right of all Jews and the obligation of every Zionist." 45 I suggest that one of the primary motivations for requests for reinternment of remains, particularly by secular Zionists, is related to the desire to fulfill this obligation on behalf of one's comrades, even posthumously. While this ritual honors both the individual or group being reinterred, it no less importantly symbolically recognizes the Zionist credentials of the sponsors. I have already mentioned the sponsors that supported the r e i n t e r n m e n t of p r o m i n e n t Zionists figures like Hess, Herzl, and Jabotinsky, as well as those soldiers and supporters reputedly associated with Bar-Kochba. Other groups (e.g., associations of veterans of both world wars, and

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associations representing ethnic groups, such as North Africans) have initiated and/or sponsored such rites. Each sought recognition of its Zionist credentials, while simultaneously reaffirming the shared belief in a sacrosanct article of Zionist faith. Even in those most partisan cases where opinions and loyalties were divided, the challenges concerned the appropriateness of a particular case, or the appropriateness of state recognition. None, however, questioned the general validity or appropriateness of such rites. On the contrary, as in the aforementioned cases of partisan conflict over the interpretation of myths, the controversial debates confirmed the legitimacy of the dominant Zionist paradigm. Analyses of the changing symbolic salience and meanings of Masada, the Holocaust, and the Western Wall for Israeli political culture reflect not only the general theme of the few against the many, but a growing emphasis on the notion of "them against us." The historical isolation of the Jewish people and the assumption of hostility on the part of the Gentile toward the Jew acquired a new meaning and salience with the Holocaust. Liebman and Don-Yehiya conclude their chapter on the new civil religion by stressing that "the traditional concepts of Esau hates Jacob and a nation that dwells alone became explanations of reality and legitimations of Israeli policy."46 Even the celebration of traditional religious holidays and contemporary secular festivities in Israeli kindergartens emphasize the victory of the Jewish people over enemies who sought to destroy them and their culture in both ancient and recent history.47 A colleague reported the following story related by his daughter upon returning from kindergarten one day. "Daddy, I know that on Passover we celebrated our freedom from the horrid Egyptian Pharaoh who wanted to keep us as slaves. On Purim we are happy because brave Queen Esther convinced the King to hang the wicked Persian Hamen who wanted to destroy all of the Jews. On Hanukkah we celebrate our freedom from our Greek enemies. Daddy, tell me—who were our enemies on Tu Bi-Shevat [the New Year of the Trees, or Arbor Day]?" 48 The twisted interpretation of tradition reflected in this anecdote is indicative of a sense of national paranoia that characterizes the more nationalistic Zionists and reaches its extreme manifestation among the xenophobic ultra-Zionists: What fundamentally divides Israeli Zionists is their evaluation of whether or not the Jewish people and its state are capable of being "normal," and whether or not such a condition (if it is possible) is one that should be sought. Essentially the humanist Zionists, even those who aspire for Israel to be a light unto the nations, aspire to normalcy (even if it may be an unobtainable condition). The nationalists believe that the Jewish people, and consequently its state, are fated to be a nation that

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dwells alone. The ultra-nationalists glory in Israel's abnormality, its isolation, and consider this singularity as proof of providential "chosenness." 4 9

I have argued that these orientations are related to different perceptions of security, perceptions of "the other," and temporal perceptions of myth and history. To put it succinctly: "The humanists tend toward greater security, perceive history as a linear process, and aspire to national normalcy. There is an inverse relationship between degrees of nationalism and perceptions of security. There is a positive relationship between the degrees of nationalism and perceptions of history as myth, or temporal notions of totemic time" 50 Zionism has contained contradictory aspirations from its inception. Competing groups with conflicting interests and ideological interpretations of the Zionist vision have utilized various symbols, myths, and rituals to interpret social reality in conformity with their respective perspectives and goals. The tension created by the struggle between rival groups debating in terms of contradictory aspirations established dominance of the Zionist discourse and the centrality and marginality of various groups in the political culture that this discourse articulated. The post-1967 period has seen a sharpening of the divisions within Israeli culture characterized by conflicting aspirations, interests, and political perspectives. Although this chapter has focused on the sources of political culture in the emerging state, I shall conclude by briefly addressing current trends in the Zionist discourse that may point to a less functional and optimistic outcome for current debates than was achieved in the earlier period. Rael Isaac suggested that the ideological divisions in Israel essentially contributed to stability until approximately 1967. However, argues Isaac, particularly since 1977, cohesiveness and stability have been undermined by the breakdown of a commonly perceived threat to survival. "And it is the perception of threat itself which now divides the public in Israel. Once the threat is differentially perceived, it pits against each other those who identify different—often contradictory—ways of meeting perceived dangers." 51 Whereas I agree with this perceptive observation, I completely disagree with Isaac's further claim that the parties no longer offer alternative views of Israel's national task. Writing at a time of the signing of the Camp David accords, Isaac was obviously disappointed with what she apparently perceived to have been a betrayal by Begin of Revisionist ideology. Subsequent developments, which have made her first observation even more compelling, have proven her second one to be mistaken. The Palestinian intifada, the subsequent changes in the position of the

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P L O , t h e E g y p t i a n a n d U.S. initiatives to facilitate t h e i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of t h e S h a m i r / R a b i n p r o p o s a l s f o r elections o n t h e W e s t B a n k a n d in t h e G a z a Strip, a n d t h e divided reactions of L a b o r a n d the L i k u d t h a t b r o u g h t d o w n t h e g o v e r n m e n t f o r m e d a f t e r t h e 1988 elections, t h e victory of t h e R a b i n - l e d L a b o r Party in the 1992 elections, a n d t h e f o r m a t i o n of t h e coalition g o v e r n m e n t with t h e dovish M e r e t z a n d t h e Shas h a v e m a d e it clear t h a t t h e r e still are viable alternative views b e t w e e n the m a j o r Zionist parties. Isaac wishes to a r g u e that "of all t h e a d v e r s e d e v e l o p m e n t s t h a t h a v e b e s e t Israel since her 1967 military t r i u m p h , t h e m o s t serious may h a v e b e e n t h e loss of faith in t h e traditional slogan, ' T h e r e is n o choice.' It is a slogan a b e l e a g u e r e d state with an ideological c u l t u r e can ill a f f o r d t o relinquish." 5 2 H o w e v e r , I suggest that the loss of ein breira as a slogan is only to b e r e g r e t t e d if it accurately portrays objective political realities. A n w a r Sadat p r o v e d t h a t it did not d o so in t h e case of Egypt. Similarly, t h e r e is s t r o n g indication that, in the case of J o r d a n , Syria, a n d t h e Palestinians, t h e r e is a choice, a c h a n c e for political dialogue. W h e r e a s p r o g r e s s in b o t h the bilateral and mulitlateral talks was delayed by t h e U.S. presidential election, t h e f o r m a t i o n of a n e w Clinton a d m i n i s t r a t i o n will h o p e f u l l y r e s t o r e a new m o m e n t u m . H o w e v e r , Isaac's fears as t o t h e impact of t h e loss of a c o m m o n p e r c e p t i o n of t h e source of t h r e a t t o t h e state b r o u g h t a b o u t by the territorial issue are even m o r e seriously applicable t o t h e results of t h e contradictory conclusions d r a w n by Israelis r e g a r d i n g t h e challenge of the Palestinian uprising. Such divisions invite i n t e r n a t i o n a l p r e s s u r e s a n d c o n t r i b u t e to divisions within t h e Jewish c o m m u n i t i e s a b r o a d . I suggest t h a t the intifada has succeeded in convincing m o s t Israelis t h a t t h e status q u o in t h e territories is not viable. A s A m o s O z aptly p u t it: " W h a t was will n e v e r b e again, a n d w h a t will be, is n o t w h a t was." 5 3 T h e intifada h a s f o r c e d m a n y Israelis t o c o n f r o n t , a n d to consider, t h e legitim a c y of t h e Palestinian claim t o t h e land a n d t o n a t i o n a l s e l f - d e t e r m i n a tion. F o r s o m e Israelis, it has called into q u e s t i o n t h e t a k e n - f o r - g r a n t e d t r a d i t i o n a l definition of the A r a b / P a l e s t i n i a n as " t h e o t h e r . " I h a v e argued: In a very real sense the present situation is forcing many Israelis to reevaluate and to redefine the essence of Zionism a century after its beginnings and how it relates to the state of Israel in its fortieth year of independence. Such fundamental challenges to perceptions of reality, which have been taken for granted by so many people for so long, are perceived by those thrust into confusion and self-doubt as a great danger. However, with perspective, this situation can also be seen to be a tremendously liberating one, since it allows for considerable freedom in the reinvigoration or re-creation of cultural paradigms, which may also open up new political options The old policies have proved bankrupt

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and the old ideologies have lost their salience. There is no turning back. But the future is rife with as many possibilities and promises as it is with threats and dangers.54

Notes I am extremely grateful to Jonathan Boyarin, William Robinson, Laurence J. Silberstein, and Yael Zeruvabel for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, which was presented at a conference on "New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State" at Lehigh University on May 13-15, 1990.1 wish to express my gratitude to Gabriel Almond, Shlomo Avineri, Larry Diamond, Louis Gan, Ephraim Kleinman, Nelson Polsby, Ehud Sprinzak, and Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar for their comments on a revised version presented to the conference on "Israeli Democracy Under Stress" held at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, July 28-July 1,1990. 1. Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 14. 2. Professor Avineri was the designated discussant of my paper at the aforementioned Stanford conference. He gave a more expanded treatment of this subject in a talk entitled "The Origins and Dilemmas of Israeli Democracy" at the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy of Rutgers University on October 18,1989. 3. Peter Y. Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy, 1948-1967 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). Medding adapts modes presented in Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984). 4. Since I am not a historian, I am sensitive to the limits of professional naïveté when working beyond one's fields of professional expertise (in my case, anthropology and political science). See Max Gluckman, ed., Closed Systems and Open Minds: The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964; Chicago: Aldine). 5. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 6. Roy Wagner, The Invention of Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 59. 7. Myron J. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1989), pp. xii-xiv. 8. Paul Ricouer, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 13. 9. Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), p. 27. 10. See Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966). 11. See Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, pp. 126-129. 12. Ibid., pp. 128-129. 13. The recent polarization of politics and political stalemate created by the election results have strengthened the Orthodox parties and made the Zionist parties somewhat less paternalistic toward the Arab voters. These trends, if

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strengthened, could lead to future governments being dependent on either Arab or non-Zionist religious parties. This could lead to significant revisions of the Zionist paradigm. See Ian Lustick, "The Political Road to Binationalism: Arabs in Jewish Politics," in Ilan Peleg and Ofira Seliktar, eds., The Emergence of a Binational Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), pp. 97-123, for an example of one such possible scenario. 14. Michael Keren, Ben Gurion and the Intellectuals (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983), and Michael Keren, The Pen and the Sword: Israeli Intellectuals and the Making of the Nation-State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989). 15. It is noteworthy that a revisionist historical perspective, or a reinvention of historical traditions (depending on one's political as well as conceptual preferences) of the Yishuv, has only begun to appear in recent years. It is being written by a younger generation of Israeli historians and historians of Israel. 16. Cited in Daniel Shimshoni, Israeli Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 1982). 17. This argument is persuasively made by Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel. 18. Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of a Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine: 1882-1948," Studies in Zionism 4 (October 1981), p. 171. 19. Numbers 23:9. 20. Since this chapter focuses on the historical origins of the political culture, I generally use the past tense. However, it should be noted that there is considerable continuity and that many features of the past shape the present political culture. I shall return to this point throughout the chapter. 21. Nurith Gertz, "The Few Against the Many," The Jerusalem Quarterly 30 (Winter 1984), pp. 94-104. 22. Nurith Gertz, "Social Myths in Literary and Political Texts," Poetics Today 7, no. 4 (1986), pp. 621-639. 23. Ibid., p. 625. For example, I have analyzed attempts to transform partisan heroes like Jabotinsky and martyrs of the dissident underground military organizations into national heroes through association with mythical "heroes" like Bar-Kochba. See Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions. 24. Yael Zeruvabel, "The Politics of Interpretation: Tel Hai in Israeli Collective Memory," unpublished manuscript, 1989, p. 1. 25. The others are Balfour Declaration Day (November 2, 1917); the anniversary of the United Nations resolution leading to Israeli independence (November 29,1947); and the anniversary of the peace treaty with Egypt (March 26,1979). See Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, p. 46. 26. Yael Zerubavel, "New Beginnings, Old Past: The Collective Memory of Pioneering in Israeli Culture," in Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 193-215. 27. Gertz, "Social Myths," p. 629. 28. Yael Zeruvabel, "From a Marginal Jew to the New Hebrew Man: National Folklore and Counter-Folklore in Israel," unpublished manuscript, p. 27 and n. 20. 29. See Nakdimon Rogel, Tel Hai: A Front Without Rear (Tel Aviv: YarivHadar, 1979, in Hebrew), cited in Zeruvabel, "The Politics of Interpretation." For a report of the debate in the Provisional Committee on February 20,1920, over the so-called Tel-Hai affair and for an analysis of its implications, see Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, 1983), pp. 83-90.

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30. Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, pp. 46-47. 31. Obviously the establishment of ideological preeminence was intimately related to the establishment of political dominance, which is a subject well beyond the scope of this chapter. For analyses of this theme, see Yonathan Shapiro, The Formative Years of the Israel Labor Parly (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1976), and Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Origins of the Israeli Polity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 32. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, pp. 132-133. Sana Hasan, Enemy in the Promised Land (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), pp. 222, reports the following observation of a kibbutznik friend: "I was patriotic once—I was proud of being called to the army after I finished school. But a year later, when I went back to school to attend a friend's graduation ceremony, the headmaster gave a speech and said, 'More graduates of this school have fallen in wars than those of any other school.' And he was proud of it!" 33. Zerubavel, "New Beginning," n. 38. 34. Myron J. Aronoff, Frontiertown: The Politics of Community Building in Israel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974). 35. For example, the Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies in a meeting on October 14, 1981, rejected a request to transfer a memorial for Machal (overseas volunteers who fought in Israel's war of independence) from Latrun (which is the corridor to Jerusalum occupied by Jordan prior to the June 1967 War) to Jerusalem because of the proliferation of memorials on private property throughout the country. 36. Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, pp. 118-119, indicate the government decision of 1950 to establish this memorial day prior to Independence Day was institutionalized in law in 1980. They indicate the 1950 decision to establish military cemeteries was somewhat controversial. The annual memorial ceremonies are attended by members of the government and the Knesset, officers and representatives of units of the IDF, the border police, veterans associations, local councils, and mourning families. Student members of Gadna (a youth organization that provides premilitary training to high school students) conduct the ceremonies at the two monuments. 37. "So Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the officials of Pharaoh, the senior members of his court, and all of Egypt's dignitaries, together with all of Joseph's household, his brothers, and his father's household" (Gen. 50. 7-8). 38.1 am grateful to Professor Shlomo Avineri, who related this to me in an interview on January 24,1983. For an excellent concise analysis of the contribution of Hess to Zionist thought, see Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1981), pp. 36-46. 39. See Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, p. 95. 40. There is no record of this decision in the files of the Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies. According to the secretary of this committee, Aharon Lishansky (in a personal interview), Prime Minister Eshkol decided this matter personally. 41. For a more detailed analysis of these events, see Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, particularly chap. 3, pp. 43-53. 42. For an extended analysis of this case, see Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, chap. 3, pp. 54-64. For works dealing with New Zionism, consult Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel; Ilan Peleg, Begin's Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel's Move to the Right (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987);

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Ofira Seliktar, New Zionism and the Foreign Policy System of Israel (London: Croom Helm, 1986); and Lilly Weissbrod, "From Labour Zionism to New Zionism: Ideological Change in Israel," Theory and Society 10 (1981), pp. 777-803. 43. Sherry B. Ortner, "On Key Symbols," American Anthropologist 75 (1973), pp. 1338-1346. 44. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, p. 130. 45. Ibid., p. 30. 46. Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, p. 166. 47. For a perceptive analysis of such a case, see Leah Shamgar-Handelman and Don Handelman, "Holiday Celebrations in Israeli Kindergartens: Relationships Between Representations of Collectivity and Family in the Nation-State," in Myron J. Aronoff, ed., The Frailty of Authority: Political Anthropology, vol. 5 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1986), pp. 71-130. 48. Myron J. Aronoff, "Introduction," in Aronoff, The Frailty of Authority, p. 7. 49. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, p. 156. 50. Ibid., p. 157. A more detailed analysis is contained in chap. 6, pp. 123-144. 51. Rael Jean Isaac, Party and Politics in Israel (New York: Longman, 1981), p. 207. 52. Ibid., p. 212. 53. Robert Rosenberg, " 'What was will never be again, and what will be, is not what was,' says Amos Oz," Jerusalem Post, February 19,1988, p. 4. 54. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions, pp. 157-158.

The Historical Origins of Israeli Democracy Yonathan Shapiro

The Political Heritage of the Founding Fathers In this chapter I wish to explain how the Jewish society in Palestine was constituted as a democratic society, and what sort of democracy it became. The new Jewish society in Palestine was established by waves of Jewish immigrants from Europe, the first of which came primarily from Eastern Europe; in the 1930s, immigrants arrived from Central Europe. A small number of Jews arrived also from the Arab countries, but the bulk of eastern Jews from these countries arrived only after the Jewish society achieved its independence. It is part of modern Israel's national myth that Israeli society continued cultural and political traditions that date to the Jewish state of ancient biblical times. But this remote historical past had in fact little impact on the structure of the new society, especially with regard to its political institutions. In their two thousand years of dispersion among the nations, Jews had developed political strategies suited for their survival as minority groups that were of little use in the new Jewish State. The first Jewish immigrants with the intention of establishing a Jewish national homeland came to Palestine, a province of the Ottoman Empire, in the 1880s. The Jewish community began to evolve into a separate social and political structure only after World War I. The period between the end of the first and second world wars is believed to be the formative period of the new Jewish society. Most social and political institutions in Israel have their origins in those years. It was also during that time that the democratic institutions of the new society were developed. The political structure and the type of politicians at its head during these formative years are, to my mind, crucial for our understanding of Israeli democracy as it existed until the 1970s, when Israeli democracy entered a new phase. The founding fathers of the new society arrived during the first quarter of this century, and continued to rule Israel until the Yom Kippur War (1973). It is the ideas and activities of the immigrants that concern us here. 65

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These immigrants all came from Russia, with the exception of a few from Western Europe and the United States. The first group arrived in the years following the abortive revolution of 1905, while the second came after the 1917 October Revolution and the civil war that followed. The third group left the Soviet Union between 1923 and 1926, after having witnessed the evolution of the Soviet Union into a communist dictatorship. Members or sympathizers of leftist organizations, these immigrants were convinced that even in a socialist Russia, anti-Semitism would not be eliminated and the discrimination against Jews would not disappear. This led them to conclude that Jews must create their own socialist Jewish state and led to their immigration to Palestine. They considered themselves both socialists and nationalists and called their ideology Zionist-socialism, an ideology that affected their concept of democracy. Sociologists claim that cultural systems should be divided into those in which the principle of collectivism dominates and those in which individualism is the dominant belief. 1 Collectivism was the dominant principle in both socialism and the Eastern European version of nationalism. The most basic socialist principle, explained one of the ideologues of the Zionist-socialist camp, was "the striving to turn the individual into an integral part of society." 2 Collectivism was also the basic principle of the Eastern European version of nationalism. Unlike Western nationalism, which identifies nationality with citizenship in the state, nationalism in Eastern Europe was identified with the ethnic group. This type of nationalism is also known as integral nationalism, in contrast to the Western version, which stressed the rights of the individual citizen. 3 A third core belief of Israeli culture is the Jewish religion. "Judaism, when cut off from religious beliefs," says one Israeli scholar, "cannot be defined." 4 This link between nationalism and religion singles out Israeli nationalist ideology from other European nationalist ideologies. In Europe, nationalism replaced religion; it was a secular ideology that contradicted the traditional religious world view. In contrast, Jewish religion is central to Israeli culture because of the strong historical and cultural link between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism. In Western Europe, religion and the state have been separated in the process of modernization; this has become a hallmark of liberal democracy. In the modern Jewish State, it is difficult to think of such a separation. This linkage between religion and the state has strengthened the collectivist component of the Israeli culture. The dominance of the collectivist principle in the Israeli culture affected the idea of democracy. It explains why the Israeli concept of democracy differs from the Western concept of democracy. As conceived in the West, democracy has two components: formal procedural democracy, as reflected in universal suffrage, in voting procedures, and in the

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guarantee of unimpeded competition between the groups striving to partake in political decisionmaking; and the liberal component that protects the rights of individuals and minorities. Liberal democracy not only expounds the principle of majority rule, but also provides for restraints to be imposed on the majority in order to safeguard the rights of individuals. The constant interplay of these two factors is the pivot around which the democratic principles turn. It ensures the rights of the majority and the basic rights of the individual, his freedom of expression, of worship, and of privacy. In the Western democracies, it is difficult to differentiate between the procedural and liberal components of democracy. The right of the citizens to organize in order to oppose the regime is essential to the preservation of procedural democracy, while the right to organize for any purpose whatsoever is also essential to liberal democracy, constituting one of the basic rights of the individual. These two components are thus inseparable in the democratic cultures of Western democracies. But it should be borne in mind that liberalism existed in these Western democracies before formal democracy developed. Democratic procedures were introduced in the West as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in order to ensure that all citizens should enjoy the right to elect their representatives in the governing institutions. They safeguarded the existence of an independent opposition that should exert a restraining influence on the power of the government and made the voting process meaningful since it allowed the voters to choose between alternative leaders. An independent opposition constituted an important guarantee for the freedom of individual citizens. Liberal scholars claim that these procedural rules of democracy served as a top dressing to liberalism.5 Unlike Western Europe, Eastern Europe did not experience the development from liberalism to formal procedural democracy; it skipped the liberal phase. The liberal idea flourished in intellectual circles in Russia, together with individualism and capitalism, for a very brief period in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the early years of the twentieth century, the struggle against czarist totalitarianism passed into the hands of socialist and collectivist revolutionaries who gave preference to the social and political rights of the citizen and accorded low priority to civil rights. This cultural history also has a structural explanation. The democratic idea was promulgated in Russia by radical organizations that introduced democratic procedures in electing their leaders. Voting for leaders provided the legitimation for these individuals to challenge the traditional authority of the Russian monarchs and the aristocracy. Democratic procedures were introduced after the first liberal revolution in February 1917,

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but because of its brevity, individual and minority rights did not b e c o m e major political issues. In October 1917, the Communist Party seized control and immediately deprived the aristrocacy and the middle class of their political rights. Only the working class and peasants were entitled to vote. In Communist parlance, this was called "class democracy." However, democracy by which only one stratum of the population benefits, even if it constitutes a numerical majority, contradicts the idea of liberalism, which demands full rights for all citizens. T h e immigrants who came to Palestine from Russia established procedural, not liberal, democracy. Their readiness to adopt procedural democracy prevalent among the radical groups in Russia has also a structural explanation. They, too, created their own political organizations in Palestine, which was contolled by the Ottoman Empire and, after 1918, by the British government. Procedural democracy provided the legitimation for their leaders' authority in the Jewish community, while the issues of individual and minority rights were outside their jurisdiction. When the Jewish community achieved political independence in 1948, procedural democracy was firmly established.

The Party and the Histadrut T h e most immediate concern of the new immigrants arriving in Palestine was to find employment. While those who arrived in the first wave of migration at the turn of the century became farmers and owned plantations, the socialists who arrived after 1905 wanted to become proletarians and looked for jobs as hired laborers. These newcomers, who had left middle-class homes and came to Palestine penniless, hoped to find employment as hired laborers in the prospering farms of the first wave immigrants. B u t they were bound for disappointment. Relying for their economic success chiefly on cheap Arab labor, farmers turned down the inexperienced Jewish laborers, with their relatively high wage demands, since their standards of living, frugal as they were, were much higher than those of the Arab farmhands. T h e first task of those who wished to become leaders of the community became to provide work for their followers. T h e money for economic enterprises could only c o m e from the World Zionist Organization ( W Z O ) , and the new leaders could become leaders of the new community if they organized the immigrants and represented their interests in the W Z O , which was run by democratically elected bodies. They thus created political parties that took part in elections to the W Z O Congresses. T h e new parties were run by elected bodies, but the leaders' endeavors were devoted to providing work for their party members.

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The real test put to these leaders came when the new wave of socialist immigrants arrived in Palestine after the revolution in Russia. Some fifteen thousand youth joined the labor community of about five thousand older laborers. While the veteran political leaders tried to induce them to join their already existing political parties, the newcomers, with their own leaders and their own ideas, did not wish to submit to the leaders of the older generation. They had just participated in a successful revolution and believed they knew how to transfer this revolution to the new society. The struggle for leadership between these two groups of laborers in Palestine was over the issue of how best to organize the laborers and build the socialist society. Instead of joining the existing parties, the newcomers advocated the creation of an organization modelled on the Russian soviets. These catered to the economic needs of all laborers and peasants, regardless of political affiliation and beliefs, and were directed by the labor parties that had taken part in electing their governing bodies. This was called "class democracy." The middle class was excluded from the soviets and was not allowed to organize its own political parties. At the time of the departure from the Soviet Union of the new wave of Jewish immigrants, even the Communist Party considered the soviets an essential adjunct to the party itself. While they wanted to gain majorities in the soviets, and thus guide their operation and development, they did not intend that the party should take them over entirely. 6 The veteran politicians rejected this idea, preferring to have the newcomers join their own organization, rejecting the principle of separation between political and economic work. But when the younger group threatened to build a separate organization, the veterans gave in for fear they would lose their dominant position. The new organization, the General Federation of Labor (Histadrut), was established in 1920, and, within a number of years, had organized 30 percent of the Jewish population in Palestine. From the start, the major political party of the veteran leaders, Achdut Ha'avodah (which became Mapai in 1930, and the Israeli Labor Party in 1968), controlled and directed the Histadrut. As the Histadrut was becoming the most powerful organization in the new society, the veteran leaders of the second wave of immigration who controlled it were beginning to appreciate the power they gained in the community as leaders of this increasingly powerful organization. The Histadrut developed powerful trade unions, a network of welfare organizations, agricultural communes (kibbutzim), cooperatives (moshavim), and large industrial plants. When a leftist opposition within Achdut Ha'avodah demanded that the party tighten its control of the Histadrut, the party leader, David Ben-Gurion, who was also the general secretary of the Histadrut, resisted their demands. Accepting the ideas of formal

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party democracy, Ben-Gurion, in early 1925, stated: The party organization, separate from the Histadrut, has been emptied of all substance. The power and influence it possessed previously by virtue of its control of economic and welfare organizations with the help of which it forced the public to adhere to its wishes, regardless of its policies and ideas, has been taken away. The public is no longer dependent on the party. On the contrary, only when its ideas are acceptable to the public does the party have power and influence; it is its ideological possessions which count now. The party is unable to accomplish anything by itself; it depends on elections and the opinions of the people outside its ranks. The party leaders have authority only as long as the public at large, not just the party members, trust them, and elect them. Party rule based on the organization of its members was replaced by class democracy. The Histadrut has been built like a quasi-state with self-rule for the working class, an autonomy founded on democratic elections in which the Histadrut's executive is elected by all workers, and is thus responsible for its actions to all of them. 7

Before long, an economic crisis and a series of political events in the W Z O led the founding fathers and leaders of the Histadrut to reassert the dominant position of their political parties. This series of events started in 1924 with a new wave of immigration, which brought to Palestine a large number of middle-class Jews, most of whom were of modest means and who wished to maintain their middleclass style of life and occupat'ons. As a result of this change in the socioeconomic composition of the new society, the very survival of the Histadrut was soon in jeopardy. The capital imported to Palestine during these years was overwhelmingly private capital that strengthened the private economic sector. Even the funds collected by the W Z O were no longer made available exclusively to the Histadrut, as the W Z O began to aid private investors in buying land and building their own villages and private enterprises. It was no longer clear that the Jewish state to be established in Palestine would be a socialist society. 8 These developments ceased with the economic crisis of 1926-1927. Many enterprises went bankrupt, causing widespread unemployment. Many newcomers had no alternative but to return to their countries of origin. It looked as if the Zionist venture was doomed to failure. In the face of these events, a new executive of the W Z O decided to adopt a new course. As a result of liquidating the steadily growing deficit of the W Z O , Histadrut projects suffered. Subsidies to many Histadrut enterprises ceased, and, as the Zionist executive refused to pay the debts incurred by Histadrut enterprises, some enterprises had to close down. Relations between the W Z O and the Histadrut had never been altogether smooth, and cooperation was somewhat forced on both sides. The W Z O was dependent on the Histadrut because it was the one organization able to help Jews settle in the country, the primary goal of the

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WZO. However, the organization did not entirely approve of the Histadrut's socialist approach. With the advent of middle-class immigration, the WZO saw a chance to break the Histadrut monopoly and aid the newcomers directly. In late 1925, the organization requested that the agricultural settlements receiving WZO financial support through the Histadrut sign a contract directly with the WZO Settlement Department. This was a deliberate attempt to undermine the Histadrut leaders' authority and negotiate with the settlements directly. In response, the Histadrut proposed that the ownership of the agricultural settlements and all their property be transferred to the Histradrut. A shareholding company was to be created for that purpose, with 50 percent of the founding shares to be held by the Histadrut executive. The settlers' consent was required since the Histadrut held no power to nationalize the settlements. Many settlers opposed the proposal, which had to be approved by an elective convention of the agricultural workers. Worried that they might lose the vote, some of the most revered leaders became weary of formal democracy. During the debate, one of them declared bluntly: "To entrust the people as the guardians of our values means, in effect, to abandon them." Another leader, in his address to the Agricultural Workers' Convention, said that "there are ideals which have precedence over the principle of formal democracy, and must be realized, even at the expense of democratic procedure." 9 However, in the absence of coercive power, the leaders could not force even the members of their own party to abandon their property to Histadrut ownership. At the Agricultural Workers' Convention, the leaders eventually succeeded in convincing the majority to accept their plan. Had they failed, their program could not have been implemented. Formal democracy and majority rule was the legitimation for their authority. But the economic crisis worsened, and with this the relations between the Histadrut leaders and the WZO further deteriorated. Their authority in the Histadrut was undermined, and the situation looked desperate. To the rescue came a new group of leaders who had arrived from Soviet Russia. Most of these immigrants were born around 1900 and had left Russia between 1923 and 1926. The events they had witnessed in the years preceding their departure shaped their lives as politicians. These events began in 1921 when the Communists introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which included denationalization of some of the land so as to induce the peasants to till the soil and help rebuild the faltering economy. Independent financial and commercial enterprises were set up beside government-owned enterprises. The breathing spell thus won was used by the Communists to reinforce the party organization with which they were planning to gain full control of the state. The party recruited new members with whom they set up party

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cells in all the important centers of power: the army, police, state administration, and trade unions. A strong centralized party machine controlled these party cells and, with their aid, controlled all the different organizations. By 1924, the party machine had effectively gained control of the state. The solutions the newcomers put before the leaders of Achdut Ha'avodah and the Histadrut in 1927, in the wake of the severe economic crisis, were numerous. To maintain a degree of autonomy, they thought it expedient to reduce the scope of the Histadrut's economy so as to cut losses and reduce dependence on the WZO. Efforts should concentrate instead, they argued, on the creation of a strong party machine with cells in all Histadrut institutions. They gave priority to organizing the trade unions under party domination, realizing that the allegiance to the growing number of city dwellers was crucial for their hold on the Histadrut. Lacking the coercive power of the Communists in Soviet Russia, they proposed to gain the laborers' confidence by proving that the party was willing and able to improve their working conditions and standard of living. In exchange they demanded that the workers be loyal to the party and its leaders, most especially during elections. Once the veteran leaders of Achdut Ha'avodah and the Histadrut accepted the organizational scheme of the younger leaders, the everyday organizational party work that this scheme necessitated was left to the new generation, fresh from Soviet Russia. It was they who set up party cells in trade union offices and in Municipal Workers' Councils (which were in charge of trade union activities as well as the local welfare and health organizations of the Histadrut, and its economic and financial organizations). All the party cells were linked with party headquarters, whose instructions they followed. The party center could thus coordinate the promotion of interests of the Histadrut members in return for their electoral support. The efforts of the party machine proved successful. In the 1927 elections to the Histadrut convention, Achdut Ha'avodah achieved an absolute majority, which it never lost. In 1930, it united with the second largest party, Hapoel Hatzair, and became the Eretz Israel Workers Party (Mapai), further strengthening its hold on the Histadrut. A few years later, it was victorious in the elections to the Zionist Congress and became the dominant party in the WZO.

Mapai Achieves Dominance After consolidating the party machine, the heads of Mapai addressed another issue of vital importance to their control and authority over the

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Histadrut and WZO: Other parties could always leave the Histadrut to establish an organization of their own. Because a split would endanger the position of these voluntary organizations, it gave them a virtual veto power and weakened considerably the authority of the party leaders in both organizations. The Mapai party machine found a solution to this vexing problem that enabled the major party leaders to exercise their authority over the other parties. This was first done in the Histadrut, where the Hashomer Hatzair Party refused to unite with Mapai. Though the Hashomer Hatzair Party mustered about 15 to 20 percent of the votes in the Histadrut elections, its strength rested in its kibbutz movement and the fact that as a small urban organization, it could leave the Histadrut and establish a rival organization. Doing so would have weakened considerably the Mapai's hold on the entire working class and the Jewish community in Palestine. This threat gave the Hashomer Hatzair a power of veto in the Histadrut despite its minority status. The heads of the Mapai party machine soon found a way to strengthen their party's hold over the other parties, both in the Histadrut and the Jewish community. To eliminate a possible veto by the Hashomer Hatzair in the Histadrut, the Mapai machine agreed to supply the Hashomer Hatzair's kibbutz movement and urban groups with the material resources they badly needed in exchange for their loyalty to the majority party and the Histadrut. Mapai's machine encouraged the Hashomer Hatzair to build its own machine, with which it conducted continuous negotiations for the supply of land for its agricultural communes and other means for its existence and future expansion; Mapai also allocated administrative jobs in the Histadrut bureaucracy to Hashomer Hatzair Party workers with whom it negotiated. In 1934, Mapai even agreed to have the representatives of the minority party join the Executive Committee of the Histradrut. In return, Hashomer Hatzair accepted the authority of the Mapai leaders who headed the Histadrut. These arrangements between the two machines did not prevent Hashomer Hatzair from maintaining its voluntary membership organization with its distinct ideology. It too became a party machine operating on two levels: the formal ideological voluntary organization and the informal machine engaged primarily in the distribution of material rewards. As the party grew in size, its dependence on the material resources provided by the ruling party increased, and the party machine became more central within the party organization. To maintain the vital relationship established with Mapai's machine, Hashomer Hatzair tried to prevent the ideological programmatic debate with the majority party from becoming too sharp and too acrimonious since this could have disrupted the informal personal relationships developed with its machine. Too radical an opposition would have harmed these

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personal intermachine relations. Consequently, Hashomer Hatzair refused to cooperate with the small leftist groups that demanded total opposition. It called itself an "identified opposition," and even renounced the desire to rule the Histadrut. It thus did not constitute a counterelite with a counterideology, enabling the Mapai leadership to rule the Histadrut with much less restraint and restrictions that a strong and independent opposition party is supposed to provide in a democratic regime. When Mapai became the ruling party in the W Z O in 1933, its leaders made similar arrangements with the parties participating in the W Z O that it had made with Hashomer Hatzair. The model for such arrangements was provided by the religious Zionist parties—Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrachi—which united after the establishment of the state of Israel and was then called the National Religious Party (NRP). In return for the religious party's acceptance of the authority of the Mapai leadership and their readiness to join the coalition in the W Z O and other elected bodies as junior partners, their members were granted access to the Histadrut labor exchanges and health services. In addition, they received rights to settle an agreed share of the land purchased by the WZO. Funds were also provided for the maintenance of these settlements. Mapai further agreed that the Sabbath and the religious dietary laws would be observed in all organizations supported by the W Z O (which included all Histadrut organizations). Last, but not least, Mapai agreed to allocate an agreed-upon number of positions in the W Z O bureaucracy to members of the religious parties. 10 These bureaucratic positions were filled by party members chosen by the leaders of the religious party and constituted the core of their party machine. Close cooperation in bureaucratic organizations provided ample opportunity for negotiating detailed agreements between the parties and cementing the relationship between them. Consequently, the religious party turned into a party machine like Mapai and Hashomer Hatzair. This structure was totally dependent on the goodwill of the Mapai party machine, which controlled the flow of funds. Mapai also needed the continuous support of the religious party, but the control of both the W Z O and the Histadrut made it the more powerful partner in the alliance. This agreement also necessitated ideological compromises like those that existed between Mapai and Hashomer Hatzair. Being the junior partner with a growing dependence on the major party, the religious party was required to make major concessions. It gave up the demand to have the Jewish community and the future Jewish state administered in accordance with traditional rabbinic laws. Instead it restricted its demands to the enforcement of the observance of the Sabbath and the religious dietary

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laws in public places. It also agreed to accept some of the ideological premises of the Zionist-socialist doctrine, namely that the public economic sector shall be preferred to the private economic sector since its contribution to the attainment of Zionism is greater. It therefore agreed that all land purchased by the Jewish National Fund be nationalized and that most of the money collected by the WZO be invested in agricultural settlements and in other Histadrut activities rather than in private enterprises. The agreement reached between Mapai and the religious party in 1933 provided a model for subsequent agreements between Mapai and other parties. Mapai thus became the ruling party in the Jewish community, while the other parties were all minor parties that were dependent on Mapai for their continuing existence. This peculiar party structure was transferred to the state of Israel.

A Dominant Party System The Israeli party system, in spite of its unique characteristics as described above, fits a general type of system known as a dominant party system. A dominant party has been defined by Maurice Duverger as a party that is not a majority party but gains more votes than other parties and clearly outdistances them for a continuous period of time. This advantage enables it to become the society's only ruling party, even though it always needs the support of other parties to form coalition governments. 11 This is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one for reaching dominance. According to Duverger, a party becomes dominant "when it is identified with an epoch; when its doctrines, ideas, methods, its style, so to speak, coincide with those of the epoch." 12 Dominance is thus spiritual. This is the result of historical and structural circumstances that prevail at the formative period of the existing party system. Every party system, we are told by Lipset and Rokkan, has its formative period when all groups in the society are mobilized by the parties. After this period passes, the party system persists for a long time, even though social and historical circumstances have changed, making such party divisions "increasingly irrelevant." 13 A dominant party system may emerge when circumstances during its formative period enable a group of politicians to define the area of politics and its rules in such a way so as to give it primacy, both in the cultural and the material-organizational realms. Israel is not the only example of a dominant party system. Japan and Italy had dominant party systems after the end of World War II. In Japan, such a system probably still exists; in Italy it still existed until recently. 14 In Italy and Japan, the dominant party system emerged after procedural democracy was imposed from the outside by foreign powers who

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then left it to the powerful local groups to determine how it should be executed. These powerful groups consolidated their political power by organizing the political and economic life in the society in ways that gave them a clear advantage over their adversaries. This they did by maintaining, in part, the traditional social structure of patron-client relations that typified their traditional agrarian social structure, using the material resources of wealthy industrialists and businessmen and the spiritual resources of the church to consolidate their material and spiritual domination. In Israel, the nontraditional socialist leaders benefited from the complete break the immigrants made with the traditional society they had left behind. Once in Israel, their desperate need to find a livelihood in the underdeveloped country created conditions that enabled the labor leaders and their party machine to achieve spiritual and material dominance. One characteristic of dominant party systems is the existence of strong antisystem parties. An antisystem party is defined by Sartori as a party that "abides by a belief system that does not share the values of the political order within which it operates." It is "an opposition of principle," not just of issues.15 The study of other dominant party systems suggests that the existence of antisystem parties that threaten the existing political structure and its established belief system was a prerequisite for the consolidation of forces behind one political party to resist the challenge; this challenge to the system facilitated the spiritual dominance of its defenders. Such was the case in both Italy and Japan, where the total rejection by the Communists and left-wing socialists of the established value system, and their threat to topple the existing political and social structure, resulted in the emergence of a dominant party and a dominant party system. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and the Italian Christian Democratic Party, both of which became dominant parties, were initially organized to fend off this danger to the regime. Sartori was baffled by the fact that he did not find an antisystem party in Israel. However, there were two examples of such parties: the Revisionist Party during the prestate years and the Herut Party, which was its successor, after the establishment of the state. The Revisionist Party was antisocialist and rejected many of the beliefs accepted by other parties (i.e., that the country should be built primarily by national capital, and that the Histradrut, with its communes and socialist trade unions and industries, would lead to the establishment of a Jewish state). It insisted that Jewish nationalism be the one and only ideal for the nationalist movements, excluding all other doctrines, especially socialism. When its views were rejected by the majority of the Zionist parties in the WZO, the Revisionist Party created a separate Zionist organization. This further consolidated the other Zionist parties behind the leaders of Mapai, who remained the unchallenged heads of the WZO.

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This antisystem party never presented a real challenge to the dominant party or the dominant party system. In the early years of its existence, the Revisionist Party tried to mobilize the middle classes to fight the party representing the laboring classes. Its leader, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, declared in 1927 that "if there is a class in whose hands the future lies . . . it is we, the bourgeois, the enemies of a supreme political state, the ideologues of individualism."16 But there was no middle class in the Jewish community on which the party could count. The middle-class Jews who came to Palestine were primarily petty bourgeois, owners of small properties. The rest of the Jewish middle class, even the Zionists among them, stayed outside of Palestine. These newcomers built small enterprises; large-scale industrial and commercial development was left to the Histadrut with its concentration of material resources. Even those from the middle class who sympathized with the Revisionist Party preferred not to risk Histadrut wrath since their precarious economic situation could then be jeopardized. Mapai leaders were in control of a powerful trade union movement, and, since the early 1930s, in control as well of the WZO, whose aid was often needed by businessmen and industrialists. This was eventually realized by the Revisionist leader who conceded bitterly that "after all we cannot defend the middle class when it is itself trash."17 At one point an attempt was made by Mapai's leaders to reach an agreement with the Revisionist Party that was similar to the agreements they had reached with other parties. The Revisionist Party built its own independent trade union, and David Ben-Gurion, who was the general secretary of the Histadrut, was willing to let the party have its own labor exchanges. Furthermore, he even agreed that in any industrial dispute in a plant where members of the Revisionist union exceeded 15 or 25 percent of the workers (the exact percentage was left to further negotiations), the minority was entitled to insist on having the dispute submitted to arbitration before a strike could be declared. The Revisionist union leaders, who were corporatists, insisted on trying to have harmony in the relations between employers and laborers and supported the idea of compulsory arbitration. This was an important concession on the part of the socialist Ben-Gurion. The concessions Ben-Gurion made to Jabotinsky exceeded those he made to other parties, seemingly because he feared that a militant Revisionist opposition might endanger his national authority. At the same time, he most probably believed that such an agreement between the weaker Revisionist trade union and the much stronger Histadrut would eventually lead to the development of a Revisionist party machine dependent on the goodwill of the Histadrut and Mapai. This assessment was not shared by the leaders of the party machine. They feared the immigrants

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pouring into the country might well prefer to join the antisocialist union. 18 Since the division within the Mapai leadership could not be resolved, the leaders had no recourse but to turn to the democratic procedure. It was resolved to conduct a referendum among all Histadrut members to decide whether to accept or reject the proposed agreement. This democratic decision to submit the dispute between the leaders to the masses was apparently not accepted enthusiastically by the masses since the turnout at the polls was low. Although participation in other Histadrut elections was usually high, this time many members abstained from voting. But, among those who did vote, the majority decided to reject the agreement. Ben-Gurion was clearly unhappy with the results of the referendum. He was convinced that it was a grave error not to ratify his agreement. However, realizing that procedural democracy was the source of his authority and gave legitimation to his leadership, he praised the democratic decisionmaking process practiced within his party in a speech before the Zionist executive. "I am proud," he declared, "of a social movement that does not submit to a dictatorship and does not follow blindly the wishes of its leader." 19 He also realized that he should have kept closer contact with his followers in the party. Had he done so, his lead may not have been challenged by the heads of the machine. From that point on, he resolved to maintain close contact with the party functionaries. These contacts "must be constantly renewed by veritable contacts—meetings with comrades to discuss the various problems, participation in common activities, in social affairs, and attending to the needs of the public." 20 Ben-Gurion realized, however, that his attempt to co-opt the Revisionist Party into the dominant party system could not continue. He therefore decided to try to keep the Revisionist Party out of the political system by convincing the other parties and the public that it was a dangerous party, a fascist party, even, that endangered the political goals of the Jewish society in Palestine. He succeeded in keeping the Revisionist Party and later its successor, Herut, in pariah status within the society. While Herut constantly received 12 to 13 percent of the general vote in the elections, it was kept out of power and out of influence. Herut was ostracized by most parties and political groups, and remained ineffective and uninfluential in the political system.

Conclusion According to democratic theory, the role of an opposition party is essential in democratic politics. It presents before the electorate an alternative point of view to that of the ruling parties and an alternative team of leaders, thus keeping the parties in power and their leaders under constant

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Democracy

scrutiny and surveillance. A powerful opposition party constitutes an important guarantee for the freedom of individual citizens since it restrains the power of the governing parties and makes elections a meaningful process by enabling the voters to choose between alternative leaders and alternative points of view. In Israel we were lacking both the idea of liberal democracy, which espouses the rights of individuals and minorities against the encroachments of the rulers, and an effective opposition, the institution that guards these rights. Furthermore, the absence of an opposition party that could present a counterelite and a counterideology to the public to compete with the dominant party elite ruling the country resulted in uncritical acceptance of the prevalent dominant ideas by the public. This characterized the Israeli political system during the reign of the dominant party system. The Six Day War in 1967 and the resulting occupation of vast territories was a turning point in the political history of Israel. The dominant party system soon came to an end, and a new chapter began in Israel's party politics. Notes 1. Robert Lane, Political Man (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1971), p. 173. 2. Yoman Hamachanot, no. 8, June, 29,1938. 3. John Plamenatz, "Two Types of Nationalism," in Eugene Kamenka, ed., Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London: Arnold, 1976), pp. 23-36. 4. Eliezer Schweid, "What It Is to Be a Jew," in M. Samet, ed., State and Religion (Tel Aviv: S. Zak, 1972). 5. Barry Holden, The Nature of Democracy (London: Nelson, 1974), p. 37. 6. Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, The Communist Party Apparatus (New York: Henry Regnery, 1966), pp. 237,251. 7. David Ben-Gurion, "The Histadrut and the Parties," Kontress, no. 10,200, January 2,1925. 8. Alex Bein, The History of the Colonization in Palestine (Givatayim: Massada, 1954), p. 306. 9. Davar, January 10,1926. 10. Minutes of the meeting of Mapai Central Committee, December 17,1933, Sharett Archives (Beit Beri). 11. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1955), pp. 307-312. 12. Ibid., p. 308. See also T. J. Pempel, ed., Uncommon Democracies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). 13. Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Party System and the Voters' Alignment: Cross National Perspectives (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1967), pp. 51-52. 14. Nathaniel B. Thayer, How the Conservatives Rule Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969); Haruhiro Fukui, Party in Power: The Japanese Liberal Democratic Policy Making (Berkeley: University of California Press,

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1970); Alan Zuckerman, The Politics of Factions: Christian Democratic Rule in Italy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979); and Alan Arian and Samuel H. Barnes, "The Dominant Party System: A Neglected Model of Democratic Stability," Journal of Politics 36 (1974), pp. 592-614. 15. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 133. 16. Joseph Schechtman and Yehuda Benari, History of the Revisionist Movement, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1970), p. 223. 17. Joseph Schechtman, Rebel and Statesman—The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Kami, 1959), p. 235. 18. Yonathan Shapiro, Democracy in Israel (Givatayim: Massada, 1978), pp. 315-317. 19. David Ben-Gurion, Mishmarot (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1925), pp. 316-317. 20. David Ben-Gurion, Letters to Paula and the Children (Tel Aviv: A m Oved, 1969), pp. 138-139.

PART 2 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

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The Electoral System, Government, and Democracy Vernon

Bogdanor

The Evolution of Israel's Electoral System The evolution of Israel's electoral system illustrates the truth of the old French saying, "C'est seul le provisoire qui dure." Adopted as a mere temporary expedient, the system has proven very difficult to change. Advocated as a stopgap, it has come to yield the lowest common denominator of agreement. In theory the purest and most democratic of systems, it has often been accused of frustrating the will of the Israeli electorate. Since the early 1980s, and especially following the exceptionally close election of 1988, when both major parties (Likud and Labor) offered lavish concessions to religious and militant parties of the right in order to form a government, pressure has been building for electoral reform. No one ever specifically chose the Israeli electoral system. When, in 1948, a decision had to be made with regard to the electoral system, the infant state was at war with its Arab neighbors. Its leaders were in no position to devote time to rational and calm consideration of what the electoral system should be. In any case, a new electoral system would be extremely difficult to implement in the conditions in which Israel found itself in 1948. The system favored by Ben-Gurion—the British "first-pastthe-post," relative majority system in single-member constituencies— would have required the delimitation of geographical constituencies in an area in which they had been hitherto unknown. This was hardly possible when the boundaries of the state itself were highly uncertain. Therefore it was decided that elections to the Constituent Assembly, which became the First Knesset, should be held by the same method as had been used in the prestate period for elections to the Zionist Congress and to the elected assemblies of the Yishuv, the Jewish Community of Mandatory Palestine. Membership of these bodies was, of necessity, voluntary, there being no Jewish state to require obedience. Therefore an electoral system had been developed that could ensure the widest possible representation of Jewish opinion. No significant strand of Zionist thought, however little support it had, should be excluded from representation. " A 83

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basic political assumption," according to Daniel Shimshoni, "was that n o 'constructive' interest could be adversely affected without its consent in a matter which that interest considered to be of vital national importance. A legitimate government, therefore, would be one in which all legitimate interests were represented, or at the very least consulted." 1 Therefore an extreme form of list proportional representation was adopted, a system more suitable for a voluntary organization than for a well-functioning modern state. The assumption was, however, that this electoral system would only be used for elections to the Constituent Assembly, which would, after due consideration, enact a permanent electoral system. What had been forgotten was that the parties and factions that achieve representation under a given electoral system come to have a vested interest in preserving it, fearing that any alternative would damage them at the expense of their opponents. So it was with Israel. The principles of the Israeli electoral system are laid down in paragraph 4 of the Basic Law: The Knesset, passed in 1958, which states that elections shall be "general, national, direct, equal, by secret ballot and proportional." Further, this section of the Basic Law cannot be changed except by an absolute, as opposed to a simple, majority of Knesset members (i.e., sixty-one members), and, according to paragraph 46 of the Basic Law: The Knesset, this absolute majority must be achieved "during all stages of legislation." This is the only entrenched provision among the Basic Laws, but the provisions in this law as well as the whole of the Basic Law: The Government, and the Basic Law: The President of the State, cannot be changed by emergency legislation. T h e entrenchment was introduced because it was feared that Mapai, the then-majority party, and, in particular, its leader, Ben-Gurion, would seek to introduce the British electoral system as soon as it could, since this would benefit the largest party, almost certainly giving it an overall majority in the Knesset and a complete monopoly of power. The electoral system itself is, in theory, one of the fairest in the world. It has three central features. Its first and most fundamental characteristic is the extreme rigidity of its list system of proportional representation. This characteristic is determined not by the Basic Law, but by Section 83 of the Knesset Election Law (combined version) 1969, which declares, "A list of candidates that wins mandates shall consist of the persons whose names appear at the beginning of the list, one after the other, and these will b e members of Knesset." The parties draw up lists of candidates, and the order in which a candidate is placed on the party list determines the chances of election. Voters cannot "write in" names, delete, or change the order in which the names of the candidates appear in the lists. Thus, for example, in the case of Likud, which in the 1988 election won forty seats

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in the Knesset, the top forty candidates on the Likud list became members of the Knesset. These candidates, however, were chosen by the central committees of the parties comprising Likud, and not by the voters. Only in 1992 were primary elections introduced as a method for choosing the party electoral list, and then only for the Labor Party, although Likud has also shown interest in this reform. There are no by-elections, and vacancies caused by resignation or death are filled by the next name on the party list at the time of the Knesset election. Second, instead of being divided into geographical constituencies, there is just one national constituency. Party lists are represented by a single letter or group of letters, and voting consists of placing a slip of paper marked with the appropriate letter(s) in the ballot box. Thus members of the Knesset do not represent individual constituencies, there is little contact with the voters, and, unlike British members of parliament or U.S. congressmen, members of the Knesset are unable to act as mediators between the aggrieved citizen and the bureaucracy. Finally, there is the extremely low threshold—1.5 percent of the national vote (just 1 percent before the 1992 elections)—needed to gain representation in the Knesset, a lower threshold than in any other democracy except the Netherlands. In 1992, any party that achieved approximately 40,000 votes secured a seat in the Knesset. In the 1984 general election (with a lower threshold and a smaller electorate) Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremist Kach Party gained a seat by winning only 25,000 votes out of about two million votes cast. The election of Kahane, stigmatized both in Israel and outside as a racist, led many to question the degree of tolerance in Israeli society. Yet in no other democracy, with the exception of Italy and the Netherlands, would the Kach Party have won a seat on so small a percentage of the vote. The main strength of the Israeli electoral system is that it secures fair representation of parties. This is of no small importance in a country where parties stand for specific ideological currents, and where "the political parties were established as parties of principle, each with a definite ideology and a particular Weltanschauung. " 2 Almost all the parties that secure representation in the Knesset stand for genuine interests, whether ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic. There are hardly any artificial parties, such as the short-lived Platto-Sharon Party, a vehicle for the personal ambitions of an eccentric businessman. Israel pays a high price for such purism, however. By offering an incentive to any faction that cannot secure high enough places on a party list to break from its party and form a new one, the low threshold encourages party fragmentation. In 1977, 22 lists competed for election, of which about half won representation, and in 1981, there were 31 lists, of which 10 secured representation. In 1984,15 of 26 lists gained seats in

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the Knesset; and in 1988,15 of 27 won representation. Of these 15 parties, only two—Likud and Labor—secured over 5 percent of the vote. Under such circumstances, any majority government other than a Likud/Labor "National Unity" government would require the support of at least seven parties in a coalition. This hardly seems a recipe for effective government. The situation changed somewhat in 1992, partly because of the slightly higher threshold and partly because of the consolidation of the three left parties into the Meretz alliance. As a result, while twenty-five parties contested, only ten won representation in the Knesset. Until 1977, the weaknesses of the Israeli electoral system were masked by the electoral dominance of Mapai. Israel enjoyed a dominantparty system such that the general election would merely help to determine which of the smaller parties was to join Mapai in coalition. The blackmail potential of the small parties was thus severely limited. What has changed since 1977 is not so much the proliferation of small parties as the relationship between the two major blocs, Labor and Likud, which have developed a closely competitive relationship, commanding the support of roughly equal portions of the Israeli electorate. This gives the smaller parties considerable blackmail potential. Moreover, the demands of the smaller parties have changed. New parties have grown up to the right of Likud, putting forward demands unacceptable to liberal opinion. In 1990, Yitzhak Shamir felt constrained to form a coalition with Moledet, a party advocating the "transfer" of the Arab population from the occupied territories into Jordan. On the left, the unwillingness of many Israeli Arabs to continue voting for Zionist parties has led to the growth of purely Arab political parties. A Labor leader is bound to fear that a coalition government sustained by the Arab parties will lack legitimacy and be unable to take authoritative decisions in foreign affairs. Finally, the religious parties, more militant now than during the founding period of the state, will trade their votes to whichever leading party, Labor or Likud, grants the most concessions to religious interests. This is a price that most of the Israeli public and diaspora Jewry are unwilling to pay. Thus the competitive relationship between the two major blocs and the difficulty of securing the allegiance of the smaller parties have tended to make so-called "governments of national unity"— coalitions between Labor and Likud—much more likely. The first such National Unity government in 1984 had positive achievements to its credit, such as lowering the level of inflation and securing the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. It played a part in lowering tensions within Israeli society after the traumas aroused by the Lebanon war. The second National Unity government, formed in 1988, had no such positive achievements to its credit, however. Indeed, its existence seems to have hampered the ability of the Israeli government

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both in responding to the peace process and in forming a coherent policy for dealing with the intifada. More than any other event in Israel's history, the intifada has exposed in all its grimness the snarled state of the country's political system. . . . Whenever this system appears to be making some progress, its wheels immediately jam. . . . The result is that in terms of the Palestinian problem, at least, the decision-making process of the Israeli government is effectively paralyzed. The cabinet is not even able to discuss vital questions surrounding the issue Any deliberation in long-range policy is repeatedly postponed; the ministers simply dodge the subject. 3

Continual national unity administrations, therefore, are hardly likely to yield effective government. Moreover, they threaten the very basis of the democratic process since, if the two main streams of political opinion unite, no scope is left for responsible parliamentary opposition. The electorate, if it seeks to register its discontent with the government, has no alternative but to support one of the extremist parties. In Germany, the grand coalition that governed between 1928 and 1930 was blamed for the depression, and voters turned to extremist alternatives: the Nazis and Communists. In the Federal Republic, the years of the Grand Coalition between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, from 1966 to 1969, saw the extreme left gain in strength while the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party nearly succeeded, in the 1969 federal elections, in surmounting the 5 percent threshold and achieving representation in the Bundestag. Moreover, the rigidity of the Israeli national list system deprives the voter of any role either in the process of coalition formation or in the composition of the electoral list of the party that he or she supports. In 1977, the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC) decided to support a Likud rather than a Labor government, but there was no way of telling whether this decision was in accordance with the wishes of those who had voted for the party. In 1984 and 1988, there were, no doubt, some Labor voters who favored the national unity government with Likud; others were opposed. But there is no way of telling from the pattern of voting which viewpoint was held by the majority of Labor supporters. The formation of coalitions is thus determined not by the wishes of the electorate, but by the tactical needs of the parties. Coalitions, instead of being presented to the voters before the election, come to be manufactured after the election results are known. Thus the political color of the government depends not upon the electorate but upon what happens after the votes are counted. Because there is no constituency representation, it is difficult for local interests to secure attention and develop that sense of communal and civil responsibility essential to a well-functioning democracy. There being no

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choice of candidate, proportional representation secures the accurate representation of parties, but not of political opinion. Yet, divisions of opinion within the parties can be just as important as divisions between the parties. Labor is currently divided between hawks and doves; yet their relative representation in the Knesset depends not upon the wishes of the voter, but upon the decisions of party organs. Except for the aforementioned primary elections within the Labor Party, the Israeli voter can exert no influence upon which candidates represent his or her party in the Knesset. Thus the voter cannot help determine whether Labor is dominated by its hawkish or its dovish wing or ensure that strong personalities are elected to the Knesset. In most cases, the voter is still condemned to vote for candidates selected by the party machine. Party loyalty rather than strong convictions or electoral popularity becomes the key to political success. In an attempt to overcome this weakness, Yigael Yadin's short-lived Democratic Movement for Change experimented with primary elections in 1977; but this experiment proved a failure. No women and only one Sephardi secured places among the first fifteen in the DMC list, which grossly overrepresented Ashkenazim and Druze. This experiment showed how easy it is for a system of direct primaries to be exploited by unrepresentative party activists, especially when effectively organized into factions.4 Therefore any reform of the electoral system must go beyond the introduction of direct primaries. It must ensure that voters—all voters, not just the members of political parties—have the possibility of exercising an effective choice between candidates. Israel and the Netherlands are the only democracies that use a national list system without any constituency element. The weaknesses of such a system have been succinctly summarized by Max Weber: "Within a country-wide proportional list system only two types of nomination systems and leadership patterns may evolve: either a charismatic leadership backed by a party machine, or a nomination system based on manipulation and bargaining by party politicians and functionaries." 5 Under Ben-Gurion, Israeli politics approximated the first pattern; more recently, it has approached the second.

The Quest for Electoral Reform Since the election of the first Knesset in 1949, numerous attempts have been made to reform Israel's electoral system. In the early years of the state, the leading advocate of reform was Ben-Gurion, who sought to end proportional representation entirely and to replace it with the British system. For Ben-Gurion, the issue of electoral reform was crucial to his

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conception of Jewish statehood. He faced the problem of establishing a single authority for the Jewish people, dispersed and leaderless for many centuries. It was necessary to create among such a people, mamlachtiut, a sense of statehood, of the general interest, of respect for law. Proportional representation, in Ben-Gurion's view, stood in the way of creating this sense of statehood since it gave too much power to special interests and pressure groups, all of which had a veto power. At the same time, of course, it was in Ben-Gurion's interest, as leader of Mapai, the largest party, to secure adoption of the British system. The first-past-the-post system exaggerates the strength of large parties, and, under it, Israel might have had one-party government until 1977. But since Mapai never succeeded in gaining an overall majority in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion's attempts at reform proved unsuccessful. In December 1958, in order to circumvent the lack of an overall majority in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion, normally opposed to referendums, proposed that one be called to decide the unique issue of electoral reform, but this attempt at reform failed. After Ben-Gurion resigned the premiership in 1963, Mapai formed an alliance with Achdut Ha'avodah, and, in 1968, brought in Mapam, to form the Israeli Labor Party. One consequence of this consolidation was Mapai's abandonment of its commitment to the British electoral system, which would not have been countenanced by its smaller allies. This was one of the factors that precipitated the defection of Ben-Gurion and the tzeirim (Young Guard) of Mapai into the new RAFI party in 1965, one of whose central planks was the adoption of the British system. Yet the formation of RAFI served only to weaken pressure for electoral reform by marginalizing the influence of the reformers. Since the late 1960s, instead of calling for the adoption of the British system, reformers have accepted the principle of proportional representation (PR), but have sought to replace the national list system with a constituency system of PR, or they have tried to establish a system of the West German type that combines a constituency element with (in effect) a national list system of proportional representation. Reformers have also sought to raise the threshold from 1 (now 1.5) percent to at least 2.5 percent so as to exclude the smaller parties. In 1977, the Democratic Movement for Change made reform of the electoral system a precondition for supporting the Begin government, but failed to secure it. The National Unity government formed in 1988 included among its policy guidelines a commitment to consider change: "The possibility of changing the governmental and electoral systems will be examined, with the aim of fortifying the country's democratic regime, of augmenting the government's ability to act and increasing the connection between the voters and those elected." It established a bipartisan commission to produce proposals, but it again faced the perennial problem of Israeli politics that any reform

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would adversely affect the chances of the small parties that form part of the government, reducing their blackmail potential. Survey evidence has indicated an overwhelming demand for electoral reform. According to a Gallup (Israel) poll in May 1990,89 percent of the public wants the electoral system changed, and 60 percent are dissatisfied with the Knesset. "I can't recall a survey that reflected as strong a consensus as this one," the director claimed.6 The only realistic way to achieve reform would be for Labor and Likud to agree to override the small parties, but the difficulty is that each of the two large parties fears that its opponent might gain from reform. The essence of the problem of legislating for electoral reform, therefore, "is that the surgeon is also the patient."7

Electoral Reform Alternatives Even if the will to change were present, however, it is not easy to judge what electoral system should be introduced to replace the present one. Few political scientists today would accept Ben-Gurion's view that the British first-past-the-post system could guarantee stable and responsible government in Israel. Most would probably claim that Israeli society, being highly plural and segmented, requires some form of proportional representation to function successfully. The first-past-the-post system works best where there are only two major parties, divided by social class, as was the case in Britain in the 1950s. It was because the Conservative and Labor parties were mainly supported by different social groups with different residence patterns that the two-party system gave Britain electoral stability during these years. When cleavages other than that of class come to be of importance, or when there are more than two major parties competing for power, the relationship between seats and votes can become very erratic. In the 1987 general British election, the Liberal/SDP Alliance gained only 22 out of 650 seats, or 3.5 percent of the seats, for 23 percent of the vote. Political scientists have shown that the nearer three parties come to sharing the vote between them, the more volatile and unpredictable the relationship between seats and votes will become.8 Moreover, adoption of the British electoral system would contradict the ethos of Israeli society, which, as Daniel Shimshoni has shown, bears considerable resemblances to that of such consociational democracies as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.9 The status quo agreement, concluded by Ben-Gurion with the religious authorities before the foundation of the state, was just one illustration of the principle that a country such as Israel, divided by ethnicity and religion, can only achieve stability through a process of mutual accommodation and recognition of subcultural differences.10 But the Westminster Model, based as it is upon the

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principle of alternating majorities, is quite ill suited to generating that sharing of power that Israel continues to need. Indeed, as the experience of Northern Ireland shows so clearly, the Westminster Model actually inhibits the search for strategies through which different interests can be accommodated within the same political system. For this reason, it is now generally accepted that any electoral reform must retain the basic principle of proportional representation and concentrate on ironing out the defects in the Israeli system as it currently exists. How is this best to be done? Proportional representation, it should be remembered, is not the name of a single electoral system, but rather a generic term denoting a large number of widely differing electoral systems with quite dissimilar political consequences. In 1918, one commentator claimed that there were over three hundred alternative electoral systems in existence.11 Human ingenuity being what it is, there are probably many more today. Almost every reformer, however, believes that the threshold should be raised again. Were it to be raised to 3 or 3.5 percent, this would have the effect of encouraging the smaller parties to ally with each other, and it would reduce the number of parties in the Knesset from fifteen in 1988 and ten in 1992 to perhaps seven or even fewer. Most reformers also believe that the Israeli electoral system should provide for a constituency element so as to secure a closer relationship between members of the Knesset and voters. But the system cannot be composed only of constituencies; otherwise, it would grossly underrepresent the religious element of the population, a minority in every part of the country except Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, and overrepresent the Arab population, which is geographically highly concentrated. Therefore a mixed system of some kind, combining proportional representation with individual constituencies, is needed. Fortunately, the electoral systems that combine these two elements can conveniently be divided into two main types. The first is some variant of the German electoral system, combining a single-member constituency element with, in effect, a national list. The second is a multimember constituency system with "topping-up" from a national pool to secure proportionality, as in Sweden. The first type has been the one most favored by electoral reformers in Israel, yet I hope to show that the second type would in fact be far more beneficial for Israeli democracy. Under the German system, the elector has two votes, the first for a constituency MP, as in Britain, and the second for a closed regional list in which there is, as in Israel, no choice of candidate. The elector may if he or she so wishes, split his or her vote, supporting, for example, a Christian Democrat constituency candidate and a Free Democrat on the list vote. It is, however, the total votes cast for the party list, subject to a threshold of 5 percent (or three constituency seats), that determines a particular

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party's level of representation in the Bundestag. One advantage of this method is that, unlike the Israeli electoral system, it enables the voter to signal which coalition he or she favors. The voter who supports a Christian Democrat candidate, but the Free Democrat list, signals that he or she favors a Christian Democrat/Free Democrat coalition, while the voter who supports a Social Democrat candidate in the constituency, but the Free Democrat list, indicates that he or she favors a Social Democrat/Free Democrat coalition. Indeed, a popular slogan for the Free Democrats, the center party in German politics, has been: "A FIRST-class decision; your SECOND vote for a THIRD force." Similarly, in Israel, it would be possible for a Labor voter to indicate whether he or she preferred the party to form a coalition with Likud, or with the Citizen's Rights Movement and Mapam; and for a Likud voter to signify whether he or she preferred a coalition with Labor or with the religious parties. The German electoral system has become popular with electoral reformers in many countries, including Britain, because it seems to combine the merits both of proportional representation and of the British first-past-the-post system with the single-member constituency. The electoral system in the draft constitution drawn up by the Law Faculty at Tel Aviv University proposes that a similar system be introduced in Israel. Yet the German system is in fact the least satisfactory of the various list systems of proportional representation. The first difficulty is that various surveys in the former West Germany have shown that comparatively few electors understand the system. A survey undertaken by political scientist Eckhard Jesse, and reported in Der Spiegel on August 18, 1980, showed that only 50 percent of the electorate knew the difference between the first and second votes, and only 25 percent were aware that it was the second vote (for the party list) that is the crucial one in determining the level of party representation in the legislature. Most of the electorate thought that the second vote was a second preference, and it was for this reason that the Free Democrats customarily performed so well on the list vote.12 In proposals currently being considered by the government, some attempt is made to combat this confusion by proposing that the list vote be the first vote on the ballot paper, with the constituency vote being the second vote. This change allows the conceptual basis of the system to be more precisely shown. The German system creates two kinds of MP: those elected by constituencies and those elected from the list. In fact, there is no difference in status between the two. Once in the Bundestag, they perform identical functions, with no differentiation on grounds of election. But that is very much due to the special circumstances of German federalism, which is quite different from the U.S. model. Members of the Bundestag are not expected to be involved in constituency work, which is the responsibility

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of local councillors and members of the Landtage (provincial assemblies). In Israel, on the other hand, part of the purpose of constituency representation is to ensure that members of the Knesset do have a constituency function. Therefore a difference in status between the two classes of member would probably arise. Further, given the relative strength of the parties, almost all of the constituency members would be either Labor or Likud, while the smaller parties would gain representation only through the list. This means that only members of the two large parties would have constituency burdens. Members of the smaller parties would be able to devote all of their time to legislative activities. The difference in function between the two types of MP would thus become very noticeable. But the fundamental reason why the German system is unsuitable for Israel is that it replicates one of the worst features of the Israeli electoral system, the closed list without choice of candidate. The constituency element in the system gives only the appearance of choice of candidate, for it is only in marginal seats that the elector will have a genuine choice. In safe seats, nomination by a political party ensures election. The need in Israel is rather to open up the electoral system to wider voter participation rather than replace one closed system with another equally closed one. The single-member constituency would be an artificial construct from the point of view of Israeli society. Given Israel's fragmented party system, it would mean that most constituency MPs would represent a minority in the constituency. For constituency representation to be meaningful, however, shared representation is necessary so that the different streams of opinion within a locality can each find a voice in the Knesset. Under proposals now being considered by the government, there is an attempt to modify the German system so as to make it relevant to the Israeli situation. Instead of single-member constituencies, the suggestion is to substitute twenty three-member constituencies (electing half the Knesset) for the possible sixty single-member constituencies. Each voter would be required to vote for two candidates. This provision, akin to the limited vote used in certain constituencies in Britain between 1867 and 1885, is intended to facilitate the election of candidates representing minority interests. 13 Its weakness, however, is that the representation of parties in constituencies is dependent upon the efficacy of party organization. Provided that the party can discover where its support lies and ensure that its supporters vote for candidates A and B (or A and C, or B and C), it can maximize its representation and also deprive the voter of his or her choice of candidate. The voter is told to vote for a particular combination of candidates in the interests of the party, while the candidates, too, owe their success to the party organization and can hardly afford to display any kind of political independence in the Knesset. Thus the amendment to the

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German system, while taking away the single-member element, introduces an essentially artificial idea whose purpose can be much better achieved by adopting variable-size, multimember constituencies. Further, a major weakness of systems of the German type, even when modified, is that the requirement of equal-size constituencies places intolerable strains on those entrusted with the task of drawing and redrawing boundaries. Constituencies will come to be highly artificial entities (Tel Aviv North West, or Haifa South East, for example), and there is no way that boundaries can be changed in response to population movements without adversely affecting the fortunes of one or other of the parties. It is for these reasons that an electoral system of the multimember type, prevalent in most smaller democracies of Western Europe, would be more suitable for Israel than a system of the German type. A multimember system would, of course, require topping-up through national allocation as occurs, for example in Sweden, if full proportionality is to be secured. But fewer members would need to be elected through such a national pool than from the list under the German system. It would be possible to secure full proportionality in Israel with eighty constituency seats and forty seats allocated from a national pool. Further, the additional seats might be allocated not from a separate list, but from the "best losers" in the constituency elections—that is, the forty candidates whose percentage of the vote had brought them closest to winning the election. Admittedly, such a system would favor smaller constituencies, where it would be easier for a candidate to secure a higher percentage of the vote. Such constituencies would, therefore, come to have more constituency representatives in the Knesset than the larger ones. But this might be considered acceptable as a means of compensating the more sparsely populated areas of the country. There is little danger that the interests of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Haifa would be forgotten by members of the Knesset or the government, and the advantage of such a system would be that only candidates attracting sizable support in constituencies would be elected to the Knesset. Party organs would lose their power to impose candidates upon the electorate by providing them with a high place on a party list. Multimember systems have three crucial advantages over systems of the German type. The first is that, because constituencies can be variable in size, they can follow natural or established boundaries. Israel could be divided into fourteen constituencies, reflecting already established administrative districts; Tel Aviv might be one constituency returning ten members with Haifa a single constituency returning six members. No special procedure for boundary drawing is necessary. When the population increases or decreases, there is no need to alter boundaries, only to increase or decrease the number of members returned by a particular constituency. No permanent boundary commission to delineate electoral constituencies

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is needed. Second, a multimember system makes possible, although it does not ensure, a greater degree of candidate choice. There are, broadly, three variants. The first is a system in which a fixed list exists in each constituency and a vote for a party is a vote for the list of candidates in the order in which they are placed by the party. Such a system is, of course, similar to the current Israeli system. The second type of system, found in Belgium, is one in which the party presents an ordered list to the voter, but the voter is given the power to modify the order of this list to some degree. In contrast, the third variant, as typified by the systems used in Finland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, provides for a much wider degree of choice by dispensing altogether with the notion of an ordered list and simply inviting the voter to choose which candidates he or she favors without intervention by the party authorities. In these countries, the "list" is nothing more than a grouping of candidates belonging to the same party, and it would be better perhaps to use the term "ticket" to describe such systems where there is no ordered list. In Finland, the elector votes for a single candidate, while in Switzerland and Luxembourg, the elector has as many votes as there are seats in the multimember constituency, and may in addition employ cumulation (using two votes on a single candidate) and panachage (voting across party lists). Thus a voter for whom, for example, feminism is of importance, may believe that his or her views are better represented by women candidates from different parties rather than candidates from just one party. This enables the voter to create his or her own party ticket according to the particular issues that the voter, rather than the party, happens to consider important. The creation of multimember constituencies would soften the Israeli tendency to express all differences between parties in ideological terms. Voters would be able to choose both between parties and between candidates. Able candidates would be encouraged to run and Knesset members would be elected on the basis of their local, as well as party, allegiances. The Knesset would thus better reflect the spread of different interests in the country. The final advantage of personalized multimember systems of proportional representation is that they assist in the election of women and minorities. In a single-member constituency system, it is the presence of a candidate who deviates from the norm—whether female, Ethiopian, or Arab—that would be noticed, but in a multimember system, the party committee choosing the ticket is concerned with choosing a "balanced" ticket in which all significant minorities are represented. In such a system, it is the absence of a female or minority candidate and the failure to present a balanced ticket that will be noticed and deplored. Thus a multimember system could help to raise the abysmally low representation of women in the Knesset, and assist in the integration of minorities into

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the Israeli political system. For these three reasons (creation of natural constituencies, encouragement of candidate choice, and better representation of women and minorities), a multimember system of proportional representation is to be preferred to a system based upon the German model. Even so, it is important not to exaggerate the benefits that electoral reform can be expected to bring. Its main effect would be to open up the Israeli political system so that the voter enjoys a greater degree of influence in choosing candidates and signaling coalitions. This would significantly weaken the power of the party organizations. Many other expectations as to what electoral reform can achieve are unrealistic. No electoral system can preclude the possibility of a close result, such as that of 1984 or 1988, with the two major parties neck and neck; nor, in a democracy, ought an electoral system inhibit the representation of widely held political opinions. More specifically, electoral reform would be unlikely to reduce the influence of the religious parties. If about 16 percent of voters support these parties, then any fair electoral system should ensure them about 16 percent of the seats; and if the religious parties are comparatively indifferent as to whether they support a government of the left or of the right, then they will retain a considerable degree of leverage. Indeed, any reform of the electoral system that, by raising the threshold, encouraged the religious parties to combine might well give them more influence than they presently enjoy.

Direct Election of the Prime Minister It is because many reformers have appreciated the limitations of any reform of the electoral system that consideration has recently been given to proposals to strengthen the influence of the executive and, in particular, the prime minister, who is considered to be too much the prisoner of opposing political factions within the cabinet and without the authority to act in his own right. One proposal that has received attention is to introduce the German procedure of the "constructive vote of no confidence," as laid down in Article 67 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic. According to this procedure, the Bundestag may only express its lack of confidence in the federal chancellor by electing a successor with the majority of its members. This procedure was introduced into the 1949 federal constitution to prevent what had happened in the Weimar Republic when governments were overthrown by a combination of mutually incompatible extremist parties—Nazis and Communists—thereby making effective democratic government impossible. The procedure of the constructive vote of no-confidence, however, is

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based on a misunderstanding. If a federal chancellor finds himself under pressure, then either there is an alternative majority government or there is not. In the latter case the chancellor is being opposed by mutually incompatible parties. In the former case, there is no problem. The chancellor would be voted out of office, with or without the constructive vote of no-confidence procedure, and be replaced by the alternative majority. In the latter case, the constructive vote of no-confidence procedure would make a difference. It would keep the chancellor in office, but as a minority chancellor. In other words, the main political effect of the procedure is to keep in power a minority government, a government not supported by the majority of the legislature. Such minority governments are commonplace in homogeneous consensual societies such as Denmark and Sweden. But in a country such as Israel, which needs a government able to take authoritative decisions in the foreign policy and security spheres, the procedure would lead to weak government. The constructive vote of no-confidence procedure might make it easier for a minority government to survive in the Knesset, but it would do nothing to give such a government the authority to govern. It would be difficult to argue that the prime minister lacks the constitutional powers needed to give authority to his office. Under the Basic Law: The Government, the prime minister has been able, since 1981, to fire any member of his government for any reason. But this power is almost impossible to use. Even when, in 1989, a minister, Ezer Weizman, clearly breached government policy by entering into discussions with members of the PLO, Prime Minister Shamir found it impossible to fire him since Weizman was being protected by the Labor Party to which he belonged. Ministers hold their position by virtue of the Knesset faction to which they belong, not as a result of prime ministerial appointment. That is one of the realities of coalition politics in Israel. Thus methods of strengthening the prime minister's power through new constitutional procedures within the current system are bound to run afoul of the political realities. It is not the constitution that limits the prime minister, but the political context within which he or she has to work. The only way to strengthen the power of the prime minister is to alter this political context. The obvious method of achieving this is to elect the prime minister directly. A version of this reform was adopted in March 1992, providing for direct popular election of the prime minister with the election of a Fourteenth Knesset after 1992. Direct election of the prime minister will give Israel a system of government bearing marked resemblances to that of the French Fifth Republic. There will be, in effect, a separation of powers, with the executive (the president in France and the prime minister in Israel) being directly elected, and the legislature being elected separately. Of course, such a system goes against the norms of Jewish history,

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which has always been skeptical of kings, exalting instead the role of the prophet. In a multiparty system, direct election of the prime minister will require, as for presidential elections in France, two ballots. The first will be in the nature of a primary, and only the two leading candidates will go forward to the second ballot. Under normal circumstances, this will mean a contest between the Labor and Likud candidates. To win in the second ballot, a candidate will have to appeal to the floating vote in the center; therefore, a successful candidate will probably come from the moderate, rather than the extreme, left or right, as is the case in France, where the presidential system has contributed to a considerable lowering of political tensions. Competition should be centripetal rather than centrifugal, and this should weaken the influence of small extremist parties. Moreover, direct election of the prime minister should be likely to strengthen the incipient bipolarity in the Israeli party system, and the losing candidate on the second ballot will most probably be accepted as leader of the opposition. There should be a clearly defined opposition bloc, and this would encourage the growth of a responsible system of government and opposition. A candidate elected under this method will be clearly shown to have won the support of the majority of Israeli voters. The rather sordid bargaining process that takes place after the votes for the Knesset have been counted will at least be diminished. There will still be bargaining since candidates of the major parties will have to win the support of the representatives of the smaller parties, but the bargaining will take place before the election, it will be more open, and the candidates of the major parties will run on a public platform that they will have an excellent chance of implementing. The directly elected prime minister will be the choice of the electorate as a whole, not merely of the largest minority party in the Knesset. His or her authority in international negotiations will also be enhanced, and he or she will be clearly seen to speak for the nation as a whole. The prime minister should become a symbol of national unity, able to overcome socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious divisions. For this reason, the new system is likely to encourage able individuals to come forward. A mere party functionary would be unlikely to secure election as prime minister. However, to derive the maximum advantage from the direct election of the prime minister, this election should take place before the Knesset elections, and not simultaneously with them (as under the adopted reform). It is one of the defects of the U.S. system of government that the legislature is elected at the same time as the president so that the electorate does not normally know how it should vote if it wishes to create a majority supporting the president. The Israeli electorate, however, should be allowed to

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vote with its eyes open, to decide whether to elect a Knesset that would support the prime minister, or whether to give the opposition power in the Knesset, thus checking the power of the prime minister. Strong government, though a necessity for much of the time, may not be needed or desired at all times. The political system will move between periods of strong prime ministerial government and periods of cohabitation or power sharing, similar to the system in France between 1986 and 1988 when a left-wing president governed with a prime minister and legislature dominated by the right. But, whether or not the Knesset supported the prime minister, it would be able to assume the proper role of a legislature—namely the scrutiny of legislation and administration—since there no longer would be any confusion between a vote on a specific item of legislation and the survival of the government. The prime minister no longer would be dependent for his office on majority support in the legislature. Unfortunately, the March 1992 amendment to the Basic Law: The Government does not go far enough in strengthening the independence of the prime minister. As before, it allows the Knesset to remove the prime minister from office by a no-confidence vote passed by sixty-one out of 120 MKs, although this will now bring about the automatic dissolution of the Knesset as well. This provision seems incompatible with the spirit of direct election. A prime minister elected by the people owes his or her authority to the people. He or she is in no sense responsible to the legislature, except perhaps for a criminal offense (for which impeachment through a judicial process rather than through the legislature would seem the more appropriate response). On the contrary, the prime minister should be given the chance to remove a recalcitrant legislature and secure one that would support his or her policies. The amendment to the Basic Law does allow the prime minister to dissolve the Knesset, but only at the cost of precipitating a new election for the prime ministership. The main opposition to direct election of the prime minister derives from the fear that it would introduce a dangerous plebiscitarian element into a heterogeneous society and what some feel is in many ways an immature democracy. Certainly, such a reform should be accompanied by other reforms, such as an entrenched bill of rights, in order to ensure that a directly elected prime minister cannot abuse his or her power. But there is, otherwise, no way of escaping the central dilemma—to give someone the power to do good is also to give that person the power to do evil. To Direct election of the prime minister will place a powerful weapon in the hands of a popular political leader. That weapon may be employed in ways very different from those desired by the advocates of reform. And yet, inertia and a political system that does not allow for effective decisionmaking is at least as much of a danger to democracy as the abuse of power resulting from strong leadership which, because democratic, is always

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subject to the verdict of the electorate at the polls. Which is the greater danger: that a strong leader would abuse his or her power, or that, in the absence of strong leadership, vital political problems, and, in particular, the problem of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, will remain unresolved?

The Referendum So far, we have discussed two reforms of the Israeli political system (a reform of the electoral system creating multimember constituencies, but retaining proportional representation, and direct election of the prime minister), but there is a third desirable reform—the introduction of the referendum into the Israeli political system. Of course, no constitutional reform is necessary to introduce the referendum into Israeli politics. The Knesset could call a referendum at any time on any issue if it so wished. Indeed, proposals for a referendum have been put before the Knesset on four occasions, the last being Ben-Gurion's attempt to secure electoral reform in 1958. The problem, however, is not so much the introduction of the referendum as ensuring that it takes place only under careful and constitutionally defined conditions. Many, perhaps most, Israelis are suspicious of the referendum and other forms of direct democracy, seeing them as instruments of dictatorship. No doubt the main reason for this is their use by Hitler and other European dictators of the 1930s. Yet this in itself should not be a reason for rejecting the referendum, any more than Stalin's bogus "elections" should cast doubt on the value of elections. The fact that the instruments of democracy can be grotesquely parodied by the one-party dictatorships of the twentieth century is a reason for rejecting dictatorship, not for dispensing with the instruments. A more sophisticated criticism might be that the use of the initiative in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s helped the Nazi movement gain support, since it was able to focus on popular grievances and gain some measure of respectability by championing them. But the political culture of Israel is, fortunately, far more mature than that of the Germany of the 1920s. Germany, it must be remembered, was then new to democracy, and democratic forces there had to struggle against economic instability and resentment born of military defeat. None of these conditions holds in contemporary Israel. But, in any case, it is not proposed to introduce into Israel the initiative, a form of referendum that can be triggered by a specified portion of the electorate, but the referendum, a device that can only be triggered by government under carefully controlled conditions. Even a cursory survey of the world's democracies is sufficient to show

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that the referendum cannot be dismissed as an instrument of dictatorship. Almost all democracies employ the referendum in some form. There are only five other major democracies that, besides Israel, have never used the referendum at a national level. They are the Federal Republic of Germany, India, Japan (although the Japanese constitution makes provision for use of the referendum for certain amendments to the constitution), the Netherlands, and the United States (although, of course, the referendum and other instruments of direct democracy, such as the initiative, the recall, and the town meeting, are widely employed at state and local levels). Far from acting as a stimulus to populism or demagogy, the central function of the referendum is to provide a form of constitutional protection, to entrench the constitution of a country against sudden proposals for change not supported by the electorate as a whole. Viewed as a constitutional instrument, the referendum acts to restrain, not to increase, the power of government. It can therefore be regarded as an important adjunct to limited government. It might be argued that, if the constitution of a country is entirely subject to the popular will, then one cannot say that limited government exists at all. But this objection can be answered by looking more closely at the specific role played by the referendum. Normally, issues are not put to the people unless government and parliament wish them to be so referred. Thus the role of the people is essentially a conservative one, rather like that of a second chamber. Were the electorate to accept the proposal in question, then it would merely have endorsed the decision of government and parliament; only if it rejects the proposal has it made a difference. Used in this way, therefore, the referendum must, as a matter of logic, exert a conservative influence, making change more difficult to achieve or rather ensuring that it does not occur unless so desired by the people. The referendum is often attacked for undermining the independence of legislators. But this criticism ignores the fact that, in the modern world, parliamentary government generally implies the dominance of parliament by the government of the day. It ignores the existence of party whips and party discipline that have already undermined much of the independence of the legislator. The referendum can be best understood as a method of bringing the people into the legislative process by dividing the legislature between parliament and people, thereby introducing a type of separation of powers into the political system. Nor is the referendum an addictive device. Its use for certain major decisions of importance does not mean that it will be employed for every decision of government. It is vital to distinguish between what David Butler has called the "two different worlds" of referendums. 14 The vast

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majority of democracies use the referendum, but only very infrequently. Switzerland is often taken as a paradigm of the use of the referendum, but in fact it is quite exceptional. Between 1848, when the Swiss constitution was promulgated, and 1986, there were 355 referendums in Switzerland. The next most frequent use of referendums has been in Australia, where there have been only forty-two since the constitution of 1900. No other democracy has held more than twenty national referendums. There is no reason to believe that introduction of the referendum into Israel would lead to its being employed on a regular basis. What, then, might be the functions of the referendum in Israel? The first and most important of these functions would be constitutional. It might be suggested that no constitutional changes should occur without a referendum. Israel does not at present have a constitution. It might, however, be argued that no changes in the Basic Laws, or perhaps in some of the more important Basic Laws, be allowed to occur without a referendum. Indeed, some suggest that when the process of enacting all the Basic Laws is completed (two more Basic Laws are planned), the future constitution (the incorporation of all these Basic Laws) should be put to a referendum. The argument for requiring constitutional change to be put to referendum is that the people in a democracy have an inherent right to be consulted regarding changes in their form of government. It might also be argued, however, that constitutional change should not be pushed through on small popular majorities. The French Fourth Republic, for example, was accepted in a referendum in 1946 by a very narrow margin on a low turnout. Thirty-six percent of the electorate voted yes and 32 percent voted no, while the other 32 percent of the electorate abstained. It has been argued that this narrow margin of acceptance deprived the Fourth Republic of legitimacy from the very beginning and contributed considerably to the problems it faced in settling the Indochina and Algerian wars. It is for this reason that a number of democracies insist upon a qualified majority as a precondition for constitutional change. In Denmark, for example, any constitutional change requires not only a majority in a referendum, but also the approval of at least 40 percent of the electorate. One interesting alternative is to provide that, instead of being essential, the referendum might be an alternative to a qualified parliamentary majority in cases of constitutional change. New Zealand, for example, which, like Israel, lacks a codified constitution, provides that to amend certain basic provisions, such as the life of the single-chamber parliament or the minimum voting age, a 75 percent majority in parliament is required or a simple majority in a referendum. There is an analogous provision in the constitution of the French Fifth Republic that requires constitutional

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change to be validated by either a three-fifths majority in the two houses of parliament or a referendum; in Italy, constitutional change requires a two-thirds majority in the two houses or a referendum. A second important function of the referendum is to provide legitimacy to decisions in cases where legitimacy cannot be given by parliament alone. There are some decisions that are so vital to the survival of the state that it is essential that they be given popular endorsement. De Gaulle's decision in the early days of the Fifth Republic to give Algeria the right of self-determination is one example. The referendums on selfdetermination performed the vital function of isolating the extremists of the far right and showing that they were fighting against a democratic decision of the French people. So also it might be suggested that, were Israel to decide to withdraw from some or all of the territories, a referendum would be needed to isolate extremists who opposed the decision, and to show that those extremists did not enjoy the support of Israeli public opinion as a whole. Only in this way, perhaps, could such a decision be given legitimacy. One other use of the referendum should be briefly noted: It can be used as a problem-solving device for issues not central to the political process but that nevertheless threaten to have a divisive political effect. Many countries use the referendum to resolve moral issues, such as abortion or licensing hours, that divide political parties. Sweden held a referendum in 1955 that dealt with driving on the left or right side of the road. One specific use of the referendum in this context is to break a deadlock within a coalition on an issue that could otherwise break up the government. The referendum on nuclear energy in Sweden in 1980 performed this function. Again, the relevance of this use of the referendum to Israeli experience should be obvious. Although use of the referendum in Israel would be infrequent, as in most democracies employing this instrument, it could have considerable value for the democratic process since it would weaken what has become a rigid parteienstaat. It compels citizens to detach themselves from their traditional party allegiances and to consider concrete proposals and form a definite opinion regarding them. It is, as James Bryce argued, "unequalled as an instrument of practical instruction in politics." 15

The Promise and Limits of Reform The question of constitutional reform has only recently impinged upon the political consciousness of most Israelis. The founding fathers of the state devoted little time to the question of how Israel was to be governed. For the first twenty years of the state's existence, this unwillingness to

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think critically about constitutional and political arrangements did not matter very much, because the founding fathers, and especially the Labor/Zionist leadership, enjoyed tremendous prestige and authority. Acceptance of this authority was essential to the smooth working of Israeli political institutions. The political system was a closed one, hostile to forms of participation that could not be channeled safely into existing party grooves. "The main feature and source of strength of the Israeli political system from the pre-state period until the mid-1960s," claims Galnoor, "was reliance on the power of organizations and institutions rather than on the direct support of the voters. Under these conditions the political parties were the major contributors to stability and continuity and to the steering capacity of the government." 16 Yet such a system was compatible only with a political culture within which the political leadership, owing to its proven achievements, attracted respect and even deference. It was bound to come under strain as a successor generation, lacking the heroic achievements of the founding fathers, came to the fore. The difficulties of the successor generation were compounded not only by internal problems besetting the state, but also by the Yom Kippur War, which severely called into question the judgment of the Labor/Zionist leadership. What has been happening in Israel has been a change in the political culture: a decline in deference, a weakening in respect for authority, and a desire on the part of the electorate to participate more effectively in the making of governmental decisions. In general the system is more open, politics is more fluid and equality of opportunity has increased. Although no change has taken place in the high election turnout, we do find changes in such aspects of participation as the direct involvement of citizens in election campaigns, the increased activities of pressure groups and voluntary grass roots organizations and a much higher number of political demonstrations and violent strikes.17

The problems of the Israeli polity flow more from the widening and deepening of its democratic political culture than from threats to the democratic system. They flow from the fact that rights of participation that formerly belonged only to the few are now claimed by the many. In the minds of many Israeli liberal intellectuals favoring reform of the Israeli political system, there lies an unresolved contradiction. The reform program began as a liberal critique of Israeli political institutions, designed to open up the political system. Yet, the opening up of the political system could easily lead to the growth of a populism of the right, hostile to everything for which liberal intellectuals stand. There are indeed

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a number of signs from survey evidence that the Israeli electorate is less supportive of civil liberties than its leaders; less willing to offer tolerance to the Arab population, both within the Green Line and in the territories; and less willing to return territory for peace than those who represent them. That is why, when faced with such proposals as the direct election of the prime minister or the use of referendums, many liberal intellectuals draw back. They fear that direct democracy could lead to demagogy, that strong government could easily turn into illiberal government. The reforms proposed in this chapter (a new electoral system offering scope for candidate choice, direct election of the prime minister, and use of the referendum) are designed to fit in with a democratic political culture and to open up the political system. Yet they will leave many Israelis feeling uneasy. Is this not because their worries are really about tendencies in Israeli society, rather than the constitution? It is all too easy to blame the electoral system for what is wrong with Israeli society. A pure proportional representation system of the Israeli type can be likened to a mirror that accurately reflects the society whose votes it translates into seats. Are not the critics really more unhappy about what the mirror reflects than about the design of the mirror? If one does not like what is reflected in it, is one right to blame the mirror? Perhaps the real concern of the critics is with the Zionist movement and the direction it has taken. Has Zionism not reached an impasse from which merely institutional changes cannot rescue it? How is Zionism to be renewed so that it can meet the challenge of modern conditions, conditions quite unlike those imagined by the founding fathers? Perhaps this is the central question facing Israelis, and in response to that question, recipes for electoral and constitutional reform can provide only a very limited answer.

Notes The bulk of this chapter was written before the general election of 1992.1 should like to thank Moshe Maor and Eli Salzberger for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. They are not to be implicated, however, in my arguments or conclusions. 1. D a n i e l Shimshoni, Israeli Democracy:

The Middle of the Journey

(Glen-

coe, 111.: The Free Press, 1982), p. 56. 2. Avraham Brichta, "The 1977 Elections and the Future of Electoral Reform in Israel," in Howard R. Penniman, ed., Israel at the Polls: The Knesset Elections of1977 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), p. 46. 3. Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel's Third Front (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), pp. 315-316. 4. Avraham Brichta, "Selection of Candidates to the Tenth Knesset: The Impact of Centralization," in Howard R. Penniman and Daniel J. Elazar, eds., Israel at the Polls, 1981: A Study of the Knesset Elections

American Enterprise Institute, 1986), p. 30.

(Washington, D.C.:

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5. Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation. Cited in Brichta, "1977 Elections," p. 20. 6. Jerusalem Post International Edition, June 2,1990, p. 6. 7. Samuel Sager, The Parliamentary System of Israel (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1985), p. 67. 8. G. Gudgin and P. J. Taylor, Seats, Votes and the Spatial Organisation of Elections (London: Pion, 1979). 9. Shimshoni, Israeli Democracy. 10. The letter embodying this agreement can be found in Shimshoni, Israeli Democracy, p. 478. 11. J.Fischer Williams, The Reform of Political Representation (London: John Murray, 1918), p. 28. 12. See also Eckhard Jesse, "Split Voting in the Federal Republic of Germany: An Analysis of the Federal Elections from 1953-1987," Electoral Studies 7 (1987), pp. 109-124; and Eckhard Jesse, "The West German Electoral System: The Case for Reform, 1949-1987," West European Politics 10 (1987), pp. 434-448. 13. See Vernon Bogdanor, The People and the Party System: The Referendum and Electoral Reform in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101-104. 14. In David Butler and Austin Ranney, eds., Referendums: A Comparative Study of Practice and Theory (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), p. 221. 15. James Bryce, Modem Democracies, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1921), p. 476. 16. Itzhak Galnoor, "Israeli Democracy in Transition," in Stephen J. Roth, ed., The Impact of the Six-Day War: A Twenty-Year Assessment (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 139. 17. Ibid., p. 145.

Israeli Democracy and Democratic Reform in Comparative Perspective Arend

Lijphart

In recent years, Israeli democracy has been subjected to frequent and increasing criticism, both by Israelis themselves and by foreign observers, for being neither sufficiently democratic nor sufficiently effective. This criticism is applied not only to contemporary Israeli politics but to the pattern that has allegedly developed during the past two decades; the year 1967 is usually seen as the turning point. Moreover, proposals for drastic political reform have gained considerable popularity; these include the proposal (accepted by the Knesset in 1992 and applicable to the first election after 1992) to have the prime minister popularly and directly elected—which implies a major shift from a parliamentary to a presidential form of government—and various proposals to completely overhaul the electoral system. Both the severity of the criticisms and the drastic nature of the reform proposals indicate that many people believe that there is something seriously and fundamentally wrong with Israeli democracy. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to a better, and it is hoped more objective, understanding of the style and quality of Israeli democracy by comparing its main features with those of the other Western democracies (and with Japan). In addition, using the same comparative framework, I shall compare the pre-1967 and post-1967 periods in Israel's political history.

Israel and Twenty-Four Other Democratic Systems The democracies with which I shall compare Israel are those that have been continuously democratic since the late 1940s—mainly the West European democracies, but also the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan—as well as the new democracies in Southern Europe—Spain, Portugal, and Greece. 1 My definition of democracy is not a very demanding one; it equals what Robert A. Dahl calls "polyarchy." 2 It does include the basic criterion of "one person, one vote," even though I obviously do not apply this 107

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s

Figure 6.1 Twenty-five Democratic Regimes Plotted on the Two Majoritarian-Consensual Dimensions Federal-unitary dimension

UNITED KINGOOM

• LUXEMBOURG 5

• GRFFCF

. hflENCH FOURTVt REPUBLIC •

• IRELAND

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| .j ^

1

« jiELGIU

SWEDEN

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|

10

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' SWITZERLAND

• UNITED STATES

standard very strictly when I include pre-1971 Switzerland, when women did not yet have the right to vote; the United States before the 1965 Voting Rights Act; the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, while these countries were still colonial powers; the three "allied powers" while they were occupying Germany, Austria, and Japan; and post-1967 Israel while it has been in control of the occupied territories. Of all these exceptions, I believe that postwar control of defeated or conquered countries or areas are the least serious violations of the "one person, one vote" standard because such control is meant to be temporary; the longer such control lasts, however, the more it creates a dilemma for democracy. My first step is to place Israel on the two-dimensional conceptual map of democracy. As shown in Figure 6.1, Israel is in an unusual position: Not only is it located in one of the extreme corners of this map, but it is also in

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an isolated position on the conceptual map, with no other countries in its close vicinity. (The point labeled Israel represents Israel's position during the 1948-1980 period. Immediately to the right are its two positions for part of this period, 1949-1967, and for the second part plus an additional decade, 1967-1990; these will be discussed later). In order to interpret the meaning of Israel's outlying position, we need to understand how the conceptual map was constructed.3 It is based, first of all, on the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy. The standard definition of democracy as "government by and for the people" raises a fundamental question that is answered in radically different ways in different democratic regimes: Who will do the governing, and to whose interests should the government be responsive when the people are in disagreement and have divergent preferences? One answer is the majority of the people, with the alternative being as many people as possible. These two answers typify the basic models of democracy: majoritarian and consensus democracy. The majoritarian model concentrates political power in the hands of the majority, whereas the consensus model tries to share, disperse, and limit power in a variety of ways. Eight differences with regard to political institutions and practices can be deduced from these two contrasting principles. Since the eight majoritarian characteristics are derived from the same principle and hence are logically connected, we would expect them to occur together. The same applies to the eight consensus elements. Comparative empirical analysis largely confirms these expectations, with one major exception: The majoritarian as well as the consensus characteristics cluster along two clearly separate dimensions. The first dimension, which may be called the executives-parties dimension, groups together five characteristics of the party and electoral systems and of the arrangement of executive power. The second dimension has to do with the three variables of government centralization, constitutional flexibility, and bicameralism versus unicameralism. Since these differences are commonly associated with the contrast between federalism and unitary government, this dimension may be called the federal-unitary dimension. The first, or executives-parties dimension, is comprised of the following five variables: 1. Concentration of executive power versus executive power sharing. The typically majoritarian executive is a one-party, bare-majority cabinet, whereas the ideal-type consensual executive is a power-sharing coalition consisting of all the major parties in the legislature. 2. Executive dominance versus executive-legislative balance. The former characteristic is again the majoritarian characteristic and the latter the consensual characteristic.

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3. Two-party versus multiparty systems. 4. One-dimensional versus multidimensional party systems. In the majoritarian model, the two major parties differ from each other programmatically on only one dimension: socioeconomic policy. The consensus model assumed differences among the major parties not only on the left-right issue dimension but also on one or more of the following: the religious, cultural-ethnic, urban-rural, regime support, foreign policy, and postmaterialist dimensions. 5. Plurality elections versus proportional representation (PR). The second dimension of the majoritarian-consensus contrast is based on the following three variables: 1. Unitary and centralized versus federal and decentralized government. 2. Unicameralism versus strong bicameralism. Strong bicameralism entails a two-chamber legislature in which the two houses are roughly equal in power (symmetrical) and elected by different methods (incongruent). 3. Unwritten versus written and rigid constitutions. The optimally majoritarian constitution is an unwritten one because it does not impose any formal limitations on the power of parliament, that is, of the parliamentary majority. At the other extreme is a written constitution that is protected by judicial review and that is difficult to amend. Israel's position in the extreme top left-hand corner of Figure 6.1 means that it is highly consensual on the first (executives-parties) dimension and highly majoritarian (or unitary) on the second dimension. Compared with the other twenty-four democratic systems, this is certainly an unusual—both an "abnormal" and "lonely"—position, but there are two reasons why the degree of abnormality should not be exaggerated. First, while Israel is by itself in the extreme top left-hand corner, it is not the only country in an extreme corner. In this respect, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States can be regarded as just as abnormal. Second, it is the combination of Israel's placement on the two dimensions that give it its outlying position. If we consider the two dimensions separately, Israel looks much less abnormal. Particularly as far as the first dimension is concerned, it is approximately as consensual as Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, and the French Fourth Republic. This is less true of the second dimension, but there is still one other country—New Zealand—that is about as unitary as Israel. The exaggerated view of Israeli democracy as an extremely unusual democratic system may have something to do with the fact that such a view arises out of Israeli-U.S. comparisons and that Israel happens to be so different from the United States; in Figure 6.1, Israel and the United States are polar opposites.

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Table 6.1 Basic Characteristics of 25 Democratic Regimes (Averages) and of Israel, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United States, and Canada (1945-1980) Executive-Parties Dimension

(1) Average Israel New Zealand Switzerland United States Canada

68 18 100 0 100 87

Federal-Unitary Dimension

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(1)

(2)

(3)

52 28 64 30 30 104

3.3 4.7 2.0 5.0 1.9 2.4

2.6 3.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 1.5

3.9 1.1 6.3 1.5 5.6 8.1

78 96 93 41 57 50

2.4 4.0 4.0 0.0 0.0 2.0

0.9 3.0 3.0 1.0 0.0 0.0

Note: The five variables of the executives-parties dimension are: (1) Minimal winning cabinets, in percent; (2) Cabinet durability, in months; (3) Effective number of parties; (4) Number of issue dimensions; (5) Electoral disproportionality, in percent. The three variables of the federal-unitary dimension are: (1) Government centralization, in percent; (2) Unicameralism-bicameralism, measured on a 5-point scale; (3) Constitutional flexibility, measured on a 4-point scale.

Problems of Measurement Before trying to explain Israel's position on the conceptual map of democracy, one needs to raise the question of whether Israel's unusual position can possibly be explained by inaccurate, and hence possibly exaggerated, measurement. This requires an explanation of how the eight variables were operationalized and how they were combined into the two dimensions. My conclusion will be that Israel's position in Figure 6.1 is largely correct. (Readers who are willing to take my word for this, and who prefer not to consider all of the technical details of measurement, may want to skip this section.) Table 6.1 presents the values of the eight operationalized variables for Israel and for the other four countries in outlying positions, as well as the average values for all twenty-five democracies. I shall deal with the federal-unitary dimension first, since it is relatively simple and straightforward. The only variable about which there is some doubt is unitary and centralized versus federal and decentralized government. Because, in practice, federations tend to be considerably more decentralized than unitary states, I operationalized this variable simply in terms of a measure of centralization: the central government's share of total central and noncentral tax receipts. Israel's score is 96 percent, which puts it at the highly centralized end of the continuum that runs from a high of 98 percent, found in the Netherlands, to a low of 41

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percent, found in Switzerland. This measure does not reflect the informal decentralization that exists in several countries in the form of official recognition and subsidization of private associations, especially in the fields of education and health care, established by religious and ideological groups. Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel are examples of such countries. If this informal pattern of decentralization, which, as Robert A. Dahl has suggested, may be called "sociological federalism," 4 could be made part of our measure of federalism-decentralization and unitarism-centralization, Israel would move down at least slightly in Figure 6.1. The unicameralism-bicameralism variable creates some problems of classification because it is not always clear whether the two chambers of bicameral legislatures are symmetrical or asymmetrical and congruent or incongruent. These difficulties do not affect the countries with unicameral legislatures, of course, and Israel is one of these. Similarly, Israel's position on the variable of unwritten versus written and rigid constitutions is completely straightforward, since we do not have to deal with the problem of determining how rigid or flexible a particular written constitution is: Israel, like the United Kingdom and New Zealand, has an unwritten constitution. The existence of several "basic laws" that are more difficult to amend constitutes a slight exception, although the extraordinary majority that is necessary in most cases is simply an absolute majority of all members of the Knesset, not counting abstentions and absences; this means 61 votes out of 120 are needed, which is still a basically majoritarian decision rule. Since the three variables of the federal-unitary dimension are measured on different scales (percentages, a five-point scale, and a four-point scale, respectively), they cannot be added together to form a composite measure. For this reason, they were first standardized (so as to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1), then averaged, and finally—in order to have as meaningful a measure as possible—standardized again. T h e same procedure was used for the five variables of the executivesparties dimension, to which I shall now turn. Concentrated Executive Power Versus Executive Power Sharing In operationalizing this variable, I gave predominant weight to the question of whether cabinets are bare-majority cabinets—"minimal winning" cabinets, in the terminology of the coalition theorists—or more inclusive "oversized" cabinets, in which one or more parties are represented that are not necessary to give the cabinet a parliamentary majority. Minority cabinets form an intermediate category. My measure is the percentage of time the country in question was ruled by a minimal winning cabinet. 5

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Israel's percentage is 18 percent, close to the consensual end of the scale, where Switzerland with zero percent minimal winning coalitions is located (that is, all Swiss coalitions were oversized), and far from the majoritarian end, exemplified by New Zealand, which was ruled by minimal winning cabinets 100 percent of the time. Although the difference between minimal winning and oversized coalitions is widely used in the literature and is regarded as the most meaningful way of distinguishing among cabinets, my measure still has two serious problems, both of which affect the case of Israel. First, it does not distinguish between truly grand coalitions and coalitions that are only slightly oversized. In Israel, only the 1967-1970 and 1984-1990 "national unity" cabinets were true grand coalitions, but most of the others were much less broadly based and generally fell short of a two-thirds majority.6 The second problem is that my measure, for the most part, does not take the number of parties in a cabinet into consideration. Oversized cabinets are, by definition, coalition cabinets, but they can vary between two-party coalitions and coalitions with a much larger number of coalition partners; minimal winning cabinets may be one-party cabinets, but they can also be two-party or multiparty coalitions. I now think that a measure of concentration versus sharing of executive power should take into account the additional elements of the size of the parliamentary support base and the number of the parties in the coalition. However, if we were to do this, the position of Israel would probably not change a great deal: Israel's usually not overly broad, oversized coalitions would move it to the majoritarian side, but the relatively large numbers of parties in the cabinets would move it in the other direction. My guess is that the two adjustments would probably cancel each other out. Executive Dominance Versus Executive-Legislative

Balance

This contrast is as important as it is difficult to operationalize. The best available method is to measure average cabinet durability. Cabinets that are durable—those that do not change frequently in terms of party composition—tend to be much more powerful vis-à-vis their legislatures than less durable executives. In the 1945-1980 period, the average durability of Israeli cabinets was 28 months, which is relatively short compared with the other democracies; Canada had the highest average cabinet durability (104 months) and the French Fourth Republic the lowest (9 months). Here, again, there are two important measurement problems. The first concerns the criteria for deciding when one cabinet ends and a new one begins. My criterion was a change in the party composition of the cabinet, which has the dual advantage of being simple and of having the

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clearest connection with the idea of relative executive-legislature power that cabinet durability tries to measure. Other students of cabinet formation have used several additional criteria, however, such as changes of prime minister and parliamentary elections. The use of additional criteria tends to decrease average cabinet durability. In the Israeli case, when the above criteria are also applied, average cabinet durability declines to 18 months. But this pattern of declining cabinet durability holds true for all countries; in relative terms, the situation does not change a great deal. I have calculated average cabinet durability for twenty democracies in the 1945-1980 period, according to five different sets of criteria. On all five, Israel ranks as either number 15 or 16.7 This means that the use of a different measure of cabinet durability would affect the position of Israel in Figure 6.1 only marginally. The second problem is the determination of when cabinets begin and end in particular countries. In Israel, for instance, it has happened several times that cabinets are formed according to a two-step procedure: A few parties formally join in a cabinet coalition, but one or more additional parties enter the coalition soon afterward. Should the short-lived interim cabinet be regarded as a separate cabinet? If so, this would increase the number of cabinets and depress average cabinet durability. My decision was to count the full cabinet only and to disregard the interim cabinet, since in most other countries cabinets do not formally come into existence until all negotiations are completed. This peculiarity of Israeli politics has, therefore, not had the effect of making it look more extreme in Figure 6.1 than it should. Two-Party Versus Multiparty

Systems

The best way to operationalize this variable is the "effective number of parties" measure proposed by Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera. 8 It counts the number of parties weighted by party size. The mean effective number of parties in Israel, based on the parties' shares of legislative seats in the 1945-1980 period, was 4.7—clearly on the consensus side of a spectrum that ranges from approximately 2.0 for the pure two-party systems to 5.0 for the Finnish and Swiss party systems. I see no grounds for challenging Israel's rating on this variable. One-Dimensional

Versus Multidimensional

Party

Systems

I gave one point to a dimension of high salience and half a point to those of only medium intensity. In principle, this means that scores can range from 0 to 7 since there are seven possible issue dimensions. In the empirical world of the 1945-1980 period, the lowest score was 1.0 (Ireland, New

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Zealand, and the United States), and the highest was 4.5 (the French Fourth Republic). Israel's score, based on the presence of high-salience socioeconomic, religious, and foreign policy issue dimensions in the party system, was 3.0. This looks like a "medium" score, but, in fact, only four democracies had higher scores. It seems to me that Israel's score on this variable is uncontroversial. Plurality Elections Versus

PR

Because a few countries have electoral systems that are neither plurality nor proportional representation (PR), and because, in practice, not all PR systems are equally proportional and not all plurality systems are equally disproportional, I operationalized this variable in terms of the degree of disproportionality of the actual electoral outcomes: the average deviation between the vote and seat shares of the two largest parties in all elections between 1945 and 1980. Israel's disproportionality score is 1.1 percent, close to the most proportional score of 0.9 percent (Denmark); the plurality countries had disproportionality scores between 5.6 and 8.1 percent, and the French Fifth Republic had the highest score of 12.3 percent. We have to consider two measurement problems. One is that there is no scholarly agreement on what the most suitable method for measuring disproportionality is. The two major alternatives to my measure are the Rae index and the Loosemore-Hanby index, but all the existing indices are highly correlated with each other.9 Nobody would deny that, compared with other PR countries, Israel has had one of the most proportional systems, and the use of a different measure is not likely to affect the result more than marginally. The second problem is more serious: All of the disproportionality measures tend to be too conservative at the ends of the scale. Since they are all based on a comparison of vote shares and seat shares, they fail to consider the fact that in the most disproportional systems, a great deal of strategic or insincere voting takes place: Many voters are discouraged from voting for small parties although these are the parties they really prefer. Conversely, in the most proportional systems, many voters are tempted to vote for very small parties that even in such highly permissive systems do not have much of a chance to gain representation; this adds to the differences between vote and seat shares and makes these systems look less proportional than they really are. Israel is clearly such a system since it has nationwide PR and a very low threshold (1 percent). If an adjustment for this phenomenon could be made, it would move Israel even more to the left in Figure 6.1, although probably only slightly. The above review can yield no other conclusion—provided, of course, that we accept the relevance of the eight variables for distinguishing

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between different types of democracy—than that Israel is not badly misplaced in Figure 6.1. Its unusual location on the conceptual map cannot be explained by questionable methods of measurement.

Democracy in a Divided Society and a Small State The next question is: Is Israel in the "correct" location in terms of the explanations of why some democracies are more majoritarian and others are more consensus oriented? There are three causal explanations that emerge from an inspection of the distribution of countries in Figure 6.1. First, there is a clear relationship between societal homogeneity and type of regime. As we move from the top right-hand corner to the bottom left-hand corner of Figure 6.1, we find countries with significant internal divisions with increasing frequency; the more divided countries are likely to be the more consensual democracies. The second explanation is population size. As we move from the top to the bottom of Figure 6.1, population size tends to go up: Smaller countries are more likely to be "unitary" democracies and larger countries are likely to be more "federal." The third explanation is the influence of the British political heritage. The countries that have been British colonies or dependencies and the United Kingdom itself are concentrated on the right-hand side of Figure 6.1. The striking exception is Israel, which spurned the Westminster tradition of the former ruler of the Mandate of Palestine. The first two explanations are also justifications. It makes sense for divided countries to adopt consensual democratic institutions and practices in order to be able to deal with these divisions as effectively and peacefully as possible. It also makes more sense for large countries, rather than small ones, to take advantage of federal-type institutions. The third explanation is not a justification: It is a factor that tends to interfere with what countries need on the basis of internal divisions and population size. In terms of the above two justifications, where should Israel be located in Figure 6.1? Since Israel is a clear case of a divided or plural society, it belongs below the diagonal that runs from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner. And since it is a small country, it belongs in the top half of Figure 6.1. Figure 6.2 combines these two criteria and shows the small triangle in which Israel "ideally" should be placed. Its actual position is slightly above the triangle, but still very close to it. However, it is also close to the top corner of the triangle. My suggestions for what I think are the most appropriate democratic reforms for Israel follow from this view of Israel's need: Israel should not move away from this triangle— that is, it should remain both consensual and unitary-—but, within the triangle, it should move closer to the center of the conceptual map.

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Figure 6.2 Appropriate Placement for Internally Divided and Small Countries on the Conceptual Map of Democracy Cons.

I

Maj.

Israeli Democracy Before and After 1967 Before discussing the reform proposals, I should like to take a quick look at the differences between the periods before and after 1967, prompted by the fact that it is the post-1967 pattern of Israeli politics that is most frequently criticized. In Democracies (see Note 1), 1980 is the cut-off year, but for the purpose of this chapter, I have added the Israeli political developments from 1980 to 1990. In terms of our analysis so far, how do the 1948-1967 and 1967-1990 periods compare? The detailed answers can be found in Table 6.2. These are summarized in Figure 6.1, which gives Israel's locations during each of the two periods. No significant change has taken place on the federal-unitary dimension. On the executives-parties dimension, Israel has moved away slightly from the extreme consensual side. Since many of the critics of post-1967 Israeli democracy are majoritarians, it is a bit of a surprise to see that Israel has already become more majoritarian since 1967. However, the shift is by no means earthshaking. When we inspect the figures in Table 6.2, we see that there was a small increase in the incidence of minimal winning coalitions, but, of course, this

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Table 6.2 Basic Characteristics of Israeli D e m o c r a c y (1948-1990,1948-1967, a n d 19671990)

(1) 1948-1990 1948-1967 1967-1990

27 25 29

Executives-Parties D i m e n s i o n (4) (2) (3) 34 31 37

4.4 5.1 3.8

3.0 2.5 3.0

(5) 1.4 0.8 2.0

Note: T h e five variables are: (1) Minimal winning cabinets, in p e r c e n t ; (2) Cabinet durability, in m o n t h s ; (3) Effective n u m b e r of parties; (4) N u m b e r of issue dimensions; (5) E l e c t o r a l disproportionality, in percent.

is counterbalanced by the fact that all the "national unity" grand coalitions occurred after 1967. Cabinet durability also increased slightly. The more important changes in the majoritarian direction were the decrease in multipartyism, from 5.1 to 3.8 parties, and an increase in disproportionality, from 0.8 to 2.0 percent. The former reflects the growing strength of Likud. The latter was mainly caused by a change in the electoral law from the highly proportional largest-remainders formula to the less proportional d'Hondt formula: In the six elections of the first period, five were conducted according to largest-remainders, whereas the situation was exactly the reverse in the six elections of the second period. As far as the dimensionality of the party system is concerned, I assigned a slightly more consensual score to the second period: It seems to me that the foreign policy dimension had not yet reached its full salience and divisiveness in the first period. If the unchanged 3.0 score had been assigned to the first period, this period would have been placed more to the left in Figure 6.1—in fact, slightly to the left of the point representing the 1948-1980 period (ISR)—making the shift from 1948-1967 to 1967-1990 look somewhat more substantial.

Democratic Reform The above analysis has established (1) that Israel is a consensus democracy as far as the first dimension is concerned, (2) that Israel is a unitary democracy with regard to the second dimension, (3) that, given its internal divisions, consensus democracy is the appropriate form of democracy for Israel, (4) that, given its small size, the unitary form of government is also suitable, and (5) that the degree to which Israel is consensual and unitary is rather extreme. The practical conclusion that follows is that democratic

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reform should take place within the consensual-unitary space depicted in Figure 6.2, and that radical change to a majoritarian form of democracy (and to federalism) is not recommended. The major reform plans that have been proposed are strongly majoritarian: the plan to change the electoral system to the single-member district plurality method and the direct popular election of the prime minister. Plurality elections tend to be disproportional and to discriminate against small parties. They also tend to result in what Douglas W. Rae calls "manufactured majorities"—a party winning a majority of legislative seats with less than a majority of the votes.10 The United Kingdom is a good example: Since World War II, the "winning" party has never won a majority of the votes. For a country that consists of distinct minorities, like Israel, a system that hands control of the government to one minority and squeezes out other minorities would be neither fair nor workable. It is worth noting that even the United Kingdom and New Zealand deviate to some extent from the plurality method in order to try to accommodate minority interests: New Zealand has a number of seats that are reserved for the Maori minority, and the British government has introduced PR for all elections in Northern Ireland (except elections to the House of Commons). Proposals that the prime minister be popularly elected usually also include two other features: that the prime minister be elected for a fixed term of office and that the prime minister not be subject to parliamentary confidence (that is, that parliament not be able to dismiss the prime minister). A "prime minister" thus defined is in fact a president in a presidential system. There are two reasons why the drastic reform of shifting to a presidential system is inadvisable for Israel. One is that presidentialism has many strong majoritarian features; in particular, it makes the election for a country's most important and powerful position into an all-or-nothing contest or zero-sum game. On this matter, there is a contradiction between Vernon Bogdanor's recommendations: he recognizes the dangers of majoritarian decisionmaking in a plural society like Israel's when he discusses alternative electoral systems—his advice that Israel retain PR, albeit an improved version of it, is based on this analysis—but he closes his eyes to the dangers of the equally majoritarian tendencies that are inherent in the direct election of the head of government. The other disadvantage of presidentialism is that, in one sense, it is almost too consensual: It sets up a separation of powers and hence potential conflict between the executive and the legislature; Juan J. Linz calls this the problem of "divided sovereignties." 11 A few countries, notably the United States, have succeeded in managing this problem reasonably well, but in many others, especially in Latin America, it has led to serious immobilism. 12 Those who advocate presidentialism for Israel,

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believing that it will create a united, strong, and purposive government, should take a closer look at these many unhappy examples of presidential democracy. Advocates of a directly elected prime minister frequently claim that their proposals are more akin to French semi-presidentialism than to U.S. or Latin American presidential government (see, for instance, Bogdanor in the previous chapter) or that they do not entail a presidential form of government at all. Both claims are erroneous. The special nature of the French system derives from its dual executive: both a directly elected president and a prime minister dependent on the legislature's confidence. This means that there are alternating phases of (1) presidential government, when the president has majority support in the legislature, and (2) parliamentary government, when there is a parliamentary majority hostile to the president; in the latter phase of cohabitation, the president retains only residual powers in the field of foreign affairs. The great advantage of semi-presidentialism over full presidentialism is that it contains a solution for what in the United States is usually referred to as the problem of "divided government": when the presidency and the legislature are controlled by different parties, the danger of deadlock is averted by shifting to a mainly parliamentary system. But in Bogdanor's proposal there is no separate official like the French prime minister who can become the head of government when the directly elected prime minister lacks parliamentary support. Hence, the cohabitation that Bogdanor has in mind for Israel would be much more like U.S. divided government than like the French original. David Libai, Uriel Lynn, Amnon Rubinstein, and Yoash Tsiddon claim that their proposal for a directly elected prime minister "does not institute a presidential regime—not in the traditional American sense nor in the sense of the French Fifth Republic." 13 But with regard to two of the three crucial differences between presidential and parliamentary government, their system is clearly presidential: (1) the "prime minister" will be popularly elected instead of selected by the legislature, and (2) the cabinet will not be the usual collegial cabinet in a parliamentary system, but a group of advisers to the prime minister who are appointed by and can be dismissed by the prime minister—similar to presidential cabinets. Only as far as the third crucial distinction is concerned does there appear to be an exception to presidentialism in the proposal by Libai and his fellow members of the Knesset: the Knesset may remove the prime minister by a vote of no-confidence. It is not clear why the proposal stipulates that an extraordinary majority of 70 members is required for this, since the prime minister's removal can also be achieved by a Knesset vote, with a regular majority, to dissolve itself; in any case, the Knesset appears to be given the same powers that parliaments in parliamentary regimes normally have. However, the effect of such a vote of no-confidence is quite different

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from that in a normal parliamentary system: it entails the termination of not only the prime minister's but also the parliament's own term of office—and, consequently, new elections of both. And the prime minister has the same power to end both his or her own and the parliament's tenure and to call new elections. A similar suggestion has been made by the Committee on the Constitutional System as "a strong device for breaking deadlocks" in the U.S. presidential system. It is not a foolproof method because, as the committee concedes, "the electorate [might] simply reelect all the incumbents." 14 In my opinion, it would mean an at least slightly improved presidential system—but still a presidential system. Similarly, the proposal by Libai and his colleagues spells presidentialism—improved in one respect, to be sure, but still with all of the divisive potential of winner-take-all majoritarian government. How can Israel's consensus democracy be improved while remaining a consensus democracy? My principal recommendations would be to try to move it closer to the center of the conceptual map of democracy by moderating its multipartism and its extreme PR system and by trying to make its cabinets less unwieldy and more stable. The best way to achieve all of these goals is to reform the electoral system. Since Israel already uses the least proportional PR formula (d'Hondt), no change is needed in this respect, but two other changes should be seriously considered. One is to institute a number of electoral districts instead of the current single nationwide district, and the other is to institute a minimum threshold higher than the 1 percent used from 1951 to 1988 and the 1.5 percent instituted in 1992—for instance, a 3 percent to 5 percent, or even higher, threshold. Both reforms would make it much more difficult for very small parties to gain representation. For instance, the establishment of tenmember districts makes it unlikely that parties with less than 10 percent support in the country will be able to win many seats. The imposition of a threshold has a similar effect, but it guarantees that the parties that do win representation in the Knesset will be represented proportionally. For this reason, my preference is for the latter alternative. It should be emphasized that this reform is not meant to completely exclude minority parties, especially the religious parties, from legislative representation. Rather the aim is to encourage small like-minded parties to unite and become larger and more responsible partners in the processes of cabinet formation and policymaking. In addition, I would urge four more minor reforms: 1. Israel should follow the German and Spanish examples of parliamentary government and adopt the so-called constructive vote of noconfidence. It stipulates that a prime minister can only be removed from office by a vote that, at the same time, elects a new prime minister. It forces parties to behave responsibly when they vote against a cabinet and, as a

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result, has at least a slight stabilizing effect. 2. Israel should consider modifying its "closed-list" P R system so as to give the voters at least some influence over which candidates on their preferred party list will be elected instead of having to accept the order of the candidates decreed by the party. List P R systems vary a great deal in this respect, from having closed lists, as in Israel, to having completely open lists, as in Finland, where the number of votes that individual candidates on a list receive determines who gets elected. Most list P R systems are somewhere in between these two extremes, which means that most of them give at least some weight to the preferences of the voters for individual candidates. In this respect, too, Israeli democracy should move more into the mainstream of consensus democracies. 3. T h e size of the Knesset should be changed to an odd number—for instance, 121 instead of 120. This would prevent the kind of impasse in cabinet formation that occurred in early 1990 when the two sides each had exactly 60 supporters. This was obviously an unusual coincidence, but if the left and right will remain roughly balanced in the foreseeable future, it is a coincidence that could happen again. Sweden changed from a 350-member to a 349-member unicameral legislature after an election produced an exact 175-175 split. 4. Finally, as far as the federal-unitary dimension is concerned, I see no urgent need for Israel to change either to a bicameral parliament or to a much more decentralized form of government, but the adoption of a written constitution does seem highly desirable. Among the other Western democracies, the United Kingdom and New Zealand are the only countries with an unwritten constitution. In both of these cases, the justification is that there is such a high degree of agreement on the basic rules that a written constitution is unnecessary. In Israel, the explanation is that there is so much disagreement that the adoption of a written constitution has turned out to be impossible. 15 B u t the more difficult it is, the more necessary it is: Israel should keep trying to draft a written constitution. In the final analysis, Israel's consensus democracy has worked reasonably well in extremely difficult circumstances. Israel needs a consensual form of democracy, but it also deserves an improved, more effective, consensus democracy.

Notes 1. These countries are covered in Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven,

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Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); and Arend Lijphart, Thomas C. Bruneau, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Richard Gunther, "A Mediterranean Model of Democracy? The Southern European Democracies in Comparative Perspective," West European Politics 11, no. 1 (January 1988), pp. 7-25. 2. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971). 3. The following summary is based on Lijphart et al., "A Mediterranean Model of Democracy?"; and Arend Lijphart, "Democratic Political Systems: Types, Cases, Causes, and Consequences," Journal of Theoretical Politics 1, no. 1 (January 1989), pp. 33-^8. 4. Quoted in Sidney Verba, "Some Dilemmas in Comparative Research," World Politics 20, no. 1 (October 1967), p. 126. 5. Time under minority cabinets is divided equally between oversized and minimal winning cabinets. 6. See Ofira Seliktar, "Israel: Fragile Coalitions in a New Nation," in Eric C. Browne and John Dreijmanis, eds., Government Coalitions in Western Democracies (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 298-299. 7. Arend Lijphart, "Measures of Cabinet Durability: A Conceptual and Empirical Evaluation," Comparative Political Studies 17, no. 2 (July 1984), pp. 272-273. An additional problem is that cabinet durability cannot be used as an indicator of executive dominance in nonparliamentary systems and subjective scores have to be assigned to such systems. But this problem does not affect the case of Israel. 8. Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, " 'Effective' Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe," Comparative Political Studies 12, no. 1 (April 1979), pp. 3-27. 9. See Arend Lijphart, "The Field of Electoral Systems Research: A Critical Survey," Electoral Studies 4, no. 1 (April 1985), pp. 9-12. 10. Douglas W. Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, rev. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 74-77. 11. Juan J. Linz, "The Perils of PTtsidentialism," Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 51-69. 12. Scott Mainwaring, "Presidentialism in Latin America," Latin American Research Review 25, no. 1 (1990), pp. 157-179. 13. David Libai, Uriel Lynn, Amnon Rubinstein, and Yoash Tsiddon, Direct Election of the Prime Minister (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1990), p. 9. 14. Committee on the Constitutional System, A Bicentennial Analysis of the American Political Structure (Washington, D. C.: Committee on the Constitutional System, 1987), p. 16. 15. See Emanuel Gutmann, "Israel: Democracy Without a Constitution," in Vernon Bogdanor, ed., Constitutions in Democratic Politics (Aldershot, U.K.: Gower, 1988), pp. 290-308.

7 Rights and Democracy: The Court s Performance Pnina Lahav

During the March 1990 governmental crisis in Israel when a petition to the High Court of Justice was followed by a plea (petition) to the grand rabbis, 1 one political commentator observed that the Israeli political scene is presently experiencing a shift from "Bagatz (the High Court) to Badaz (the Religious Court)." Implied in this statement was the assumption that the real power centers in Israeli democracy rest outside the duly elected representatives of the people. Insofar as the comment conveyed the widespread Israeli belief that the Court 2 is hyperactive in giving shape and direction to Israeli politics, it is misguided and misguiding. It confuses appearance with substance. Indeed, Israelis are extremely litigious and tend to petition the Court for any act that they find irritating, but the actual substantive influence of the Court on political affairs is marginal. A review of the Court's jurisprudence shows that when the Court is caught in a political crisis, it either sides with the political leadership, or its decisions are quickly reversed by statutory means. As I will show below, the Court has been modestly successful in only two areas: bringing about a moderate measure of legality in the everyday actions of the administration, and fostering a liberal conception of rights. The reasons for this state of affairs are rooted in the early history of the state. The Supreme Court was the last branch of government to be established and from its inception had to struggle for acceptance and recognition. Furthermore, in the tension between parliamentary democracy on the one hand and constitutional democracy on the other, the former has so far held the upper hand. In the absence of a constitution and judicial review, the Knesset has the upper hand and has proven quick to change judicial interpretations of the law that are not to its liking. The dominance of the concept of parliamentary supremacy in Israeli politics has affected the judicial conception of law. A more formalistic and deferential stance has developed, taking sustenance from English judicial behavior. Since the early days of the state, this judicial conception has been in tension with a more open and activist view of the role of the judiciary, which believes that the Court should project a liberal and democratic vision into its interpretation. Finally, the tension 125

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between universal values and the nation-state has generally been resolved with the latter maintaining an upper hand. Thus when a citizen comes before the Court to assert a right and the state objects for reasons related to national security or the welfare of the Jewish State qua Jewish State, the Court has tended to prefer the values embedded in the nation-state at the expense of those rooted in universal values. Perhaps the best way to illustrate my argument is through a historical review of the Court's performance. A historical understanding of the various phases through which Israel's Court has passed over the last forty years facilitates the examination of the role played by the judiciary in shaping Israeli democracy and the difficulties, internal and external, that it has encountered. The history of Israel's Supreme Court may be broken into four periods: 1.1948 to 1953. This was the five-year period that passed between the establishment of the state of Israel and the enactment of the Judges Law, which vested the judiciary with tenure. During this period, the political institutions of government, the cabinet and the Knesset, displayed an ambivalent attitude toward the judiciary, and the Court found itself struggling for recognition as a full-fledged branch of the government. During this period there emerged in Israel's political culture a majoritarian, formalistic conception of democracy, which regarded the legislature as the final authority in matters of law and which had concomitantly rejected (or postponed) the pledge to enact a constitution. The Court adopted a stance of judicial restraint that in essence accepted this political culture and rejected efforts to turn the Declaration of Independence into the Charter of Rights of Israelis that would bind the Knesset. As a result, the judicial protection of rights during this period was rather timid and limited in scope. 2. 1953 to 1970. This period began with the landmark case of Kol Haam, which recognized the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press within Israel's legal system. The opinion launched an approach of judicial activism and injected the rhetoric of political vision and liberal ideals into the judicial discourse. The Declaration of Independence, hitherto considered bereft of legal validity, was endowed with constitutional significance. 3. The late 1960s to the late 1970s. During this period, the Court became increasingly conservative. Its senior judges advocated judicial restraint, and at least one, Justice Landau (who served as chief justice between 1980 and 1982), even expressed opposition to the enactment of a bill of rights. The achievement of the previous period was not eroded, but no further progress toward civil rights was made. 4. The late 1970s to the present. With the retirement of the senior

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justices, most of whom had served on the Court since the early 1950s, and with the appointment of Meir Shamgar and Aharon Barak as justices (Shamgar was later appointed to chief justice), a new era of judicial activism began. This era is characterized by a strong commitment to a liberal vision of political and civil liberties. In the territories, however, the status quo has been maintained, and the Court generally defers to the military judgment, resulting in a legitimation of suppression on a large scale. 1948-1953: The Years Of Struggle Institutional

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The Supreme Court of Israel was inaugurated on September 15,1948, four months after the establishment of the state. Negotiations for the Court's establishment took place after the executive and legislative organs of government were fully functioning. Thus the judiciary started with a disadvantage. It needed the goodwill and cooperation of the two other branches of the government in order to come into existence. Unlike the provisional government and the provisional state council, the Court was not allocated a building in Tel Aviv, which was then the center of politics, but rather in Jerusalem, then under military occupation and unclear status.3 On September 15,1948, the newly appointed justices occupied the same old building that has served as the Supreme Court of Mandatory Palestine. This building, totally inadequate and dysfunctional, which the Court shared with its owner, the Russian church, served as the home of Israel's High Court from 1948 to 1992. Against the formidable buildings erected for the government and the Knesset, it has stood as a symbol of the lower status of the Court in the eyes of the political elite. A new and rather impressive building for the Court was inaugurated in November 1992. In a way, it comports with the enhanced status of the Court in recent years. It would be interesting to see if and how the new facilities affect the Court's public image. The following years seemed to confirm the initial impression that the Court was the least significant branch. The first Knesset had a very active and impressive legislative record, yet it did not include the status of the judiciary. While the members of the Knesset were quick to protect themselves against any possible executive abuse, by vesting themselves with a most comprehensive legislative immunity,4 they left intact the colonial arrangement whereby judges could be fired at the will of the government. The government did not make use of its powers to dismiss judges, but in other ways it displayed its less than sympathetic attitude toward the judiciary. In addition to the uncomfortable building, the judges had to

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fight constantly against erosion of their salary; they were refused diplomatic passports (a status symbol) and were not always invited to important governmental functions. 5 Tension between the Court and the government and the Knesset reached a peak in January 1952. Minister of Justice Bernard Joseph (who replaced Pinhas Rozen following a coalition cabinet crisis) denounced, from the podium of the Knesset, the mercy with which judges treat persons convicted of assaults on members of the police force. Either because of his sensitivity to the status of the police, or due to his volatile, rather impulsive character, the minister criticized the judiciary in a polemical and offensive manner. "Are they [the judges] winged saints descending from heaven?" he asked rhetorically, and continued to describe the sentences applied by the courts as "an insult to the law." The episode was particularly charged, since the judges were already feeling vulnerable due to lack of tenure and independence and could only look to the minister of justice to defend their interests before the political branches. The Court experienced the event as a humiliating attack on its professional integrity. Chief Justice Zmoira sent a restrained letter to the speaker of the Knesset in which he denounced the dangers awaiting a society where disrespect for judges is dictated from above. The letter was not published in the Knesset's official record and a public discussion of its content was undermined by the cabinet. From the Knesset podium, both the minister of justice and the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, rejected, in stern language, the idea that the Court may protest the blow to its credibility. Both relied on a well-known and reputable constitutional principle, the separation of powers. They explained that the letter constituted a judicial invasion of the legislative domain and therefore should be returned to its sender. One could see these developments as a triumph of the principle of separation of powers. But this interpretation is not plausible. The Supreme Court did not initiate the series of events and did not protest the legitimacy of criticism. It was attacked from the podium of the Knesset and came to ask for redress. Moreover, the collision was not between the Court and the legislature, but rather between the Court and the executive branch. Indeed, the Court could have kept silent (and in fact the subsequent developments did not leave it any other option), but it may have seen itself as the little Hans sticking his finger in the hole that opened in the dam and was threatening to flood the environment. The pertinent question presented by the case was the meaning of the revived Israeli civilization: What would be the norms of behavior among people? Between the branches of the government? Who would serve as an example, and what example would they serve? In passing, we might add that on the same occasion, Bernard Joseph also attacked the "vulgar

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position" of the Israeli press. Intolerance toward press criticism, accompanied by an attack on the judiciary, is symptomatic of an illiberal conception of the polity. O n e should not ignore the possibility that the justification of separation of powers was merely a pretext used by the government to show the Court its proper place in the political order. In the Knesset a few months later, M K and former Minister of Justice Pinhas Rozen asked the minister of justice, then Haim Cohn, why the Judges Law was not mentioned as a part of the agenda of the Ministry of Justice: "Has the child been banished into the desert?" he asked rhetorically. Cohn replied that the Judges Law would be included in the legislative agenda of the following fall. In fact, the law was only seriously considered and enacted after Rozen had returned to head the ministry in 1953. The Judges Law served as an important landmark in the struggle for the independence of the judiciary. 6 Two central factors of this law affected the institutional status of the Court. First and most important was judicial tenure, which encompassed both personal and material or substantive aspects. Judges came to be immune to executive intervention in matters related to their salary, place of service, termination of service, and disciplinary proceedings. On the substantive side, the Judges Law stated explicitly that a judge was only subject to the law.7 The immunity of the judiciary consolidated Israel as not an omnipotent Leviathan, but a state under the rule of law, with the principle of separation of powers serving to neutralize the threat of concentration of powers by the Leviathan. A second factor was the shift to a system of selecting the judges by a committee. The system of appointing judges through an active and open involvement by the legislature (subjecting the appointments to Knesset confirmation), a system that implicitly acknowledged the political dimension of judging, was repealed. In its stead a novel and original method was adopted, which vested the power of appointment in a committee. The committee was composed of nine members: three judges (including the chief justice), two cabinet ministers, two Knesset members, and two attorneys elected for that purpose by the bar. It was a shift from an open and democratic method of judicial appointment to a closed process that sought to appear strictly professional. The shift signaled a preference for professional symbolism over democratic symbolism. This professionalization of the judicial enterprise both fortified and nourished an expectation that the content of judicial decisionmaking be apolitical. 8 The Conception of Rights T h e Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel included a firm commitment to political and civil liberties in the liberal tradition:

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T h e state of I s r a e l . . . will be based on the principles of Liberty, justice and p e a c e as conceived by the Prophets of Israel; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race or sex; will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture . . . will loyally uphold the principles of the United Nations C h a r t e r . 9

In addition, the Declaration included a commitment to enact a constitution.10 However, the legal system Israel had inherited from the colonial regime was decidedly a n t i - c i v i l - l i b e r t a r i a n . T h e D e f e n s e (Emergency) Regulations, enacted in 1945, in fact suspended all conventional rights. They provided for the confiscation of private property; for strict control over speech; and administrative detention, deportation, and even a suspension of the civil judiciary in favor of military courts. Bernard Joseph himself opined, shortly before the state of Israel had been inaugurated, that "civil liberties, in Palestine, is either a matter of the past or of the future." 11 As soon as the state was inaugurated, however, it was decided to retain the regulations. The civil war between Israeli and Palestinians, the invasion of the Arab armies threatening to annihilate the Jewish State, and Jewish terrorism that peaked in the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte only two days after the Supreme Court had been inaugurated, all militated against respect for civil liberties. Moreover, Zionist ideology and the Zionist ethos were ambivalent about the concept of individual rights. The socialist strand in Zionism, represented by Mapai, Achdut Ha'avodah, and Mapam, which in fact controlled a majority in the Knesset, did not hold much respect for "bourgeois rights." Indeed, the cardinal right—the right to vote—had been fully recognized, and the first Israeli elections, in 1949, did see the Palestinian Arabs and the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants voting to the parties of their choice as full-fledged citizens of Israel. Beyond that, however, the majority parties displayed little warmth for liberal values. They did, however, have a concept of rights: socialist rights. The legislative record of the early 1950s is very impressive in terms of the social rights granted to Israelis: from the Women's Equal Rights law of 1951, to the right of elementary education, social security, and mandatory compensation and vacation. 12 In addition to the collectivist tendencies inherent in the socialist conception of rights, the Zionist ethos of both right and left upheld the supremacy of the nation and national (collectivist) values, openly urging individual self-sacrifice for the sake of fulfilling the national goals. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion introduced this ethos into the debate about rights in Israel's parliament in 1951. The Knesset was debating the issue of a written constitution. Both the center and the right wing parties insisted that a bill of rights was absolutely necessary. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion

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responded: "In a free state like the state of Israel there is no need for a bill of rights... we need a bill of duties... duties to the homeland, to the people, to aliya, to building the land, to the security of others, of the weak."1"1 The Supreme Court shared this Zionist ethos. Following the Bernadotte assassination, the provisional government outlawed the Lehi (Stern Group) and launched a massive campaign to crush its members. When a Lehi member petitioned the High Court of Justice and asked for a narrow interpretation of the law, an interpretation that would limit executive powers to suppress opposition, the Court responded: When the state security and the public peace are in grave danger, the ordinary legal tools are sometimes insufficient and it is imperative to prefer the needs of state security over individual rights. In such a case every citizen is required by the entire public to sacrifice his liberties for the public good.}*

It is important to understand that beyond the socialist platform and the Zionist ethos, a theoretical conception of law and democracy was at stake. The pertinent question revolved around the relationship between pure majoritarianism and entrenched rights. A conception of democracy based on pure majoritarianism would reject any effort to place certain rights or principles beyond and above the power of the sovereign legislature. A Madisonian conception of democracy would place certain actions beyond the sheer power of the representative body. In legal terms that would mean binding the legislature by an entrenched constitution and a bill of rights. Ben-Gurion understood this dilemma very well when he opposed the introduction of a constitution and a bill of rights for Israel. He explained that where the people are sovereign, freedom is granted and there is no need for a "rigid framework and artificial chains." 15 Most of all, he wanted to preserve the "dynamism of the state," a dynamism that cannot tolerate a rigid constitutional framework. He therefore urged a concept of democracy where the legislature was supreme to determine the contours of liberties. This understanding of democracy as pure majoritarianism was accepted by the Supreme Court in its early years. In the first few weeks of its existence, the Court was urged to uphold the Declaration of Independence as a higher law against which the legality of statutes would be examined. It is important to note that the context in which this claim was made did not touch directly upon national security. The context was the severe housing shortage and at stake was the power of the executive to confiscate real estate—to reshape the right to private property. The Court held that the Declaration did not have any legal validity and could not be invoked in a court of law. Thereby, the Court accepted the concept of

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democracy as pure majoritarianism and rejected the idea that there are limits on the legislature. 16 These decisions were announced prior to the election of the Constitutional Assembly in January 1949. It may well be that the Court believed that a constitution would shortly be enacted. However, the Constitutional Assembly changed its name to "the First Knesset" and decided to postpone the project of constitution making. From the perspective of rights, the Court was in a difficult position. Without some conception of "higher law," it was difficult to recognize and protect individual rights. Since it had given up the idea that the Declaration of Independence could serve as such higher law, and since the Knesset refused to proceed with the enactment of a constitution, the Court was left with very little room within which rights could be protected. Without tenure, in the broader political context of severe security and financial problems, with a statutory system that gave vast powers to the executive and was hostile to rights, and with a conception of pure majoritarianism, there was very little the Court could do. The Protection of Rights, 1948-1953: Judicial Restraint and the Formal Style

In general, the Court deferred to the vast administrative powers that Israel's legal system of the period vested in the executive. By and large the Court did not interfere with executive discretion, even when it violated individual liberty. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Court did not make any contribution to rights during this period. First, the Court insisted that the implementation of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations adhere to the letter of the law. Therefore, the Court ordered the release of individuals administratively detained if the detention failed to meet the conditions stipulated by the regulations. 17 Also, the Court used the liberal maxim that "all is permitted which is not prohibited" to defend the right to pursue an occupation in Israel. 18 In a particularly courageous opinion, the Court invalidated an order by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to deny employment to Eldad Sheib, the chief right-wing ideologue of the period. One should remember that at the time Ben-Gurion was the most powerful politician in Israel. What characterized these opinions, in addition to the substantial courage they required, was a formal style.19 The protection of rights was accomplished through a literal and technical interpretation of the language of the particular statute; when the liberal principle that "all is permitted which is not prohibited" was invoked, it was accompanied by the insistence that the legislature was free to change this situation if it saw fit. Absent from these opinions were the characteristics of the Grand Style in opinion writing: a vision of the polity, arguments from political and

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moral philosophy, rhetoric upholding a substantive notion of the rule of law, and the sanctity of the individual in the polity. T o summarize this section, in the period between 1948 and 1953, the notion that the public good justifies a massive limitation on individual rights and liberties was widely accepted. Key elements of a more expansive conception of liberty were rejected: the necessity of a bill of rights, the idea that the Declaration of Independence should bind the Knesset, and a modification of the pure majoritarian model of democracy. T h e Court cooperated by bowing before the principle of pure majoritarianism and by adopting a formal style that denied the judiciary a role in shaping the content of the Israeli polity. A shift occurred in 1953, following the enactment of the Judges Law.

Laying the Foundations of Civil Liberties: 1953-1969 Kol Haam v. Minister of the Interior20 Almost as soon as the state of Israel was established, David Ben-Gurion announced which parties were acceptable and which were not for purposes of establishing a coalition government. Herut, Menachem Begin's right-wing party, and the MCI (Maky), Israel's Communist Party, were both declared outside the pale of acceptability. 21 The Communist Party, initially rebuked because of its essential rejection of Zionism's nationalist component, loyally trumpeted Stalin's line at a time when the USSR was increasingly becoming anti-Semitic and antiIsraeli. 22 This behavior did not endear the party to Israel's decisionmakers. O n e target for harassment was the party's newspaper, "The People's Voice," Kol Haam, and its Arabic counterpart, Allttihad. From the British Mandatory regime, the government had inherited vast powers to whip the press, and it had put them to use against the Communist Party. 23 In March 1953, Israel's respectable daily Ha'aretz reported that A b b a Eban, then Israel's ambassador to the United States, had announced that in the event of a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Israel would dispatch 200,000 soldiers to assist its American ally. A few days later, the two Communist dailies denounced the "anti-Soviet incitement" of the "American war mongers" and the bankruptcy of the Ben-Gurion government that "meekly follows its American masters." That same week, before the Knesset, Ben-Gurion declared that the item published in Ha'aretz was "a journalistic hoax." 2 4 A t the same time, however, the minister of interior made use of his powers u n d e r the Press Ordinance of 1933 to suspend the publication of both Communist newspapers (but not of Ha'aretz) for a period of over ten days.

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Responding to a complaint in the Knesset, the minister informed the legislators that if the Communists resented his action, they could petition the High Court of Justice. There was a hint of conceited righteousness in that advice. A few months earlier, in a similar case involving the Communist papers, the High Court declined to interfere with the discretion of the executive to apply its suspension powers.25 Given the course of these events, it is quite clear that when the petition of Kol Haam and Al Ittihad came before the Court, the justices were well aware that the entire government of Israel viewed the suspension as a necessary means to defend the state's reputation abroad and to prevent social disruption at home. The case was argued at the end of June 1953, but it was not resolved when the Court adjourned for the summer. When the Court reconvened on October 16, 1953, Justice Simon Agranat, in a unanimous opinion, announced that the right of free speech was the cornerstone of Israeli democracy, that it had been abridged in this case, and that the suspension order was invalid. How much the passage of the Judges Law in August 1953 had to do with this bold step, we shall never know.26 But enough departure from previous doctrine was accomplished to suggest that this was a conscious breakthrough. One cannot help but think that the statutory guarantee of tenure had some encouraging effect on these developments. Five major aspects of the concept of rights were developed in the opinion: 1. The meaning of democracy and the role of the individual in it 2. The significance of open deliberation for the good society 3. The potential use and abuse of the interest in national security as related to the exercise of political and civil liberties 4. Israel's Declaration of Independence as a normative mediator between the vision of the polity and the legal content of rights 5. Limitations on executive discretion and the scope of judicial review as derivative doctrines anchored in the legal content of rights The meaning of democracy and the role of the individual in it. Justice Agranat began his discussion by contrasting democracy with authoritarianism. In an authoritarian regime, the ruler is treated as a superior person, one whose understanding of right and wrong must be accepted by the subjects. Criticism of the rulers in such a regime, if at all undertaken, should not be public and should be done with respect and deference.27 A democracy, by contrast, presupposes self-rule of the citizens over themselves. The people are the true rulers; the government is merely their temporary agent. In the authoritarian polity, therefore, the individual has no rights and

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is totally dependent upon the government. Does it follow that in democracy citizens have unlimited rights? For example, are they totally free to speak against the government? Such a view, Agranat said, would be oversimplistic. No polity can tolerate absolute rights. All rights must be shaped in accordance with considerations of the public good and the interests of the state. But the considerations shaping the contours of the right are not only those based upon collectivist utilitarian calculations. The self-realization of individual citizens as well as their role as political actors constitute an important part of the state's striving toward perfection. They should, therefore, partake in shaping the contours of the right. While the right could not be absolute, it also could not be voided for reasons of state. It was crucial for the state to facilitate open deliberation, albeit unpleasant, because open deliberation is an important part of the goodness of the state itself. Agranat next analyzed the significance of open deliberations for the realization of the good society. What weight should be assigned to considerations of national security under such a theory? Shouldn't the state be empowered to defend itself against dangers, both external and internal? The significance of open deliberation for the good society. Political participation, Agranat began, is not only the privilege of the elite. In the true democracy (the good society), the deliberation of political issues and the shaping of political opinions should not be the exclusive domain of the few. The "simple citizen" ought to participate in the political process not merely when the time comes to vote, and not only through the parties and the legislature, but also by following daily the significant issues affecting public policy. However "simple" the ordinary citizen is, he can form an opinion about current events and "understand what needs correction." 28 Open deliberation in public has a tremendous educational value for the citizenry. It is crucial for building the consensus that distinguishes the democratic polity from a regime that survives by the "power of the fist." 29 Arganat further observed that the process of open deliberation also serves as an important means in the search for truth and allowing the "person, qua person, to give full expression to his characteristics and personal attributes; to nourish and develop, to the extent possible, his self . . . so that life will be worthwhile for him." Thus, he continued, tying the principle of open deliberation to the theory of the good society is not merely a "private" interest, but it is the goal of the state itself. The potential use and abuse of the interest in national security as related to the exercise of political and civil liberties. Justice Agranat was willing to accept a broad definition of the interest in national security. The concept embraced "everything related to the prevention of enemy invasion... the

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frustration of every effort to overthrow the regime with force and violence . . . the maintenance of public order and the securing of the public peace." 30 Indeed, he observed, when the state is found to be in the midst of a national crisis, it would be legitimate to use the interest in security to delimit the right to free speech.31 However, he proceeded, this interest may be easily abused. Historically, Agranat observed, governments have tended to overreact to conditions of crisis and strike at expression "even when it does not constitute a threat to the peace of the state or the nation." 32 Agranat then moved to the philosophical difficulty of tilting the balance toward national security, which brought him back to the theory of the polity. The significance of the interest in national security should not mislead one to see the calculus in terms of the interest of the collective on the one hand, and the mere private interest of the individual on the other. One should beware of the conclusion that the sacrifice of the individual is justified by the good of the collective. The interest in preserving free speech is a "collective interest," one not less crucial than national security, for the realization of the final end of the state as the moral polity. The danger may lurk not in the threats from within and without the boundaries of the state, but rather in the act of sacrificing the very freedom that the state was set up to achieve, in the false hope that freedom would be preserved. 33 It was a clear warning to the leadership of Israel that its almost blind devotion to the tender Jewish State might result in throwing out the baby along with the bathwater. Israel's Declaration of Independence as a normative mediator. Justice Agranat needed a normative instrument to facilitate the incorporation of his rights theory into Israeli law. It was a difficult task since there was no constitution or any jurisprudence that could comfortably support the theory. 34 In the absence of any other norm, he invoked Israel's Declaration of Independence. It was not an easy task. Early Supreme Court opinions rejected the idea.35 But in a bold move, Agranat reinterpreted the previous opinions so as to open the gates for reentry of the Declaration into Israel's legal system: The Declaration, "to the extent that it reflects the vision of the people and the core of its beliefs, we are obliged to pay attention to its contents, when we come to i n t e r p r e t . . . the laws of the state." 36 From then on, the Declaration became the cardinal rule of interpretation, giving meaning and direction to the system of rules. Its commitment to democracy, political participation, equality, f r e e d o m of conscience, and, most importantly, "the principles of liberty, justice and peace in light of the vision of the prophets of Israel," infused into the interpretation of laws, had a capacity to transform the entire landscape of Israeli political and civil liberties. 37 Indeed, Arganat's m o d e of applying the Declaration as a rule of interpretation to the

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instant case served to demonstrate the radical potential with which the Declaration was later invested. Limitations on executive discretion and the scope of judicial review as derivative doctrines anchored in the legal content of rights. Bernard Joseph's bitter statement that the Defense (Emergency) Regulations emptied the concept of rights of any meaningful content, referred to two basic devices for the nullification of individual autonomy: the broad, oftentimes absolute, executive discretion to violate basic human rights,38 and the absence of judicial review of such actions. The statute involved in Kol Haam fit exactly the Joseph description. Section 19 of the Press Ordinance law vested full discretion in the minister of interior to suspend the publication for "such a period as he may think fit." 39 In a previous decision, the Court held that it would not interfere in the discretion of the minister. 40 Justice Agranat, ignoring the precedent, proceeded to delimit the discretion of the minister of interior. From then on, the minister could suspend a newspaper only if, after having taken into consideration the "high public value of the principle of freedom of the press," he concluded that "as a result of the publication, there is a probable danger to the public peace." 41 Further, the Court would review the substantive considerations of the government. In this case, since a probable danger was not likely to occur, in the opinion of the Court, it was necessary to invalidate the order. This result was crucial for ensuring a proximity between the theory and the practice of rights. The opinion not only boldly disrupted the government's crusade against the Communist Party, but it also served as a model for treatment of the vast pool of discretionary powers vested in the executive branch. The probable danger test (commonly known in Israel as the near-certainty test) was the one developed in this case; other formulations could serve for the limitations on powers in other cases. What was crucial was the guarantee of substantive judicial review. It was exercised here in full power and vigor. The opinion in Kol Haam was Israel's Marbury v. Madison.*2 With this opinion, Israel's press began to enjoy considerable freedom to criticize, observers of the legal scene had a case to point to in order to prove the state's commitment to political and civil liberties, and the courts had a model theory and methodology for incorporating human rights into the legal system. 43 The recognition of the Declaration of Independence as a valid source of rights, coupled with the approach of judicial activism, resulted in a more protective decisional law. Between 1953 and the late 1960s, the Court delivered a number of landmark opinions that expanded civil liberties in Israel. Freedom of speech and its intimate relationship to freedom of association were recognized and given priority, even against considera-

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tions of terrorism and national security; 44 the right of the public to know and the concomitant limitations on political censorship of the movies was introduced into the legal system; 45 and freedom of religious worship (to the Reform Jewish movement) was guaranteed, thereby denying monopoly to Orthodox Judaism. 46 Freedom from religious limitations on individual activities 47 and the right of all parties, incumbent and new, to receive equal treatment in campaign financing were also established. 48 The Court was gaining prestige and authority. It was gradually appearing as the guardian of Israeli civil liberties, and the number of petitions presented to it was on the rise. However, the Court's record was far from uniform. Judicial restraint, armed with legal formalism, assisted some of the justices in allowing much administrative abuse, resulting in severe limitations on civil liberties. These limitations were applied particularly in the area of national security. In a number of cases, the Court allowed the suppression of the rights to freedom of speech, association, and movement and the right to pursue an occupation because of national security considerations applied by the executive branch. The culmination of this trend took place in 1965, when an anti-Zionist A r a b list was banned from participation in the elections. No law permitted the Central Elections Committee to ban parties because of the substantive content of their platform. In the case of Yerdor, the Court was called upon to create a discretionary power that would deny some ideas the right to compete in the marketplace of elections. 49 In a two-to-one opinion, the Court decided to legitimize the ban on the party. Two of the three justices who took part in the Kol Haam opinion, Justice Agranat and Justice Sussman, were sitting on the panel. Justice Landau, who had contributed his vote to make the Kol Haam opinion unanimous, was chairman of the Central Elections Committee, whose decision was challenged in Court. This point is significant in itself, since these judges not only led the Court in the Kol Haam opinion and were the more senior justices, but they were also the recognized intellectual leaders of the Court. To justify the ban, Agranat and Sussman used concepts of natural law. Agranat focused on the first part of the Declaration of Independence, ruling that the "eternity of the state of Israel is a fundamental constitutional fact" that n o authority in the state may deny, 50 and Sussman invoked more general concepts of the "natural right" of the state to defend itself against destruction as well as the West German concept of the "fighting democracy." The most interesting aspect of the opinion is that it was written in the Grand Style, was definitely activist in its result, and used arguments from history and political theory. The Court understood very well that it was called upon to choose between the particularism of the state of Israel as a Jewish state and the universal values e m b e d d e d in

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another part of the Declaration. Rather than insist that the Jewish State and universal values can live in harmony,51 the Court shared the view of the politicians52 that the two were mutually exclusive and that the particularistic interest in the Jewish State should be upheld. Given that the Court's more liberal justices were involved in the decisionmaking process here, the case may be viewed as an important signal that the Court was becoming more conservative.

The Late 1960s to the Late 1970s: The Conservative Court The major turning point in the Court's performance started with the Shalit case, known as the case of "Who is a Jew."53 Shalit, an officer in Israel's army who was married to a non-Jew who defined herself as an atheist, wanted to register his children as Jewish. The Ministry of Interior refused, applying the Halakic principle, which makes the mother a decisive factor in determining one's religious affiliation. It should be clear from the start that the categories of nationhood and religion were mixed in this case, and that Shalit was interested in registering his children as Jewish in the national, not religious, sense of the word. Like Yerdor, the question posed the dilemma of particularism versus universalism. Does Israel allow for self-determination of personhood? Does it recognize the individual's choice in that matter? Or is the state of Israel bound by the particular definition upheld by Jewish Orthodoxy, which coerces the individual to accept a definition alien to his/her own world view? The case is interesting from several perspectives. For the first time in Israeli history, the entire Court of nine justices was assembled to render an opinion. Therefore, the case enables us to get a good overview of the position of the Court at that time. Also, the case was preceded and followed by a political crisis. At first, Chief Justice Agranat sent a letter to the government, urging it to drop the category of nationality from the registry, thereby making the case moot. The Court, obviously, was reluctant to rule in what was clearly perceived to be an explosive political issue. The Eshkol Cabinet refused to assist the Court, thereby forcing a decision. The opinion was five to four in favor of Shalit. Within days a coalition crisis erupted, the religious parties threatened to leave the cabinet, and the law was amended, thereby pulling the rug from under the legal significance of the Court's ruling. From the perspective of the result, the decision was clearly liberal and in keeping with universal values. The reasons I see it as the signpost of the shift to a conservative stance are the texture of the legal argument presented by the majority, the nature of the divisions between the justices, and the aftermath of the case.

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While the result was clearly bold, the reasoning was not. The majority opinions were extremely technical and formalist in orientation. They avoided the substantive issue of the relationship between Jewish statehood and individual self-determination, and hid behind a dry and literal reading of the law. The gist of the argument was that, the official at the registry should not go beyond the narrow requirements for purposes of registration. On the dissent, two of the judges, Agranat and Landau, both senior justices with a liberal record, held that the issue lacked legal texture and should be left to the political process. The remaining two justices, Silberg and Kister, both deeply religious men, were the only ones who did not hesitate to present a substantive world view that embraced all the particularism that the Halakah and religion entail. Silberg, blessing the new alliance between nationalism and religion following the Six Day War, even went further to rebuke the "left" that failed to understand the genius of the Jewish people. 54 The nine opinions in Shalit revealed a weak and divided Court. The five justices of the majority not only were unable to agree on one version of their reasoning, but their legalistic reasoning was pedestrian and failed to provide a counterweight against the political pressure and the firm commitment of the religious camp. Two of the senior justices, who had hitherto participated in building the jurisprudence of civil liberties, abandoned the liberal camp and retreated into a position of judicial restraint and a "process jurisprudence" that shuns judicial intervention in substantive matters that are not "purely legal" (I will return to this issue momentarily). The 1970s were not characterized by Grand Style opinions, upholding civil liberties; the Court issued subdued opinions, repeatedly upholding executive discretion and deferring to arguments of law and order and of national security. There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon. First, it may be related to the rise of the doctrine of pure majoritarianism in the late 1960s. The Knesset had boldly asserted its supremacy in Israeli constitutional life shortly before the Shalit opinion. In Bergmann v. Minister of Finance, the Court invalidated, for the first time in its history, a Knesset statute on the grounds it violated the equality in elections principle, entrenched in Basic Law: The Knesset. 55 A study of the Knesset protocols following the opinion reveals the shock and outrage that swept the Knesset as it discovered the bitter taste of judicial review. The reaction was swift. The particular statute under consideration was amended in keeping with the recommendation of the Court, but, simultaneously, a new statute was enacted, immunizing all other statutory law related to elections from judicial review. 56 The message was clear: The Knesset was not about to tolerate judicial meddling in its affairs. 57 1 believe that this turn of events, together with the

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post-Shalit invalidation of the Court's holding, demoralized the Court and bred doubts as to its ability to influence the values of the Israeli polity. This explanation should be tied to personnel considerations. Most of the justices in the late 1960s had served on the Court since the early 1950s. It is quite likely that they were more easily demoralized as a result of fatigue. They had been on the Court too long and had exhausted their zeal and energy for liberal reform. There may have also been an indirect U.S. influence. It was the twilight of the Warren era. The Warren Court had been severely attacked for its activist, pro-civil libertarian stance in the United States. The theories of judicial restraint, which prevailed during the New Deal, were again hailed in U.S. legal intellectual circles, and the jurisprudence known as "legal process," emphasizing the propriety of deference to substantive political judgments, was on the rise.58 It may well be that the rise in conservative jurisprudence in Israel was somewhat influenced by this literature. To these factors we might add the wars fought by Israel during much of this period. The observation that when the guns speak, the muses keep silent, could well be applied to this case. The Six Day War was followed by acts of terrorism in the occupied territories, by the war of attrition on the Suez Canal, and finally by the Yom Kippur War. In an effort to quell the uprising in the territories, 59 the military made increasing use of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations. When challenged in Court, the justices chose not to intervene with the military discretion. In addition, the Six Day War unleashed the hitherto suppressed powers of Jewish nationalism. These, together with the fears for the security of the state, tilted the balance against liberal jurisprudence.

The Late 1970s to the Present Just as the beginning of the conservative period may be traced to a judicial result that was pro-civil liberties in content, so the beginning of the modern period may be traced to an event that was rather negative in these same terms. The case known as Ha'aretz v. Electric Company revolved around the tension between the right to reputation and the freedom of the press. 60 In a celebrated U.S. case, New York Times v. Sullivan, the Warren Court held in 1965 that public officials did not enjoy the same protection that the libel law grants to ordinary individuals. Less protection, the Court held, was essential in order to ensure a thorough and uninhibited criticism of the government, without which a democratic process could not flourish.61 In a three-to-two opinion, Israel's Court rejected this premise. It held that a public official was entitled to the protective umbrella of the libel law, even if the press had criticized the official in his capacity as manager of the (governmental) Electric Company and despite the fact that the

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official had instructed his spokesperson not to speak to the reporter. The Israeli Court explicitly rejected the U.S. approach to the issue. The justices involved in this three-to-two confrontation provide the clue for an understanding of the change the Court was undergoing at that time. Justice Landau, one of the original cosigners of the Kol Haam opinion, was chief justice. He wrote the majority opinion rejecting the expansion of the right of free speech in Israeli law. In the dissent stood Justice Shamgar, who issued a strong opinion in favor of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The confrontation, I am suggesting, was not only about two different world views, but also one between generations. Most of the justices who were serving under Chief Justice Landau were appointed in the 1950s or the early 1960s. They were nearing retirement, and their position had become conservative over the years. Between 1975 and 1980, six of the nine justices retired. Shamgar, appointed in 1975, was the first to signal the emergence of the new Court. Shamgar had a few characteristics in common with Chief Justice Landau. Both were born in Danzig; along the spectrum of Zionist ideology, they sided more with Jabotinsky than with Ben-Gurion or Berl Katznelson. But in 1977 their positions about the law were diametrically opposed. By then, Landau had crystallized a firm commitment to judicial restraint, which he had articulated not only in his judicial opinions but also in a number of academic lectures he had delivered.62 He took a position against the enactment of a bill of rights, was apprehensive about the possibility that "unchecked rights" might deteriorate into senseless licentiousness, and opposed judicial activism. Shamgar had a different approach. He sympathized with the expansion of freedom of speech accomplished by the Warren Court, did not share Landau's fear that freedom would breed anarchy, and, it became clear in hindsight, had a vocational conception of his role on the Court. In later years, as the Supreme Court expanded individual rights, a strange phenomenon took place. Generally, the doctrine of stare decisis instructs the Court to follow the majority rather than the dissent when relying upon a precedent. The Court of the 1980s, however, kept referring to Shamgar's dissent in Ha'aretz v. Electric Company as a guiding precedent, a faux pas from the technical perspective of judicial decisionmaking.63 This phenomenon captures best both the realization of the modern Court that a new era has dawned and its willingness to be more protective of rights than its predecessors. In 1978, another strong personality was appointed to the court: Aharon Barak, a law professor with a brilliant academic record. Like Shamgar, Barak joined the Court after serving as Israel's attorney general. The two justices, therefore, had extensive experience with the political system and had proven their ability to stand the heat of political crises. The consider-

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ations of the judicial appointment committee in making these two appointments are not publicly known. Clearly both Shamgar and Barak possessed the excellent professional track record that would make them attractive candidates to the Court. However, it is not clear that the members of the appointment committee were aware of the activist yeast present in the two that in a few years would turn the Court into an active participant in shaping the content of Israeli democracy. In 1979 the Court took the first step in the direction of liberalization by restricting the power of the police to limit the right to demonstrate. The Police Ordinance, in keeping with the authoritarian inclination of the colonial period, invested limitless discretion in the chief of police to grant permits to demonstrate. In the case before the Court, a group of young couples wished to denounce the housing shortage in Israel. The police denied a permit to demonstrate on the ground that the demonstration might result in a breach of the public peace. Justice Barak wrote the opinion for the Court, in which he ruled that the denial of permit was unreasonable, and he issued a number of guidelines the police must follow in considering the petitions for permit to demonstrate. For the first time in Israeli history, the right to demonstrate was openly recognized by the Court. Moreover, the opinion was written in the Grand Style, relying upon arguments from moral and political philosophy. It is interesting to note that the opinion was unanimous, and that the two other justices supporting Barak were Shamgar and Landau. In Barak, Shamgar found a partner to move forward his vision of Israel as a democracy committed to political and civil liberties. Justice Landau's consent to the result defies his general record during this period. It may well be that Barak's and Shamgar's energetic enthusiasm had rekindled the liberal spark in Landau, and persuaded him to support that important development. 64 In the 1980s, the mark of Shamgar and Barak became increasingly prominent as they sometimes dissolved, sometimes weakened, some of Israel's holiest cows. When the Central Elections Committee decided in 1984 to deny Meir Kahane's racist party, as well as the pro-Palestinian list, the right to run in the elections, the Court had the choice of invoking the precedent of Yardor and letting the decision stand. But the Court, convened in a panel of five due to the significance of the case, held that only proof of high probability would justify denying a right as significant as the right to run in the elections. 65 When the Board of Film and Theater Censorship decided to ban a play strongly critical of Israeli military behavior in the West Bank, the Court responded by drastically limiting the discretion of the Board, rendering it quite powerless. 66 Efforts to ban the appearance on television of both ultranationalist Jewish and pro-PLO politicians met with judicial disapproval. 67 A decision by the Knesset to suspend the parliamentary immunity of a representative of the Progres-

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sive Party for Peace (the pro-Palestinian list) was overruled by a three-totwo vote, Chief Justice Shamgar and justices Barak and Shlomo Levin speaking for the majority. 68 Another extraordinary event relates to the challenge posed by feminists to the orthodox religious establishment in Israel. Since its establishment, Israel supported religious councils in the local governments, the membership of which was purely male. In 1986 a religious woman named Lea Shakdiel expressed a desire to sit on the religious council and in due course was elected by her party to occupy that position. There followed a lengthy and volatile campaign in which the entire religious establishment, starting with the Chief Rabbis and concluding with the minister of religion, refused to let Shakdiel occupy her seat, citing the Halakic rule that a woman should not participate in public affairs. In 1987 the Court accepted Shakdiel's challenge, ruled that in Israel sex equality extended to all public positions, including religious ones, and ordered her reinstated. Shortly thereafter, the Court ordered the mayor of Tel Aviv to reverse his refusal to allow women to participate in the election of the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv.69 In 1989, the Court went even further when it held that the discretion of the military censor was substantively reviewable in court, and that the censor's decision to suppress an article criticizing the Mossad was not legitimate. 70 It is important to note, however, that the Court of the 1980s also had a dark side. There is tension on the Court concerning the substantive values that Israel should uphold and the role of the Court in shaping them. One should remember that Israel's Court is unlike the U.S. Supreme Court in that its judges sit in panels rather than en banc. As a result, the decisions reviewed above were decided by panels of three or five justices. The Court does have a cadre of rather conservative justices who either uphold the doctrine of judicial restraint, substantively disagree with a liberal world view, or have too legalistic a view of the law to participate in the debate about the shape of the nation. 71 At the moment, the more conservative strand plays only a minor tune in the overall performance of the Court, but one can distinctively hear its music and, with contextual changes, that music may become louder. Second, the progressive wing on the Court is by no means a united camp. Major differences exist between the various justices. This point became clear during the 1987 crisis concerning the Shin Bet (Israel's Security Services) and the murder of the terrorists who had hijacked bus 300.72 The decision of Israel's president to pardon the head of the Shin Bet and his close officials, accompanied by the firing of the attorney general, caused an extraordinary public outrage in Israel. The Court was urged to hold the pardon decision premature and therefore illegal. The argument was that the pardon should take place after a trial and a conviction, not before such events take place. The Court ruled two to one to reject the

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petition, thereby asserting the legitimacy of the pardon. Chief Justice Shamgar was in the majority (along with Deputy Chief Justice, BenPorath), with Justice Barak in the dissent. The split was significant since it concerned not only questions of interpretation and of the legitimacy of judicial activism, but also whether arguments from raison d'état justify the bending of the principle of the rule of law. In this case, Shamgar took the more cautious position with regard to arguments of national security, whereas Barak boldly insisted that the president cannot thwart the criminal process and may pardon only following conviction. The case, a culmination of a major political crisis in Israel, proved the point I made in the introduction to this chapter: that where it really matters, the Court goes along with the government or at least defers to its judgment. Under such circumstances, it would be a mistake to interpret the Court's contribution as significantly affecting political events in Israel. Further proof of this point is the Court's record in protecting rights in the occupied territories. Generally, Israel's Court has not had a good record defending the rights of the Arab minority. 73 In the West Bank and Gaza, however, the record is decidedly bad. The Court has sanctioned the most blatant violations of rights, from the right to free speech, freedom of the press, the right to demonstrate, the right to freely associate, the right to freedom of movement, the right to property, and the right to pursue an education. The Court has also sanctioned deportations, despite the strong opinion of international law experts in Israel and abroad that such action is illegal. In this area, the Court's style resembles the position it took in its first period, following the establishment of the state of Israel. The opinions are generally short; the arguments are highly technical; moral and political arguments are notably absent. The gist of the opinions, from the technical point of view, has to do with the discretion that the law vests in the military government. The Court either defers to the military discretion or opines that that discretion had been reasonably applied and hence the Court should not substitute its own for it. This style decidedly clashes with the style applied, mostly by the same judges, in cases within pre-1967 Israel, cases that are written in the Grand Style and have a strong sense of vision and a bold commitment to liberal values. Occasionally, an opinion breaks away from this trend and provides some relief to the Palestinians of the territories, but such opinions do not change the general trend of suppression and arbitrary military power. The double standard applied by the Court, one in Israel proper and one in the occupied territories, creates a severe problem. It gives the Court a Janus face. On the one hand, the Court can be justly proud of its substantive civil liberties record, while on the other, it stands passively before extensive violations of human rights. This situation pollutes the legal culture. It breeds cynicism about a rule of law that gives one set of

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rights to Jews and another to Palestinians. It brings about vociferous criticism of the Court by those whose expectations have been rising as a result of the Court's liberal record.74 Such criticism further weakens the culture of the rule of law. There are a few arguments that would make this picture less alarming. One is tempted to point out that other democracies possess a record of human rights violations during periods of emergency, most notably the U.S. in the Japanese detention cases or the English in their applications of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations during the two world wars. It is indeed true that during periods of emergency the track records of these courts were pro-government and against civil liberties. But the U.S. and English courts during these periods possessed neither a Grand Style nor judicial activism. In the United Kingdom, a tradition of either is yet to be developed. In the United States, only a few cases protected civil liberties, while the first major step in the Warren Court agenda was taken in 1953 in Brown v. Board of Education.15 The interesting comparison might be the record of the U.S. Supreme Court during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It was at this time that many of the southern states tried to suppress the civil rights movement through convictions of breach of the peace and public disorder. The Warren Court stood firmly in support of equality. New York Times v. Sullivan, the libel case from Alabama whose doctrine features so centrally in Ha'aretz v. Electric Company, the case that launched Chief Justice Shamgar's career as a civil libertarian, revolved around the effort of the Alabama government to suppress the civil rights movement by means of intimidating the New York Times and the black leadership. There are a number of reasons for the Israeli Court's behavior. First and foremost is the traditional reluctance to interfere in matters of security. This stand is nourished and fortified by the (mostly unarticulated) feeling of the Court that in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict the Court should prefer the nation-state of Israel to the universal values claimed by the petitioners (mostly Palestinians). In addition, my observation concerning the failure of the Court to defend rights in the territories is not shared by the military. It has been common knowledge that Yitzhak Rabin's perception while serving as minister of defense was that the High Court of Justice stands in the way of an efficient quelling of the Palestinian rebellion in the territories. Suggestions to limit the jurisdiction of the Court surface periodically. The Court thus finds itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it is severely criticized by civil rights groups for failing to give relief to the Palestinians, whose rights are denied by the military government, and on the other hand, it is criticized for failing to give the military the breadth of discretion necessary to deal with the violence.

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Conclusion A review of the Court's performance in the last forty years shows that the tendency to project the universal values of democratic Israel, embedded in Israel's Declaration of Independence, has intensified in the last decade. This development may be attributed to the increasing maturity of Israeli democracy, to the rise of citizens' groups committed to political and civil liberties (most notably the Association for Civil Rights), and to the concomitant enhanced sensitivity in the academic legal world to a jurisprudence of rights. However, strong forces within Israel militate against this trend. The stresses under which Israeli democracy finds itself, particularly its inability to form a consensus concerning the status of the occupied territories and its ambivalence toward the Palestinians, are not conducive to a liberal world view of universal rights. Additionally, the strong theme of illegalism, documented by Ehud Sprinzak,76 runs very deep in Israeli society and undermines efforts by the Court to carve respect for law and order.77 When and if the Court stands in the way of a policy deemed desirable by the power holders, its holding is viewed as a nuisance; the gut reaction is to either ignore it or limit its jurisdiction so as to exclude its participation. Respect for the rule of law does indeed prevent an open defiance of the Court, but the climate of illegalism pollutes the atmosphere. Finally, the Knesset, the source of Israeli law, has proven that the maturity I have alluded to above is a relative matter. The recent failure to pass a bill of rights for Israel is indicative of this point. The proposed bill left intact the Defense (Emergency) Regulations and allowed for broad executive discretion in matters of national security. The likelihood that it could change the current state of affairs was minimal, and yet a majority of representatives did not rally around it. This reluctance of the legislative body to enact a comprehensive bill of rights led Amnon Rubinstein, MK (formerly a professor of constitutional law at Tel Aviv University), to devise a different strategy. He decided to submit legislation that would guarantee special substantive rights, about which consensus would more easily be obtained. The strategy has worked. In 1992, two such bills were enacted—Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. In an address at the University of Haifa delivered on May 18, 1992, Justice Barak hailed the two laws as "legal norms of preferred constitutional status—much like the situation in the U.S., Canada, and many other countries."78 Barak asserted that the two laws would enable the Court to be more vigilant in its efforts to protect political and civil liberties in Israel. It should also be added that the elections of 1992, which brought about the ascendance of the Labor Party to power, renewed the Knesset's

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interest in enacting a bill of rights. It is, however, too early to assess either the effect of the two recent laws or the likelihood of further legislative developments in this area. In conclusion, the contribution of the Court is, if one may forgive the oxymoronic description, at once modest and impressive. It has shaped and developed a conception of rights that upholds and encourages civic virtue and popular participation in public affairs. In doing so, it is laying the foundations for a more meaningful democratic order in Israel. This contribution, while very significant, is modest. Its failure to provide for a more meaningful protection of rights in the occupied territories is ringing proof of this proposition. The Court is not a power holder, and its effect on Israeli politics is widely exaggerated, but it is making a mark and nourishing a liberal spirit and a measure of sanity in an otherwise maddening political scene.

Notes 1. The petition to the High Court challenged the decision of the speaker of the Knesset to postpone the vote of no-confidence in the Knesset. The High Court agreed that the speaker had violated the Knesset's internal code of procedure but declined to intervene. At the same time, a separate plea (petition) was made to two of Israel's most eminent rabbis, Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, mentor of the Shas Party, and Rabbi Eliezer Schach, mentor of Degel Hatora Party. Both rabbis are intensely involved in Israeli politics. 2. Israel's Supreme Court serves a dual function. It is the highest appellate tribunal for criminal and civil matters; in its capacity as the High Court of Justice, it reviews the legality of administrative action. My reference to the Court refers to the Court in both of these senses. For a review, see Asher Maoz, The System of Government in Israel, 8, Tel Aviv University, Studies in Law 9 (1988). 3. According to the partition resolution, Jerusalem was to be an international city. The state of Israel had declared Jerusalem its capital in 1948 after the inauguration of the Court. 4. The Knesset Members Immunity (Privileges and Duties) Law was enacted in 1951. For a discussion, see Amnon Rubinstein, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1980) p. 264. 5. See Din U-Dvarim, Memoirs of Second Chief Justice of Israel, I. Olshan (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1978) in Hebrew. 6. See Pnina Lahav, "The Supreme Court of Israel: Formative Years, 1948-1955," 11 Studies in Zionism 45,54-56 (1990). 7. See Section 2 of Basic Law: Judging, 1984 Sefer Ha-chukim no. I l l , p. 78. See generally Shimon Shetreet, "Developments in Constitutional Law: Selected Topics," 24 Israel Law Review, 368, 372 (1990). 8. In theory, a majority in the Committee—three judges and two attorneys— guarantees that professional and nonpartisan standards would determine the appointment process. In practice, it is conceded that at least the attorneys possess world views and political preferences that might affect their choice; hence the majority cannot be seen as immune to political preferences. So far the minister of justice has served as chairman of the committee and has thus exerted some

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influence over its operations. Candidates may be suggested by the minister of justice, chief justice, or by three members of the committee. Professor Shimon Shetreet, the foremost Israeli expert on this topic, suggests that the minister does have some leverage in suggesting candidates, and it is furthermore his view that a judiciary reflecting the society at large should be the goal of the appointment process. Shetreet, "Developments in Constitutional Law," at 378-380. 9.1 L.S.I. 3 (1948). 10. Ibid. " We hereby declare t h a t . . . a constitution [shall] be drawn up by a Constituent Assembly not later than the first day of October, 1948." 11. B. Joseph, British Rule in Palestine (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1948), p. 226. 12. For a discussion of the labor reform legislation in the 1950s, see R. Ben-Israel, "Israel," in International Encyclopaedia for Labour Law and Industrial Relations 6, p. 38 (1988). See also Compulsory Education Law, 1949, 3 L.S.I 125; Women's Equal Rights Law, 1951,5 L.S.I. 171. 13.4 Divrey Haknesset 819 (1950). Emphasis added. 14. Brun v. Prime Minister, H/C 16/1948 1 P.D. 109,112 (1948). Emphasis added. 15. See note 13. 16. Zeev v. Gubernick, 1 P.D. 85,1 S.J. 68 (1948). 17. H/C 7/48 Al Karboutly v. Minister of Defense, 2 P.D. 5 (1948). 18. Bezerano v. Minister of Police, 2 P.D. 80 (1949). 19. For a development of the concepts of formal and grand styles, see Karl Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), p. 35-41. For an application to the Israeli legal scene, see Pnina Lahav, "American Influence on Israel's Jurisprudence of Free Speech," 9 Hastings Const. L.Q. 21 (1981). 20. 7 P.D. 871 (1953) (Hebrew), 1 S.J. 90 (1948-1953). 21. S.N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society 178 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985). 22. Between July 11 and 18,1952, twenty-three of the Soviet Union's most senior Jewish intellectuals were tried and sentenced to death. On January 13,1953, nine physicians, seven of whom were Jewish, were accused of an attempt to poison the Soviet leadership. In the Jewish world, these events were interpreted not only as anti-Semitic, but also as an effort to put an end to Jewish national consciousness in the Soviet Union. See B. Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 195-201; B. D. Weinryb, " Antisemitism in Soviet Russia," in L. Kochan, ed., The Jews in Soviet Russia Since 1917, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 322-323. 23. See Pnina Lahav, Press Law in Modern Democracies, (New York: Longman, 1985), pp. 270-281. 24. Kol Haam v. Minister of the Interior, 7 P.D. 873 (1953). 25. Ibid, at 166. See discussion in Lahav, "American Influence on Israel's Jurisprudence of Free Speech," 9 Hastings Const. L.Q. 21,30 (1981). 26. In an interview thirty-five years after the events, Justice Agranat was intrigued by the proximity of these events, but could not recall their direct influence on his decision. 27. Kol Haam v. Minister of Interior, 7 P.D. 873, 876 (1953). 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid, at 879

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31. Ibid, at 880, citing Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919); Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927). 32. In support of this proposition, he cited Lord Sumner's observation that England had gone too far in the suppression of expression during World War I, and an article in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences concluded that such abuse is a common feature of governmental behavior under conditions of stress. Ibid, at 880-881. 33. Ibid, at 881. 34. In principle, he could resort to the Mandate or the King's Order in Council, but these were not authentic Israeli documents. It would be too much of a paradox to speak of democracy and self-rule and then rely upon norms imposed upon the polity from without. The Palestine Order in Council (1922), reprinted in R. Drayton, Laws of Palestine 3, 2569 (1934). 35. See Zeev v. Gubernik, supra note 16. 36. Ibid, at 884. 37. In 1986, M. Ben Porath, deputy chief justice of Israel's Supreme Court, deplored the "failure to enact the Declaration as part of Israel's constitution." She said: "The moral force of the Declaration is beyond doubt and in its light most important decisions safeguarding the rights of the individuals in their relationship with the government were made." Ben-Porath, " A Constitution for the State of Israel—Whether Desirable and Feasible?" 11 Tel Aviv University Law Review 19, 19 (1986). Indeed in recent years, the Declaration had taken root as the source of constitutional rights in Israel and is frequently being invoked by the Supreme Court. 38. For example, regulation 94 regulates the issuance of permits to publish newspapers thus: "The District Commissioner, in his discretion and without assigning any reason therefore, may grant or refuse any . . . permit." Regulation 111 provides that "a Military Commander may by order direct that any person shall be detained for any period not exceeding one year in such place of detention as may be specified by the Military Commander in the order." The matter regarding administrative detention has been regulated in an Israeli law, Emergency Powers (Detention) Law, 5739, 1979, 33 L.S.I., 89. Other powers to limit rights of Israelis are still in force. 39. Section 19(2): "The High Commissioner [now replaced by the Minister of I n t e r i o r ] . . . may (a) if any matter appearing in a newspaper is, in the opinion of the High Commissioner . . . likely to endanger the public peace . . . suspend the publication . . . for such a period as he may think fit." 40. Kol Haam v. Minister of Interior, 7 P.D. 165 (1953). 41. Kol Haam v. Minister of Interior, 7 P.D. 871 (1953). 42.5 U.S. (1 Crunch) 137 (1803). 43. When discussing political and civil liberties in Israel, commentators uniformly hail Kol Haam as proof of the commitment of the Supreme Court to basic notions of liberty. See e.g., Laufer, "Israel's Supreme Court: The First Decade," Journal of Legal Education 43, 52-53 (1964); A. Barak, "Chief Justice Agranat: 'Kol Haam'—The People's Voice," in R. Gavison and M. Kremnitzer, eds., Essays in Honour of Shimon Agranat (Jerusalem: 1986), p. 129; A. Maoz, "Defending Civil Liberties Without A Constitution—the Israeli Experience," 16 Melbourne University Law Review 815 (1988). 44. Heruty v. Attorney General, 12 P.D. 1541 (1958) (acquittal from charge of membership in a terrorist organization; the accused belonged to right-wing Ultranationalist circles); Companies Registrar v. Kardosh, 16 P.D. 1209 (1962)

Rights

and

Democracy:

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Performance

151

(Companies Registrar decision to deny a Palestinian nationalist group a permit to incorporate itself is invalid). 45. Ulpaney Hasrata v. Levy Garry, 16 P.D. 2410 (1962). 46. Peretz v. Kfar Shmaryahu, 16 P.D. 2101 (1962). 47. Yisramex Inc. v. State of Israel, 22(2) P.D. 343 (1968). 48. Bergmann v. Minister of Treasury, 23(1) P.D. 693 (1969). 49. Yerdor v. Chairman of the Central Elections Committee to the Sixth Knesset, 19(3) P.D. 365 (1965). I would also add that the evidence before the Court was rather thin. No evidence concerning the actual likelihood that the party might be able to "destroy the Jewish State" was sought or presented. It was the very idea of Palestinian nationalism that was perceived by the majority as a menace to the survival of the Jewish State. 50. Ibid. 51. For example, by insisting that the danger amounted to "talk" and countertalk could cure it. 52. The Central Elections Committee represents the incumbent parties in the Knesset. 53. Shalit v. Minister of Interior. 23(2) P.D. 447 (1968). 54. Ibid. 55. See note 48. 56. Knesset Election (Validation of Statutes) Law, 1969. 57. It would be a mistake to interpret the post-Bergmann events as the Knesset accepting the Court's interpretation. While indeed the Knesset did accept the Court's recommendation for a compromise, it had also immunized in toto all previous legislation. Elections (Confirmation of Validity Laws) Law, 1969, 23 L.S.I. 221. Herein lies its assertion of majoritarian democracy 58. See generally, G. E. White, Patterns of American Legal Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978), p. 136. 59.1 am referring here to the uprising that took place in the early 1970s, as distinguished from the intifada of the later 1980s. 60. 31(2) P.D. 281 (1974), overruled in further consideration by a five-justice panel in Ha'aretz v. Electric Company, 32(3) P.D. 337 (1977). 61.376 U.S. 254 (1964). 62. M. Landau, "A Constitution as a Higher Law in the State of Israel?" 27 Hapraklit 30 (1971), in symposium, " A Constitution for the State of Israel: Whether Desirable and Feasible?" 11 Tel Aviv University Law Review 27 (1985), and "On Justiciability And Reasonableness in Administrative Law," 14 Tel Aviv University Law Review 5 (1989). 63. See H C 1/81 Shiran v. Broadcasting Authority, 35(3) P.D. 367, 373; Cr. App. 696/81 Azulai v. State of Israel, 37(2) P.D. 565, 571; H C 337/81 Mitrani v. Minister of Transportation, 37(3) P.D. 337, 356-7; H C 372/84 Klopfer Naveh v. Minister of Education, 38(3) P.D. 233,238,241; Cr. App 2/84 Weiman v. General Elections Committee to the 11th Knesset, 39(2) P.D. 225, 245-6. 64. Saar v. Minister of Interior and Minister of the Police, 34(2) P.D. 169 (1979). These principles were reiterated by Justice Barak in Loyalists of Temple Mount v. Chief of the Jerusalem Police, 38(2) P.D. 451 (1984). The group wanted to conduct Jewish prayers, at the Temple Mount, on the day of the liberation of Jerusalem, in keeping with its policy of "restoring the central position of the Temple in the life of the state and the nation." The police denied a permit on the grounds that the symbolic event might result in violent confrontations between Moslems and Jews. The Court held, unanimously, that the police did not prove

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that violence was indeed closely probable. See D. Kretzmer, "Demonstrations And The Law," 19 Israel Law Review 47 (1984). 65. Neiman v. Chairman of the Central Elections Committee to the Eleventh Knesset, 39(2) P.D. (1984). The Knesset changed the law following the decision and the Court later sustained the decision to prevent Kahane from running but held that the right of the Pro-Palestinian Party to run had been violated. Neiman v. Chairman of the Central Elections Committee to the Twelfth Knesset, 42(4) P.D. 177 (1988). 66. Laor v. Board of Film and Theater Censorship, 41(1) P.D. 421 (1986). 67. Zichrony v. Broadcasting Service, 37(1) P.D. 757 (1983); Kahane v. Broadcasting Service, 41(3) P.D. 255 (1985). 68. Miaari v. the Speaker of the Knesset, 41(4) P.D. 181 (1986). 69. Poraz v. Mayor of Tel Aviv, 42 P.D: 309 (1987). 70. Shnitzer v. Chief Military Censor, 42(4) P.D. 617 (1988). 71. Hadashot v. Minister of Defense, 38(2) P.D. 177 (1984). For a good discussion, see R. Shamir, "Legal Discourse, Media Discourse, and Speech Rights: The Shift from Content to Identity—the Case of Israel," 19 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 45 (1991); see also A. Feldman, "National Security and Mass Destruction Weapons," 9 Communications Lawyer 10 (1991). 72. Barzilai v. the Government of Israel, 40(3) P.D. 505 (1986); 6 S.J. 1 (1986). 73. See, for example, Watad v. Minister of Treasury, 38(3) P.D. 113 (1984) (holding valid a regulation that provides financial benefits to students of religion, even though Israel has only Jewish religious institutions of learning and as a result only Jews are entitled to the benefits). For a detailed overview of the treatment of Israeli Arabs in Israeli law, see Kretzmer, The Legal Status of Arabs in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990). 74. For a critical analysis of the Court's performance, see Ronen Shamir, "Legal Discourse, Media Discourse, and Speech Rights: The Shift from Content to Identity—the Case of Israel," 19 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 45 (1991). 75. 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 76. Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of the Israeli Right (New York: 1991), and Every Man Whatsoever Is Right in His Own Mind—Illegalism in Israeli Society, (Tel Aviv: 1986), in Hebrew. 77. A good example is the petition to the High Court of Justice mentioned in my introduction. The Court agreed with the petitioners that the speaker of the Knesset has flagrantly violated Knesset rules, yet the Court declined to interfere. 78. Aharon Barak, "Tools for Justice," The Jerusalem Post, International Edition, June 6,1992. See also Allan E. Shapiro, "A Revolution Whose Time Has Come," The Jerusalem Post, International Edition, July 4,1992.

8 Israels Political Economy Ira Sharkansky

Israel's government dominates the national economy like none other outside the socialist bloc. 1 Along with other governmental behemoths, Israel's government has trouble being responsive, effective, and efficient. Symptoms of distress are levels of inflation that are chronically higher than those of industrialized democracies, as well as an imbalance of payments, and a foreign debt that may be the largest in the world on a per capita basis. Other chronic problems include an exploitation of public service for partisan advantage, heavy financial losses in public enterprises and other quasi-governmental organizations, and an insensitivity of entrenched bureaucrats to interests other than their own. Insofar as the government is so heavily involved in economic management, it hardly seems possible to consider possibilities for political reform without thinking of their implications for the economy. Alternatively, the political benefits that are associated with existing economic arrangements may limit the possibilities of political reform. It is common to measure a government's involvement in the economy by means of the percentage of national resources represented by government spending. Various calculations indicate that Israel scores very high on this measure. The International Monetary Fund has shown Israel to be the leading country, or among the leaders among Western democracies, during recent years; it has ranked along with Sweden with government expenditures in the range of 70 percent of gross domestic product, or almost twice the average of Western democracies. 2 Official Israeli sources show budget outlays of the government in the range of 80 to 90 percent of gross national product (GNP). Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reports a larger conception of spending by "government, local authorities, and national institutions" that has occasionally been larger than the gross national product! "National institutions" include the National Insurance Foundation, the Jewish Agency, and Keren Kayemet. These are quasi-governmental by virtue of coordinating their activities with government officials and receiving at least part of their

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funding from the government. They invest in economic development and provide social services. Israel's governmental and quasi-governmental outlays are even larger than indicated by these official reports. Finding one's way through official financial reports is no easy task. Among the outlays that might be added to the record of spending by the government and national institutions are several items that are formally outside the government budget, but heavily influenced by government decisionmaking: the "independent" outlays of health maintenance organizations that provide health care to most of the population, universities, bus cooperatives, and government companies and their subsidiaries; plus directed credits from the Bank of Israel for activities favored by government policy. There is an element of word play in the finding that Israel's governmental and quasi-governmental bodies are able to spend more than the nation's gross national product. It occurs because these bodies receive and spend substantial resources that do not figure into the calculation of GNP: grants from overseas governments and private contributors, plus loans from overseas and domestic sources. Israel's well-known defense burden figures prominently in any explanation of the government's dominance of the economy. Annual military expenditures usually range above 20 percent of GNP, compared to the 1 to 6 percent that is typical of Western countries. Israeli policymakers have economic responsibilities that resemble those of Eastern Europe prior to the recent wave of market-oriented reforms there. The clumsiness associated with a government that tries to manage an entire economy may be even worse in Israel's case. The democratic norms of Israel encourage each sector to press the government for even more outlays. The Israeli government cannot order labor unions, industries, or citizen groups to cease demanding government aid for the purposes that they favor. Israel's lack of a written constitution allows the government to do whatever a majority of the Knesset desires. A number of Basic Laws are said to be creating a constitution by stages. A Basic Law can be changed only by an extraordinary majority of the Knesset. However, there is no Basic Law for civil rights. Israeli citizens cannot call on a legal measure of special standing when they seek to assert their rights against a bureaucrat's ruling or against the law that stands behind it. No Israeli party has ever won a majority in national elections. Governments have been coalitions between parties and subparty factions whose leaders seek to bid up the powers and resources available to the ministries they control, or at least to keep a retrenchment-minded finance minister from cutting the budgets of their ministries. Israel's political culture also contributes to high public expenditures.

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Social welfare has been an important value since the time of the Zionist founders. Government investments designed to assure employment opportunities have figured prominently in plans to attract Jewish immigrants and to dissuade emigration. The explanation of Israel's governmental activity is less important for this discussion than its implications. Subsequent sections deal with several of the temptations and the problems that flow from a government that dominates Israel's economy. The second section of this chapter describes how party politicians have exploited the importance of government jobs for their own advantage. The third section reports on various enterprises and other bodies that depend on government aid, have recorded substantial losses, and in some cases have evaded the rules of their government benefactors. The fourth section details additional costs of Israel's strong state for the economy as a whole, as well as individuals, firms, and other institutions. The fifth section considers several efforts at reforming Israel's political economy, with particular attention on privatization. As in other countries, Israel's experience with this fashionable mode of public policy has been ambiguous and clumsy. The last section offers a summary view of Israel's political economy, and considers how economic and political incentives may constrain reform.

Serving the Public or Serving the Party? A certain incidence of political appointments in the civil service is considered essential for the proper operation of democracy. However, Israel's politicians exceed by a great deal the practices that are considered legitimate elsewhere. During the period of National Unity governments since 1984, politicization seemed to reach new heights. The country's major parties that joined in the government argued about the fundamentals of policy. However, they agreed about sharing the spoils of power. And there was no opposition party strong enough to maintain norms developed over the previous three decades. Cabinet members strengthened their own subparty factions by naming close supporters to key positions in their ministries, as board members of government companies, and to management positions within those companies. Political appointees given responsibility for personnel placed additional party friends in middle- and lower-level jobs. One appointee decided which applicants would receive a company's low-rent apartments. Some patronage was offered to established employees. All the workers in one government company were promised a pay raise in order to smooth the reception of a political appointee.

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Israeli Political Appointments

in a Comparative

Institutions

Context

The image of a purely professional administration, free of political appointments among senior administrators, has little standing in the contemporary literature of political science or public administration. In the public services of Western European, North American, and Japanese democracies, senior administrators are likely to be politically sensitive, if not political appointees per se.3 The crucial question about political appointments deals with their placing and their quality. It is considered legitimate to place individuals who are both politically reliable and professionally qualified in critical positions where they can help elected officials formulate and implement their policies. Another kind of political appointment is generally seen as a remnant of simplistic populism. This is the appointment of political allies for the purpose of strengthening the electoral base of the politician who makes the appointment. Where this mode of appointment prevails, there is little or no concern to find candidates with appropriate professional talents to couple with the prime requirement of loyalty in electoral campaigns. There is also no concern to limit political appointments to policy-relevant positions. More appointments mean more voles in the next election. Serious writing about political appointments in the United States is useful for its description of the lengths to which White House aides have gone in order to locate, recruit, and appoint individuals who qualify on professional criteria as well as loyalty to the major policy lines of the president.4 Background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation follow initial screening by the White House staff. Citizens' groups serve as self-appointed watchdogs. One group under the inspiration of Ralph Nader reported on the backgrounds, financial standing, and professional reputations of one hundred of President Ronald Reagan's appointments.5 Israelis concerned about political appointments might find the U.S. practice worthy of emulating. Several commentators use the round numbers of two thousand to three thousand for the positions that are available for political appointments in the U.S. national government, or about one-tenth of 1 percent of the approximately 2.7 million positions in the federal service. An additional 2 percent of the positions in the national government are temporary. This is a category that raises suspicions among those concerned about political appointments. As noted below, the incidence of positions available for political appointments in the Israeli civil service is much higher than in the U.S. national government. Politics in the Israeli Civil

Service

There are deep roots of politicization in Israeli public administration.6 The early years of the state service were marked by a primacy of political

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criteria at all levels of appointment. There was a continuation of the "party key" system that developed within Jewish institutions during the time of the British Mandate. Each party was accorded a percentage of appointments according to its success in elections. When the state was created in 1948 with a coalition government, each party was responsible for appointments in those administrative units controlled by its ministers. The rapid creation of a state service, in conditions of war and mass immigration, provided further justifications for partisan appointments: They were quicker and easier than the deliberative processes of an established civil service. The centralization of economic management in government hands may increase the politicization of the civil service. The government's dominance of the economy means that the rewards of decent salary, power, public visibility, and prestige are most likely to be found in the public sector. This adds to the importance of jobs at the disposal of politicians and reduces their incentive to replace patronage with recruitment and appointments that are strictly professional. An increasing concern for professional skills was associated with the enactment of the State Service Law of 1959. That law provides that a person shall not be appointed as a state worker except after the Civil Service Commission publicly announces the position and opens it to competitive selection. However, the law provides that "the Cabinet is authorized, on the basis of a proposal by the committee on public service and an announcement in the official register, to define certain positions or classes of positions as exempt from the requirements of public announcement (and competitive selection)." 7 Israeli civil service regulations permit each minister four personal appointments: the director general of the ministry, adviser, secretary, and driver. Reports in the media are one source for the conclusion that cabinet ministers have found ways to expand their appointment prerogatives. Yet another source are reports of the Civil Service Commission. Several indicators can be found in its publications to measure the proportion of positions that are open to political appointments: the percentage of each year's appointments to the civil service that are not made as the result of advertised announcement and competitive selection; the percentage of each year's appointments to the civil service that are not made through government employment offices; the percentage of each year's appointments to the civil service that are made on a temporary basis or employed on the basis of a special contract. 8 These indicators are useful in assessing the outer bounds of what may be professional or political appointments. They do not reflect the considerations actually used by appointing officers. The incidence of political appointments may be greater or less than these indicators suggest. Positions awarded under public announcements and formal competitions may

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be "sewn up" for candidates selected in advance, sometimes on the basis of political criteria. The conditions written into the job description may be so specific that only the preselected candidate is able to qualify. It is also the case that special contracts and temporary employment may be awarded to candidates selected according to professional criteria, with no reference to their political loyalties. Only 28 percent of the nearly 3,500 positions filled during 1984 were done so as a result of tenders; 41 percent were filled neither as a result of tendering nor by government employment offices; 23 percent of positions filled in 1984 were formally exempt from tendering; and 17 percent were filled by temporary workers. Twelve percent of the 32,609 employees in standard grades during 1985 were temporary or special contract workers. These data must be presented with a serious reservation: They indicate the incidence of positions open to political appointments, and not the number of political appointments per se. The motivations for appointing candidate "X" to position "Y" elude systematic analysis, as does the true incidence of appointments that are made more on the basis of political as opposed to professional criteria. Nonetheless, the data available describe a civil service that departs markedly from the standards of Western democracies. The high incidence of temporary employees, employees on special contracts, and positions exempted from tendering indicate a civil service that has not kept to the aspirations of professionalism articulated with the enactment of the State Service Law of 1959. Not included in the indicators used are several areas on the margins of Israel's government sector that offer no centrally collected and published records of their personnel procedures. By reputation, they are said to be even more politicized than the ministries of the central government. They are: • Government companies. Members of each company's board of directors (ranging between two and twenty-two per company) are subject to appointment by a minister (or ministers) in charge of the company. There are some two hundred companies owned by the government, with some seventy thousand employees. There are an uncounted number of subsidiaries of these companies, as well as subsidiaries of subsidiaries. The companies have been featured in media reports of political appointments. • Companies, cooperatives, and other institutions affiliated with the Labor Federation, Histadrut. The Labor Federation is responsible for organizations that employ some 25 percent of the country's labor force. Some of the most important of the Labor Federation affiliates are properly labeled quasi-governmental due to the large

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inputs of government financing. Prominent here are the bus cooperatives and the health service, which dominate their sectors of the economy. Since its founding, the Labor Federation has been under the control of the Labor Party or its predecessors. In some bodies affiliated with the Labor Federation, it is taken for granted that activity in the Labor Party is a prerequisite for initial appointment or career advancement. • Companies and other institutions owned by, or responsible to, international Jewish organizations. The World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency are dominated by political parties active in Israeli politics. In some of their administrative units, it is acknowledged that appointments are made according to an applicant's party affiliation. • Local authorities governed by partisan mayors and councils. Although the local authorities are subject to supervision by the Ministry of the Interior and the Civil Service Commission, the concern of these control bodies with local authorities' personnel appointments is negligible. A number of local authorities also operate companies that provide additional opportunities for patronage. Some smaller authorities, in particular, are noted for nepotism and other forms of political appointment. Problems on the Margins of the Israeli State This section deals with a problem that is universal among modern countries, but which may trouble Israel even more than most: relations between government authorities and the managers of quasi-governmental organizations. The margins of the Israeli state are filled with approximately two hundred companies owned by the government, as well as an uncounted number of enterprises that are subsidiaries of government companies, plus organizations that are partly financed by and accountable to the government, even while they claim primary affiliation to the Labor Federation or international Jewish organizations. Several lines of supervision and control link Israel's public bodies with the government. In the case of government companies, routine reports flow from the enterprises to ministries assigned responsibility for them, while policy directives flow to the enterprises via the ministries' appointees to company boards of directors. The Authority for Government Companies provides central recordkeeping for company finances, personnel, and the activities of company directors, within the framework established by the Law on Government Companies. The state comptroller

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makes occasional audits of government companies, transmitting these reports to the Knesset Committee on State Audit and publishing them for public distribution. The state comptroller also has audit access to nongovernmental bodies that receive government support, such as the health system and the bus cooperatives affiliated with the Labor Federation, and the universities. Both the Labor Federation and the World Zionist Organization have their own audit units with the responsibility of examining enterprises responsible to them. Litnited Supervision

and

Control

Israel's public enterprises and service providers enjoy more independence than this description of formal supervision and control suggests. Enterprise managers, as well as government authorities, express the attitude that enterprises should be entrepreneurial, and enjoy at least some of the freedoms and discretions of their private sector counterparts. The Authority for Government Companies has taken a narrow view of its responsibilities. It does little more than assemble records sent to it by the companies. The state comptroller looks into the largest or the most problematic of the government companies every three years or so, in contrast to its annual audits of government ministries. The state comptroller audits other government companies every ten years or so, or not at all. The auditors of the Labor Federation and the World Zionist Organization generally pay even less attention to enterprises in their sectors. Their audits are less probing than those of the state comptroller, and they are less likely to publicize embarrassing problems. 9 Nongovernmental public bodies that receive government aid have sought to exempt themselves from government controls. Sometimes they evade explicit governmental directives that are given to them. T h e state comptroller reported that the Egged Bus Cooperative paid its members higher salaries than were to be allowed by a policy of the Finance Ministry.10 Each of Israel's universities violated the rules of the government's Council of Higher Education against deficit financing, and by borrowing money without the Council's permission. A 1987 state comptroller's report indicated that six universities had accumulated debts equivalent to $(US)105 million. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was responsible for $60 million of that total. Media reports available after the publication of the state comptroller's report indicate that the Hebrew University's debt was $80 million. Then it became evident that the university's debt was over $100 million. In some cases, universities also violated the government's regulations with respect to income tax and currency controls by the manner in which they paid staff members who were overseas on sabbatical leave. The Council of Higher Education did not report certain details of

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university financing, in recognition of the universities' claim of privacy. 11 Financial Loss and Other Problems of Policymaking

and

Management

Data for 108 of Israel's government companies indicate aggregate profits in the range of $244 million to $452 million annually during the 1975-1985 period. 12 However, a substantial amount of that profit was supplied by eight companies engaged in the exploitation of natural resources in the Dead Sea and Negev regions. Of the 108 companies examined, there were aggregate losses in the range of $9 million to $16 million annually for companies showing losses during 1975-1981. For the years 1983 and 1985, aggregate reported losses increased to $94 million and $198 million. During each year, 25 to 32 percent of the companies recorded losses. One group of companies inclined to chronic losses were those dealing with the construction and/or management of housing. 13 These companies seem to have been concerned more with the provision of social services than with their formal mandates to operate according to commercial standards. Other companies with losses suffered from bloated work forces, outmoded technologies, and products of low quality and high costs.14 The formal audit reports of the state comptroller noted that work forces did not shrink despite losses and the lack of contracts in hand for additional work. The auditors who actually visited the companies reported that employees spent working hours playing football. It did not help the reputations of these companies when Israeli television broadcast pictures of hapless workers banging away by hand on large pieces of steel or watering down the dust with primitive sprinklers. Politics and Public

Enterprises

The previous section described how cabinet members responsible for the companies have used them to find jobs for their political supporters. Politics also enters into the financial support provided to several loss-making nongovernmental enterprises. Organizations owned by or affiliated with the Labor Federation have received substantial government help to pay off accumulated debts: the Egged Bus Cooperative, the Solel Boneh Construction Company, the Sick Fund, and cooperative agricultural settlements (kibbutzim and moshavim). At various points in the history of the National Unity governments from 1984 to 1990, Labor Party members of the cabinet refused to discuss enactment of the government's budget until these organizations had been promised aid. In the case of the Egged Bus Cooperative, the government's liquidation of $235 million in debt came on top of annual aid in the range of $154 million, which is paid to the cooperative in order to subsidize bus services.

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The state comptroller complained that the government did not assert its capacity for financial control when Egged signed especially attractive agreements with companies owned by the cooperative's membership. According to the state comptroller, these amounted to disguised benefits given to the owner-employees of the cooperative, in evasion of a retrenchment policy that was undertaken by the government in order to reduce inflation.15

Costs of a Strong State It is appropriate to describe the Israeli state as strong while adding the qualification that its formal powers may be greater than its ability to administer its policies. The state exhibits its strength by the controls it can exercise over many details of its citizens' lives. The clumsy side of Israel's state appears in its syndrome of high taxes, budget deficits, an imbalance of payments, foreign debt, inflation, and a lack of economic growth. Income tax rates of 45 percent begin at an annual gross income equivalent to $21,000. There is a value added tax of 18 percent, and additional purchase taxes double the costs of some appliances and automobiles. The government's expenditures exceeded its income during eighteen of the thirty-eight budget years between 1948 and 1985, including four of the six years between 1980 and 1985. International trade chronically produces a negative balance of payments, typically in excess of 20 percent of GNP. The foreign debt is about 125 percent of GNP, and is said to be the highest in the world on a per capita basis. Inflation has ranged between 15 and 20 percent a year since 1985. Many Israelis consider this a positive accomplishment in comparison to rates in excess of 100 percent annually between 1980 and 1985; however, current inflation is three to ten times greater than rates prevailing in other industrial democracies. Economic growth measured by GNP per capita, corrected for inflation, has been barely one percent a year since the war of 1973. Israel's government reaches deeply into the management of firms that it does not own. Firms that are ostensibly private are bounded by taxes, subsidies, licensing requirements, and other regulations. The ostensible purposes are to raise revenues for social and security programs; encourage employment and exports; and assure equity, safety in the workplace, environmental quality, and orderly planning. The realities may actually limit some of these goals as potential investors are frightened off by the complexity of regulations, or pursue their activities informally and illegally, outside the net of taxation and regulation. It may be inaccurate to use the term "private sector" for any of Israel's companies. Managers learn to profit not by offering products that can compete in the international market, but by offering proposals that will earn subsidies from govern-

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ment offices. 16 Alliances between powerful bureaucracies and the firms that receive government aid are counted among the elements that protect the status quo and retard growth. The strength of Israel's state is formidable when bureaucrats make arbitrary decisions that are fateful for individual citizens, without explaining their reasons or providing access to the information that is used in making the decisions. Parents are incensed when stubborn clerks overlook explicit regulations in the assignment of students to schools and ignore written appeals to change their assignments. Income tax authorities make artificially high assessments that force citizens to prove the merits of lower sums. Military authorities reach deep into the citizenry of a security-conscious country, where males are active in reserve units until their mid-fifties. The military makes decisions that are even more draconian—and beyond appeal—than those of civilian officials. When the army removes the security clearance of a reservist and refuses his demand for an explanation, it may cause severe damage to his personal status and his economic opportunities as a civilian. Clerks call reservists to duty and then cancel the call at the last minute, without taking account the inconvenience to the reservist. Far more extreme is the case of Mordecai Vanunu. He was kidnapped or lured from Europe, and then tried in secret for revealing details about Israel's nuclear weapons, without the opportunity to have the evidence against him exposed to public inquiry. Arabs charge that security personnel have been arbitrary in inflicting serious injury or death and have avoided thorough inquiry or severe punishment. Institutions as well as individuals suffer from the snarls of arbitrary controls. Land is likely to be leased from the Israeli Lands Authority rather than owned outright. Transfer of a lease to another party or changes in the use of a parcel may require the Authority's approval. The Authority might not agree to a transaction involving parcel A unless an institution is willing to sell it parcel B for a certain price. For some parcels of land, other bodies may have a veto, and may condition their approvals on some matter that is foreign to the issue at hand.

Reform There are several proposals of long standing to reform Israel's statism. One or another political party with a European liberal heritage has been on the scene since the period before independence, promoting ideas of free enterprise. A Citizens Rights Party has been prominent in the campaign for enactment of a written constitution, or at least a Basic Law for civil rights. The political crises of early 1990 saw more than 500,000 citizens

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sign one or another petition in behalf of reforming the electoral system or the government structure. Several of the proposals claimed to offer greater accountability to citizens by politicians and bureaucrats. In response to increased attention to the problem of political appointments, the Knesset enacted a law that prohibits individuals holding membership in ranking party organs from receiving appointments to certain positions. It remains to be seen if such a formalistic approach to political appointments will make any serious inroad against the phenemonon. Privatization

Privatization is the reform in behalf of economic liberalization that has enjoyed the most attention in recent years. Its appeal is worldwide. The great push came from the simultaneous administrations of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Perestroika in the Soviet Union and revolution throughout Eastern Europe added to the phenomenon. There has been no equivalent surge of governmental fashion since a wave of public management swept the world after World War II, bringing one or another variety of socialism and public enterprise to more than one hundred new countries and many of the older ones. It is easy to understand the appeal of privatization in Israel. Intense criticism has focused on the government's management of the economy. There is also a component to the Israeli culture that welcomes the ideal of privatization. Jewish inclinations to free enterprise exist alongside Jewish inclinations to government assurances of social welfare. A mixture of private and public economic management appeared even during the long period when the Labor Party dominated Israeli politics. It was not unusual for the government to unload its shares in some enterprises in the same period that it increased its shares in other enterprises. The aspiration to privatize faces special challenges in Israel. The country's most prominent expense—defense—does not seem to be an activity that can be assigned to the private sector. Proposals to rely on private outlays for education, health, and industrial development face the habits and ideologies of Israelis, reinforced by the political power of the Labor Party and the Labor Federation. Leaders of Israel's Liberal Party tried to reduce the government's involvement in the economy even before Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher entered office. A "New Economic Policy," declared in November 1977, promised to reduce the government's control over foreign currency. For the first time in Israel's history, citizens would be able to hold sizable amounts of foreign currency, and companies would be free to arrange financing overseas. The government also committed itself to sell a number of companies to the private sector.

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The policies of 1977 were not impressive in their accomplishments. The freedoms given to deal in foreign currency came to be associated with high inflation and were withdrawn. The commitment to sell government companies ran up against the cabinet's reluctance to sell its profitable companies and the reluctance of investors to buy the companies that the cabinet wanted to sell. A government-owned mortgage bank was sold to private investors. However, this required that the workers be given sizable compensation for their change in status. There has been another wave of privatization in recent years. This reflects the international fashion and a mood of economic reform that has prevailed in Israel since July 1985. It began in reaction to a surge of inflation that surpassed 1,000 percent on an annual basis. The cabinet has resisted rescuing industries in distress, despite the prospect of increased unemployment. Both the government and the Labor Federation have sought to unload problematic and unprofitable firms. Advocates have expressed sentiments in behalf of private management and in selling assets in order to accumulate cash during a period of economic hardship. The meaning and implications of privatization are less clear than its popularity. The general picture is one of reducing the role of government in economic management. The literature advocating privatization is marked more by enthusiasm and ideological fervor than intellectual rigor. Conceptions of privatization are varied, ambiguous, and even contradictory. They include the partial or full sale of government assets, with or without relinquishing government control, and transferring management to a variety of quasi-governmental entities, with or without a concern to maintain existing levels of service quality or equity. Policymakers and technocrats arrange contrived sales with sizable benefits to the purchasers in order to prove the appeal of privatization. The several meanings of privatization get in the way of knowing what is at stake and judging the success of individual efforts.17 This is no less true in Israel than elsewhere. As in other countries, there has been little in the way of systematic, comprehensive, and quantitative analysis of actions that fit within the several meanings of privatization. The following actions have occurred in Israel since 1985: 1. The government and other public sector bodies have sold shares in enterprises they own. In some cases the control of enterprises has passed into private hands, while in other cases control has remained with the public sector. Various sales have been accompanied by government loans or other benefits to the purchasers. 2. Activities formerly performed by government employees, including security guards, waste disposal, and policy planning, have been contracted to the private sector.

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3. The government has reduced or eliminated its subsidy of various goods and services, including basic foods, public transportation, and health care. 4. Some reduction of government support has been passive. Cost increases in health services have not been matched by increasing government aid. This has produced a creeping, silent, or passive privatization, with differentials in service quality leading individuals to the private sector for some of their health care. 5. There has been an increase in the importance of user fees to support certain services, in keeping with the reduction of government subsidies. In the case of elementary and secondary education, the development of user fees for various activities has proceeded despite the proclamation of the minister of education and culture that there will be no user fees for programs of enhancement. 6. Policymakers have proclaimed their intention to eliminate certain monopolies or cartels that have had effective control over prices or services in their sectors. In the case of television broadcasting and the distribution of petroleum products, it is not clear whether these efforts will be able to overcome the opposition of the bodies to be affected by such changes. 7. Some government regulations of economic activities have been relaxed or eliminated. Insofar as other government regulations have been introduced or strengthened, it is not possible to strike a balance and conclude that regulation has, in the aggregate, increased or decreased. 8. Commissions composed of prominent civil servants, entrepreneurs, and academics have proclaimed the need to rationalize the operations of local authorities (Sanbar Commission, 1980) and the total public sector (Kubersky Commission, 1989). Like their models in other Western countries, these commissions have emphasized professional, economic, and commercial values, along with businesslike management. The Kubersky Commission, in particular, supports the reduction of the government's role in economic management. To date the political authorities have responded to these reports with something between complete indifference and accepting commission recommendations "in principle," but implementing few, if any, of the details. 9. Local authorities have used the label of "privatization" for the creation of public enterprises, under their ownership and control, to carry out functions that had been the responsibility of municipal departments. This reveals either a gross misunderstanding of privatization or an artful exploitation of a fashionable label in order to dress up a policy that seems to run counter to the general meaning of the term. As in other countries, Israel's experience with privatization has been ambiguous and clumsy. Sales of government-owned shares have not been made to the highest bidders in the open market, but have been arranged

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with investors recruited by ministers or senior civil servants. Some appear to have been forced sales, or "sweetheart deals" arranged with wealthy diaspora Jews by policymakers concerned with proving the appeal of privatization. The government has invested in firms about to be sold or has provided loan guarantees in order to make the purchase more attractive to the investors. According to reports by the state comptroller, actual sales should have been more profitable.18 According to an informal report from one investor, the government's assurance of profit in one deal has led him to look for similar values elsewhere in the Israeli market.

Prospects of Reforming a Politicized Economy Israel will not easily shed the problems of economics, policymaking, and administration that are detailed in this chapter. Events already underway may have profound economic and political effects. At this point, however, it is appropriate to emphasize the speculative nature of any forecasts. The many linkages between economic and political characteristics limit the capacity to predict the results of change in any particular detail. A massive wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union is underway, which is bound to have economic implications and possibly political influence. As yet unknown are the short-run costs of providing the immigrants with housing, language training, employment, and social services, and what are hoped to be the long-run benefits of the immigrants' occupational skills and purchasing power. The number of immigrants who actually arrive will depend on events far removed from Israeli control, such as the future of reforms in the former Soviet Union and the decisions of the United States with respect to the admission of immigrants from the former Soviet republics to the States. Also relevant will be the continuing evolution of tensions in the occupied territories and the responses to them by foreign governments, and the potential immigrants themselves. Even if total immigration exceeds one million, the immigrants will come to a country whose economic and political structures are well established. Thus any impact of the immigration on Israeli politics or economy is likely to be incremental. Moreover, it may be in the direction of making the economy either more liberal or more centralized, or in moving the polity marginally to the right or the left. Also in the environment is a movement of protest against the country's political structure and procedures, described in several other chapters in this volume. It is unclear what will be the outcome of this movement for Israel's government and politics. It is even less clear what each of several proposed reforms might entail for economic changes. It seems integral to Israel's thoroughly politicized economy that

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economic issues are always high on the public agenda. However, they seldom are the highest items on the agenda. One or another issue connected to security usually seems to lead the government's concerns, and the high outlays for security are important in reinforcing the government's involvement in the economy. When an economic issue attracts the attention of the media and the politicians, it is often one that adds to the government's involvement in the economy. Recent examples include the need to provide solutions to the problems of couples left homeless due to escalating rents caused by the wave of immigration. The large number of recent immigrants appeared to push the government in the direction of central planning, despite a general mood in favor of privatization. Israel's intensely competitive democracy seems likely to work against any thoroughgoing reform of its economy or political structure. It seems easier to institute reform in an authoritarian setting such as that of the former Soviet Union or the psuedodemocracies of the Third World. Each existing component of Israel's controlled economy has beneficiaries as well as those who suffer from the controls. The benefits available to policymakers and their supporters via controls over jobs, industrial regulations, and investments seems likely to strengthen their commitment to the status quo in politics as well as economics. Where politicians control so much of who gets what and how, the appeal of efficient or responsive government may be less attractive than where most economic decisions are already in private hands. The complexity of the government's involvement in the economy also works against reform. A simple declaration in favor of free enterprise cannot take the place of changing hundreds of legal and regulatory details. Even if the political system were made slightly less democratic in the interest of strengthening the government and/or the prime minister, the change hardly seems likely to give over the subject of economic reform to a "czar" who can rationalize, liberalize, or privatize in a systematic fashion.

Notes 1. This chapter draws heavily on the author's The Political Economy of Israel (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987), and "Too Much of the Wrong Things," Jerusalem Quarterly 45 (Winter 1988), pp. 3-26. 2. International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, annually); the exact positions of Israel and other high scorers, like Sweden, have varied from one annual report to the next. 3. Hugh Heclo, Government of Strangers (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1977); Matei Dogan, ed., The Mandarins of Western Europe: The Political Role of Top Civil Servants (New York: Wiley, 1975); S. E. Finer, "Princes,

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Parliaments and the Public Service," Parliamentary Affairs (Autumn 1980), pp. 353-372; Ezra N. Suleiman, Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1974); Joel D. Aberbach, Robert D. Putnam, and Bert A. Rockman, Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 4. Roger G. Brown, "Party and Bureaucracy: From Kennedy to Reagan," Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1982), pp. 279-294; John W. Macy, ed., America's Unelected Government: Appointing the President's Team (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1983); Richard L. Schott and Dagman S. Hamilton, People, Positions, and Power: The Political Appointments of Lyndon Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 5. Ronald Brownstein and Nina Easton, Reagan's Ruling Class: Portraits of the President's Top 100 Officials (Washington, D.C.: The Presidential Accountability Group, 1982). 6. This section relies on my "Israeli Civil Service Positions Open to Political Appointments, 1 ' International Journal of Public Administration 12, no. 5 (1989), pp. 731-748. 7. State Service Law, 1959, Section 21, in Hebrew. 8. On the character and techniques of Israel's civil service, see Ya'acov Reuveni, Public Administration in Israel: The Government System in Israel and Its Development During the Years 1948-73 (Ramat Gan: Massada, 1974), chap. 6, in Hebrew. 9. Asher Friedberg, "Public Audit in the Margins of The Public Administration System in Israel," Ph. D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985, in Hebrew. 10. Audit Report on Egged Cooperative (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1986), p. 11, in Hebrew. 11. Audit Report on Institutions of Higher Education and the Committee on Planning and Finance of the Council of Higher Education (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1987), pp. 12,26,39-70, in Hebrew. 12. The companies chosen are those for which there is complete data provided for most of the years surveyed. The companies were surveyed biannually. The data were taken from Annual Reports 1975-1985 (Jerusalem: Authority for Government Companies), in Hebrew. 13. Most notably Housing and Development; Amidar Immigrant Housing; companies active in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa (i.e., Chelmish, Prozot, and Shikmona); and the Company to Rehabilitate the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. 14. Audit Report on Mekorot Water Company Ltd (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1985), in Hebrew; Audit Report on Israel Shipyards Ltd (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1985), in Hebrew; "Beit Shemesh Motor Company, Ltd," Annual Report §36 (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1986), pp. 1306-1318, in Hebrew. 15. Audit Report on Egged Cooperative. 16. Samuel Hadar, "The Blurring of the Public and the Private in the Relationship of Government and the Industry: The Case of the Large Industry in Israel," Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1988, in Hebrew; Alvin Rabushka and Steve H. Hanki, Toward Growth: Plan to Revitalize the Israeli Economy, (Jerusalem: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1989), in Hebrew. 17. See, for example, Paul W. MacAvoy, W. T. Stanbury, George Yarrow, and Richard J. Zeckhauser, eds., Privatization and State-Owned Enterprises: Lessons from the United States, Great Britain and Canada (Boston: Kluwer, 1989);

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Steve H. Hanke, ed., Prospects for Privatization (New York: The Academy of Political Science, 1987); Paul Cook and Colin Kirkpatrick, eds., Privatisation in Less Developed Countries (New York: St. Martins Press, 1988); Gabriel J. Roth, The Private Provision of Public Services in Developing Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Peter Abelson, ed., Privatisation: An Australian Perspective (Sydney: Australian Professional Publications, 1987). 18. Annual Report MO (Jerusalem: State Comptroller, 1990), pp. mxvimxxxix, in Hebrew.

PART 3 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES

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Elite Illegalism in Israel and the Question of Democracy Ehud Sprinzak

The Shin Bet Affair and the Rule of Law Recent scandals in Israel, most notably the obstruction of justice by the Shin Bet (Israel's secret service), have called attention to the illegalistic orientation of Israel's top political leaders: the conviction that security considerations, party interests, and their own political survival stand above the law. During the summer of 1986, a very serious controversy erupted in Israel. Following an intense debate between Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and State Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, the independent legal counselor of the government, Zamir was forced to resign against the better judgment of most of the nation's jurists. The bone of contention was the Shin Bet and its involvement in the mysterious killing of two Arab terrorists, who had been captured alive following an unsuccessful bus hijack. Despite early denials, it was found that the head of Shin Bet personally instructed his men to kill the terrorists without a fair trial or hearing of any sort and was present when the terrorists were killed.1 The issue being debated was not the killing of the terrorists, but the deliberate attempt by the Shin Bet to cover up its direct involvement in the case. Thus it was learned that the head of the service and his chief lieutenants conspired to lie to a government investigation committee probing the killing. A top Shin Bet man, who was made an official member of the committee, would meet every night, for months, with his cohorts to coordinate the next day's false presentations and testimonies. The conspiracy, aimed at concealing Shin Bet's responsibility for the killing, was highly successful. The blame was shifted to the military, and one of Israel's most illustrious generals, innocent by all standards, almost lost his job and reputation. When the whole story was disclosed by several unhappy Shin Bet officers, the leading cabinet minister remained unmoved. The only officials to leave the organization were the informers. Only an immense public outrage and Zamir's protest forced the government to fire the guilty intelligence heads. But they were not dis173

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missed until a special pardon, worked out by the government and Israel's president, made sure they could not be prosecuted. The government's treatment of Zamir was among the most controversial aspects of the Shin Bet Affair. A respected former law professor at Hebrew University, Zamir was shocked by the new revelations as well as by the desire to acquit the officials involved without a trial. As the head of the state's prosecution and the government's legal adviser, Zamir was instrumental in creating the first official investigation committee to which the Shin Bet officials had lied. His legal advice to the prime minister and his top colleagues was unequivocal: All Shin Bet officials involved should be brought to justice, irrespective of their impeccable past records and unquestionable contribution to the nation's security. The strong rejection of this advice by all the ministers involved created a serious problem. How could the government work out some kind of legal deal without the collaboration of Zamir, the official responsible for handling all the government's legal matters? The solution found was very characteristic of Israeli political culture. Zamir was "not consulted in the matter," and the prime minister, together with several highly politicized private lawyers, crafted a pseudo-legal solution behind Zamir's back. Zamir himself was not fired, but the expiration of his term as attorney general was used by the government as a pretext to select a new person for the job. Leaving office in the midst of great uproar, he made no secret of his personal and professional criticism of the government's asssault upon the principle of the rule of law. The ministers involved remained unshaken, and the political earth in Israel did not move. Responding to public pressure during the affair, Israel's new prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, elaborated on the legal philosophy that guided the government. The Israelis were asked to compare the law to the bread they all eat: The law is not an end in itself. Like bread, which is eaten not for itself but in order to keep the body alive, the law ought to serve the state and not vice versa. It is possible to imagine situations of a dictatorship of law as of yikov hadin et hahar (the law can penetrate the mountain), but something like that is unacceptable. The law was only destined to make orderly life possible. 2

The Shin Bet Affair displayed a typical attitude on behalf of the Israeli leadership toward the law and the legal order. The most prominent ministers in the Israeli cabinet were so determined to salvage the methods and reputation of their secret service that they were ready to disregard the most flagrant obstruction of justice ever known to have been committed by an Israeli defence agency. When viewed against the background of the successive illegal affairs that brought down the Labor hegemony in the

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1970s and characterized the second Likud administration (1981-1984), the Shin Bet scandal appears to be more than an unfortunate accident. It shows that Israel's political culture contains a strong dimension of elite illegalism, an instrumental orientation of the nation's leadership toward the law and the idea of the rule of law. Israeli leaders, so it seems, do not appear to be antidemocratic in principle, or have an alternative model of government to the democratic order. But their conception of democracy is limited, and their commitment to universal legal principles, recognized today as an integral part of the modern democracy, is very low. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the historical evolution of Israel's elite illegalism and to examine its metamorphoses since the Yishuv in Palestine. Some of the points to be made in this regard are: 1. Israel is formally established on the principle of the rule of law, but it is possible and necessary to identify in its political culture a clear dimension of behavioral illegalism that far exceeds the normal and expected sphere of disrespect for the legal norms in a democracy. 2. Beyond the salient behavioral illegalism, there exists a deep cultural layer of illegalism in Israel's political society. The characteristic features of this layer are an instrumental orientation toward the legal order and a conviction that democracy can work without a strict adherence to the law. 3. The illegalistic syndrome, which is behavioral as well as cultural, did not emerge in the last decade, when it appeared in a rather sensational way, but has been developing since the beginning of the century, side by side with the Zionist polity in Palestine. 3 The proposition argued in this chapter is that Israeli democracy has always been very weak on the question of legalism, and that recent governments have not been an exception to this phenomenon. Legalism in the Western sense of the term never was an integral part of the democratic system established in Israel by the Zionist parties and their leaders. Israel's illegalism has therefore been an elite illegalism. Instead of curtailing grassroot illegalistic orientations brought in by immigrants from nondemocratic societies, it has nourished them from above and continues to do so to the present. Four historical stages of elite illegalism are examined: 1. Functional Illegalism: the illegalism of the Yishuv leadership that was necessary for the establishment of a Zionist policy in Palestine, but which produced many of the present patterns of Israel's illegalism. 2. Latent Illegalism: the hidden illegalism that developed after the

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establishment of the state, under Ben-Gurion's "universalistic" mamlachtiut (statism). 3. Manifest Illegalism: the open illegalism of the post-Ben-Gurion leaders that flourished under Levi Eshkol and Pinchas Sapir. 4. Illegalism Rediscovered: the elite illegalism that re-emerged under the Likud government and has been sustained by the National Unity government.

Illegalism as a Feature of Political Culture While the concept of illegalism is rarely elaborated in the dictionaries and encyclopedias, it can easily be understood as the opposite of legalism, a well-defined term. The compact edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines legalism as "a disposition to exalt the importance of law or formulated rule in any department of action." The Random House Dictionary defines legalism as "a strict adherence or the principle of strict adherence to law or prescription." The idea implied in these definitions, which is conveyed by most other dictionaries, is that legalism is not just a form of behavioral obedience to the law but also a prescriptive norm. A respect for the law and for the idea of the rule of law is not, according to this prescription, mandatory because of the material gains involved but because of the intrinsic value of the legal order. "A society with law," writes H. A. L. Hart, "contains those who look upon its rules from the internal point of view as accepted standards of behavior and not merely as reliable predictions of what will befall them at the hands of officials if they disobey." 4 The precise meaning of the rule of law is today a subject of intense academic debate, one in which liberals and conservatives sharply disagree. 5 Nevertheless, it appears that the study of political culture may benefit a great deal from the legalism-illegalism distinction. If we agree with students of political culture that the rule of law basically amounts to the orientations of the citizens and the key political actors toward the conduct of public affairs, 6 then it is possible to place political societies on a continuum ranging from an orientation of strict obedience to the law to an orientation that implies a total disregard for it. A useful way to conduct research on this topic seems to follow the method of Max Weber: testing the empirical reality against two opposing ideal types: 1. Legalism as an ideal type of political culture. A comprehensive conception of the rule of law expressed in influential writings of legal authorities, major juridical documents, court rulings, legislation and regulation of the regime in question; a genuine identification of the leading

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ideologues, politicians, and civil servants of the regime with this conception and its elevation to a normative behavior; a negative attitude of all these authorities toward illegal excesses, immaterial policy decisions, and sectarian public administration; a general citizens' respect of the law. In order to have the legalistic ideal-type approximate reality, its characterization should leave room for certain struggles and cases of civil disobedience that do not presuppose a general instrumental attitude toward the law, of clear cases of personal disrespect for the law as a result of faults in the law itself, and for general criminality and a reasonable universal lawbreaking expressed in traffic violations, drunken driving, and income tax evasion. 2. //legalism as an ideal type of political culture. Not requiring a negation of a general commitment to the rule of law by all authorities concerned, it represents the existence of a deep gap between the legal conception espoused by juridical authorities and the courts on the one hand and reality on the other. This ideal type is therefore characterized by the existence of a prestigious and influential ideology that either degrades the rule of law or assigns it a low priority; a blatant disregard for the ideas of the rule of law, the public interest, and impartial public administration by top politicians and civil servants in the name of an ulterior state norm, ideology, or party interest; an enactment of laws that cannot be enforced; outstanding cases of political and politically related corruption and adminstrative white-collar crime, clientelism, and patronage; low-level corruption and a comprehensive citizcns' disregard for the law and that for which it stands.

Functional Illegalism: The Yishuv Period Even a cursory examination of the Zionist literature, including the debates on the political nature of the movement, may show that the founding fathers of Israeli Zionism were never aware of the rule of law as a principle of good government. It is not difficult to see why. All of them came from Eastern Europe, from countries with no democratic culture and no tradition of civil and individual legal rights. Critical of the oppressive regimes in those countries, they entertained several conceptions of democracy (people's, class, Jewish), but none of these included the idea of the primacy of the legal order. For Jews who never even experienced the rudimentary elements of democracy, such as free elections, free press, and majority rule, the niceties of the rule of law, impartial public administration, and civil service were completely irrelevant. This unawareness and its resultant effects were strengthened by three influential pro-Yishuv cultural orientations that played an important role in shaping the political mentality of the growing community in Palestine: the ghetto culture, the baksheesh

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culture, and the culture of naive socialism.7 The ghetto culture was the system of orientations that had developed for hundreds of years in the Jewish shtetl, or the Jewish ghetto, in Eastern Europe. Almost every aspect of ghetto life was informal. Everyone knew everybody in the shtetl, and there was no need for an official code or written law. The only formal law was the Torah and its halakic interpretation as understood by the local rabbi. But this law had no features of positive, state law. It was a basis for communal conduct, along with many other informal modes of behavior, such as "Shmor li ve'eshmor lecha" ("You help me, and I'll help you"). The attitude toward the formal law of the land was one of suspicion because no shtetl Jew could trust the law of the Gentiles, and state law was seen as another part of the oppressive Gentile society. One had to survive it, not respect it. The art of Jewish survival within the ghetto included an elaborate system of using, avoiding, or sidestepping the law.8 The baksheesh culture was an essential part of the organizational culture of the Orient, Middle East, and North Africa that the Jews, most of whom also lived in ghettos, shared. Baksheesh, a Turkish term for an instant bribe one gives to an official who can help or do a favor, was not a Jewish invention. It was a permanent feature of the Ottoman Empire, which instituted an organizational polinormativity. 9 Side by side with the formal, legal norms of the colonial bureaucracy, which the citizen (in many cases a conquered minority) was expected to respect, thrived an informal, illegal system of bribery and favoritism. If one could not get along through the formal, legal channels, it was always possible to make it through baksheesh. Jews, like many other minorities, learned to live with baksheesh and use it for their needs. The culture of naive socialism did not have deep historical roots, but it was highly influential among the idealist pioneers who came from Eastern Europe. Its main feature was an ideological animosity toward formal and legal bureaucracy, which, it was assumed, was an essential part of capitalism.10 Strongly believing in the good nature of man, certainly of the socialist Zionist, the naive socialists were sure that good intentions and hard work were a solution to every problem. Bureaucracy, legality, and formality implied "false consciousness" and bourgeois mentality. Having a strong psychopolitical background of illegalism, Israel's founding fathers were unlikely to discover the virtues of the rule of law in the first place. But the circumstances they encountered in Palestine made such tentative learning all the more difficult. The declining Ottoman colonial administration that ruled Palestine before World War I was extremely hostile to the Zionist endeavor. Even baksheesh rarely worked. And the British, whose legal system could indeed help shape a decent Zionist legal culture, was seen, as early as the late 1920s, as renouncing

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the Balfour Declaration. By the late 1930s, and as a result of their notorious White Paper, which barred Jewish immigration almost totally, the British assumed the status of "foreign rulers." Their system of justice may have been legal, but according to the Yishuv leaders and ideologists, it was illegitimate. So strong was the anti-British sentiment that an entire nomenclature of prestigious illegalism evolved: aliya bilti-legalit, hagana bilti-legalit, hityashvut bilti-legalit (illegal immigration, illegal defense, illegal settlement, respectively). 11 A generation of young Zionists, some of whom were to play key roles in the scandals of the 1980s, was socialized into public life by the spirit of a typical speech by Berl Katzeneson, chief ideologist of Mapai: There is an immigration which is named "illegal." . . . Everything in this legal world is legal—legal regimes, legal conquests, legal documents, even a legal breaking of commitments. Jewish immigration only, based on the old charter of Exodus, is i l l e g a l . . . if this immigration is illegal, what immigration is legitimate and legal? It is not the fault of the refugees, our fault, that we have become law breakers. He who broke the fundamental constitution of the land made us criminals.12

The evolution of the Yishuv's defiant illegalism vis-à-vis the British did not help the internal Zionist structures, which were to a great extent autonomous, to adopt legal and professional manners. Of much greater importance was the lack of interest of the individuals and movements that had established these institutions. Yonathan Shapiro, who studied Achdut Ha'avodah and its relation to the emerging Histadrut (the General Federation of Labor), has shown that since their inception, the raison d'être of these organizations and the sole measure of their success, was the interest of the movement. 13 Considerations of efficiency, good management, accountability, and profit were never allowed to interfere. Politicians and ideological activists were made paid directors of Histadrut economic corporations and were judged by their dedication to the party and the cause. This was the atmosphere in which protektzia14 for anshei shlomenu (our crowd) flourished, and public money, which was very scarce, started to become cheap. Contrary to the common belief that Labor scandals involving illegal behavior, bad management, and corruption only started in the 1970s, the Histadrut and other Labor organizations have faced scandals from the outset. A Histadrut investigation committee that studied one of the earliest crises of Solel Boneh, its subsidiary construction corporation, found out in 1928 that its directors were overpaid in many ways and had constantly defied the egalitarian ideology of this socialist organization, which required that all workers, rank notwithstanding, receive equal pay. 15 Answering the call for the resignation of the responsible directors, David

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Ben-Gurion, at that time the secretary-general of the Histadrut, said: We were never trained in business administration. Had we only been a business, we should have all resigned. But we represent a social movement and we have to learn from our mistakes.... Had we been deterred by our inexperience and incompetence, we would have never created Degania, Ein Harod and Nahalal Had we concluded that they should have resigned it would have been immoral, apolitical and unreasonable. . . . I believe in the hegemony of labor in Zionism. But this hegemony will never be based on the fact that we are more able or honest but rather on the fact that we are more Zionist than the others.16

In this classical defense of Labor's wrongdoers, Ben-Gurion made it clear that the movements that had established Degania, Ein Harod, and Nahalal, exemplary kibbutzim and moshavim, could do no wrong. Zionism, not honesty or ability, was the name of the game, and no one could be more Zionist than the Labor movement and its leading party, Mapai. As "illegal" and damaging as the illegalism of the Yishuv was, it is necessary to admit that most of it was functional. Facing the harsh animosity of the Ottoman regime and, later, the growing British hostility, the founding fathers of the Yishuv had little choice. Had they adhered to the spirit and letter of the law, they might have ended up with high grades in civics but would never have established a state. There was a sense and purpose in the Yishuv illegalism. It was mandatory and moral to save Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany, with or without British consent. And it was just as necessary and right to establish a strong Jewish polity in Palestine before the Arabs launched their attack, Great Britain's formal law notwithstanding. The problem of the functional illegalism of that period was that it created and helped sustain strong patterns of illegal behavior that far outlived their functionality. These prestigious patterns were not forsaken when the mandatory power departed and the Zionists established their own state.

Latent Illegalism: The Case of Ben-Gurion's Mamlachtiut A popular joke in the early 1950s told of how the Zionist volunteers who served in the British army during World War II stole from the British (for the Jewish underground in Palestine), but forgot to stop when the state of Israel was established. While simple and unidimensional, the anecdote nevertheless tells a sad story of the inability of the new elite of the Israeli democracy to change direction and embark upon a full legalistic course. To say that Israel simply continued to be run in the prestate fashion would be erroneous. The early achievements of the Jewish polity were, in

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fact, very impressive. In the midst of Israel's most devastating war, the Jewish leaders formed an effective executive and a viable parliament. A comprehensive court system was established, and a functional civil service started to shape up. It was all orchestrated by David Ben-Gurion, a self-educated man, who carved a unique philosophy of government out of an immense but highly unsystematic body of reading. Ben-Gurion's new philosophy, mamlachtiut, contained many universalistic elements. It was a great improvement upon Mapai's old "Bolshevik" approach, which maintained that everything that was good for the party was good for the Yishuv. 17 The key mamlachtiut theme was "from a class to a nation." It expressed Ben-Gurion's recognition that the old sectarian socialist philosophy of Mapai was irrelevant for nation building. A regime that intended to triple its population in five years and was to bring together persecuted refugees from the four corners of the earth could not afford the old thinking. Mamlachtiut's greatest accomplishments were, undoubtedly, the creation of Zahal, Israel's apolitical people's army, and Hinuch Mamlachti, the state's unitary educational system. Both bore the fingerprints of Ben-Gurion and made a great contribution to the socialization of the Israeli youth to a modern political society. Ben-Gurion's mamlachtiut had, however, three fundamental flaws. It was hardly shared by most of his colleagues in Mapai, the prime minister himself applied it only selectively, and, most important of all, it lacked a built-in legal theory. Most of Ben-Gurion's colleagues, the powerful Mapai veterans, did not fully identify with their leader's new vision. While symbolically endorsing it, they were very reluctant to adopt its conclusions. Their Mapai, a very innovative and powerful machine that they had built from scratch, was too precious to sacrifice on the altar of mamlachtiut. 18 They were especially hostile to Ben-Gurion's efforts to operationalize mamlachtiut by bringing in new blood, ambitious and successful young wolves like Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, who "had not drained swamps in Hadera" and were not party veterans. These old party hands—Golda Meir, Zalman Aranne, Levi Eshkol, and Mordechai Namir—were not as powerful as David Ben-Gurion, but strong enough to slow down mamlachtiut. Holding key executive positions, they kept the old Mapai machine oiled, and made sure that many official jobs remained in the hands of party loyalists 19 and that new immigrants were absorbed by the "party" well before they were absorbed by the state.20 The party itself and many party-related organizations were, in fact, controlled by the Gush (bloc), a most powerful informal party machine that was established in order to secure the hegemony of Mapai. The Gush, which operated with the full consent of Ben-Gurion, made sure that the right people were placed in the right public positions, with or without professional qualifi-

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cations. 21 Thus no mamlachtiut was allowed to touch the party, the powerful Histadrut and its subsidiary economic corporations, or the very influential Jewish Agency. A whole echelon of Israeli executives heard of mamlachtiut only over the radio. While his junior colleagues were manifestly diluting mamlachtiut, Ben-Gurion himself was selective in its application. No general criteria were established for qualification for mamlachtiut, and its determination was exclusively Ben-Gurion's. The A r a b citizens of Israel, for example, were never considered legitimate subjects for this policy of equalization. They were a "security risk" and kept under tight control. Long after the successful termination of the 1948 War of Independence and the elimination of the real Palestinian security risk, it was still possible to maintain in Israel a special "military government" for over 10 percent of its citizens. 22 Former members of the Irgun and Lehi underground organizations were likewise not equal partners, for they were "fascists" or "putschists." Many of them could not get decent jobs in any public agency and for years paid for their prestate sins.23 And "Ben-Gurion's youngsters" offered an interpretation of their own for the new ideology. According to Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan, mamlachtiut meant bitzuism (getting things done), efficiency, and smooth operation that got results. Rules, regulations, and orderly procedures were invented, according to the young guard, in order to be ignored and sidestepped. Thus on the prime minister's direct command, Shimon Peres, director general of the Ministry of Defense, sidestepped Golda Meir, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, and ran his own European secret diplomacy. 24 Moshe Dayan, Israel's number one soldier, believed he was above all rules and regulations in fighting, driving, womanizing, and archeology collecting. Dayan developed, according to his biographer, an idiosynchratic theory of the "sovereign personality," which implied that he, Moshe Dayan, was above all laws and conventions. A charismatic person by all standards, Dayan became a role model for an entire generation of young military officers and other talented sabras (Israel-born youth). 25 The major flaw in mamlachtiut was its detachment from any legal theory. Nowhere in his writings and public speeches of the 1950s did Ben-Gurion assign any significance to the role of law, the rule of law, or the idea of checks and balances. There is no doubt that the man was not anarchist and that discipline, law, and order were very much on his mind. Ben-Gurion is known, in fact, for his conviction that the Jews were lacking civic virtues and for his conclusion that a special effort to teach them to live in a sovereign state was highly necessary. But he never recognized that he himself, the great David Ben-Gurion, or the party (under his guidance) could do wrong. The idea that the best way to introduce mamlachtiut was to place the entire political system, including Mapai's government, u n d e r

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a strict legal umbrella was not part of his vision. Ben-Gurion, a stranger to the liberal and constitutional traditions that were always suspicious of power, truly believed that good intentions and correct political education could produce a decent republic. It was, of course, very convenient politically not to have one's own hands tied by unnecessary legal procedures. Israel's newly created Supreme Court, for example, was badly treated by Ben-Gurion. Neither he nor Minister of Justice Dov Yosef showed, in the 1950s, great respect for the court, nor did they see it as a major part of the Israeli system of government. 26 It was David Ben-Gurion, the father of mamlachtiut, who was responsible for probably the single greatest constitutional blunder in Israel's history, the failure to introduce a constitution. There was no doubt, in 1948, that the new state was committed to a written constitution. It was first set as an essential condition of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution that sanctified the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. 27 It was restated in Israel's own Declaration of Independence on May 15,1948. The document, which was solemnly signed by the entire roster of the nation's leaders, secular and religious alike, stated unequivocally that Israel's first elected constituent assembly was to make a constitution. But, declarations aside, the commitment for a constitution was very superficial. The religious partners of the coalition government were strongly opposed to the idea. They already had a constitution, the Torah, the book of books. For them, the idea of a man-made sacred document was anathema. Mapai, Ben-Gurion's party, which was in control for nearly twenty years did not like the idea, either. A constitution threatened to put its political domination under such legal arrangements as a bill of rights and checks and balances. Hesitant to shirk their public obligation and defy the United Nations and the entire world, the representatives of the Israeli political majority crafted a brilliant ploy. They relegated the draft constitution to a committee. Two years later, when the issue had faded from prominence, the Knesset quietly passed a resolution that postponed the issue indefinitely. 28 Neither a bill of rights nor a system of effective controls of the government were ever introduced to the Jewish State. Israel's Supreme Court had been only partially successful in defending civil rights. The Knesset, on the contrary, has never been able to control the government or balance its excessive power. It was and remains a feeble legislature dominated by Israel's coalition government. None of its committees was given subpeona powers and it has always been short on resources and resolve to conduct a serious investigation of its own. It was then, at the critical moment of Israel's initiation, that the authority of the "Old Man" could make a difference. If Ben-Gurion really had a legal philosophy, he must have known there was no better way to

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introduce the entire system into mamlachtiut than through an elevated constitutional document that would guarantee civil rights to all, introduce systemic checks and balances into the government, and serve as a permanent legal model for the nation. It may not have been easy to prevail upon the religious parties, but if there ever was a man to do it, it was Ben-Gurion. None of the religious leaders was deterred from signing Israel's Declaration of Independence because it categorically committed the new state to a future constitution. None was in a position in 1949 and 1950 to challenge Ben-Gurion on an issue that had been agreed upon since 1947. But neither the understanding nor the will were there. In the debate that finally ended with an indefinite postponement, the people of Israel were told by the prime minister the following: The circumstances that necessitated and justified a supreme and ennobled constitution in America, and even France, do not obtain in our country. On the contrary, if we wish to educate the people to respect the law, we have to educate them to respect every law, not just "an ennobled" law which is called "constitution." The dynamism of the land cannot stand a rigid framework and artificial chains. The laws of Israel should follow this dynamic development. 2 9

It is not clear whether Ben-Gurion's stand was a product of instrumental considerations of a leader who wanted to avoid constitutional checks on his government, or whether he really believed his words. But, nearly forty years after the event, it is clear that he was wrong in both of his propositions. There is no sign that the people of Israel were educated to respect the law, and there certainly are no indications that the "educators" themselves, the Israeli political elites, were ever in a position to educate.

Manifest Illegalism: The Post-Ben-Gurion Era The illegalism of the 1950s may be called "the latent illegalism." As we have seen, it existed, yet it was concealed under the heavy cover of the universalistic mamlachtiut. However, an event of historical significance took place at the beginning of the 1960s—the Lavon Affair—that changed the entire orientation of Mapai. The "Affair" did many things to many people, but its major effect was the near demise of Ben-Gurion's mystique and authority.30 The "old lion" and his young followers discovered, to their great dismay, that because of their disregard of legal procedures (which they never bothered to introduce as part of their mamlachtiut), they were voted down in Israel's cabinet and lost the Labor hegemony. Had Ben-

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Gurion been successful in the introduction of a constitution in 1949-1950, it would have been extremely hard to resist his 1960 demands for the selection of an independent committee for the investigation of the Lavon Affair, and he would have probably stayed in power. But the battle was lost, and the leadership of the country passed to the hands of the old Mapai guard, Levi Eshkol, Pinchas Sapir, and Golda Meir, for whom the entire mamlachtiut symbology was anathema. 31 They did not like it, did not want to hear about it, and had no intention of practicing it. Unfortunately, they had no alternative universalistic ideology. What they were best at was the art of pragmatic politics, a method full of innovative compromises, halfbaked solutions, brilliant maneuvers, and, necessarily, intense illegalism. Eshkol's orientation to public life was already demonstrated in the early 1950s while he was the treasurer of the Jewish Agency. When severely criticized by the institute's comptroller for allowing two officials to use the Agency's foreign currency for their own private purposes, Eshkol responded: The purchase was made in frozen Lirot (Israeli pounds), not in foreign currency. But, even had it been conducted in foreign currency, I would not have seen any wrongdoing in it. We would have followed Mikra Meforash (the original Torah text): "Lo Tachsom Shor Bedisho" ( D o not muzzle the ox while he threshes the corn). 32

Eshkol's rule, "Do not muzzle the ox while he threshes the corn," was certainly not an action-oriented prescription, and he and Sapir, Israel's minister of finance, were good Zionists and decent individuals. But since the two sincerely believed they could run the country in a personal way through some trustworthy lieutenants, threshing the corn became their modus operandi. Sapir, the grand master of Israel's economy and a financial genius, was the mastermind of the whole system. He had a personal knowledge and control of almost everything that was happening in the public and private sectors of Israel's economy. Very few Israelis could be nominated to influential positions in the state's economy and public life without his personal approval. Using the immense resources under his commands, and especially the less controllable money that came from foreign sources (German reparations, the United Jewish Appeal, Israel Bonds, loans, and U.S. government grants), he could, and did, make and break people. Genuinely eager to build and strengthen Israel's economy, Sapir did not care about procedures and rules—he was the rules. 33 Everything was written and memorized in his own small black notebook, the most notorious notebook in Israel's history. All that was expected from an obscure and unknown entrepreneur who wanted to start a government-supported industry was for that individual to come to Sapir with

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a brilliant idea. Since Sapir belonged to the old school, which believed that everything that was good for Mapai was good for the country, the new debtors were expected to line up with major Histadrut corporations and contribute financially to the ruling party. 34 Not all of this was formally illegal since Israel's laws of parties' finance were very primitive in the 1960s, but the Sapir system uplifted the old Mapai clientelism and favoritism to unprecedented heights. Never before was so much easy money moved so easily into politics without an external review or control. 35 It is not certain that Pinchas Sapir and his political colleagues, most of whom lived modestly, were fully aware of the negative implications of the system they created. It is clear, however, that they did not expect this system to produce personal corruption and criminal mismanagement. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. Starting in 1968, Israel was stunned by scandals and economic collapses that involved some of Sapir's most-favored enterprises. Companies, such as Netivei Neft, Somerfine, Autocars, The Israel Company, Anglo-Israel Bank, Solel Boneh, and Vered, had either collapsed or were severely damaged by bad management and corruption. Public investigations revealed for the first time the magnitude of the "Sapir System" and its dynamics. They showed how callously money was granted, used, and misused. 36 Most devastating were the cases of two top Mapai executives, Michael Tzur and Asher Yadlin. Tzur, a former director general of Sapir's Ministry of Commerce and Industry, cheated on the government in the case of The Israel Company. In the process, he embezzled several million dollars. Yadlin, who was about to be nominated governor of the Bank of Israel, a position of high prestige and power, was convicted of embezzling money from Kupat Holim, the Histadrut's powerful sick fund. What was typical of these individuals, and others who were caught, was their total surprise. All of them felt they were following old patterns of conduct and management that were legitimized by their elders, the founding fathers of Israel. In his book, Testimony, the most revealing document on the illegalistic practices of Mapai, Asher Yadlin writes: I am not asking anyone's forgiveness. I do not apologize. I paid the full price—1217 long days and nights in jail. I do not argue that I am a victim of the regime. I am a victim in only one sense, that many, very many from the top administrative and political leadership of Israel could sit instead of me. I am also a victim in the sense that not Asher Yadlin the person, but Asher Yadlin the symbol, sat on the defendent's bench.37 The truth expressed in Yadlin's book was a sentiment shared by the people of Israel long before the book's publication, and it played a major role in what was, for many years, unthinkable—a Labor defeat in the

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elections. There was no doubt in 1977 that a fifty-year-old organizational style was badly damaged. The only question was: How badly?

Illegalism Rediscovered: the "Mapaization" of Likud and the Rise of the National Unity Coalition During the years that followed the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israelis subjected themselves to sincere self-examination. The war shattered Israeli self-confidence and caused many people to ask hard questions about themselves, their leaders, and what the post-war protest movement called "the poor quality of public life."38 Most of these questions were asked in regard to the mehdal (culpable blunder), the intelligence failure to prepare for the war, but serious soul-searching about many aspects of the illegalistic conduct of public affairs also took place. The postwar critical and moody spirit forced the prompt resignation of the entire gallery of Mapai leadership in April 1974: Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Pinchas Sapir, Abba Eban, and Israel Galili, all of whom had been reelected only three months earlier. Never before had this party experienced such a shake-up. The sense of a new, and better, beginning was demonstrated by the free hand given to Aharon Barak, the dynamic attorney general, to investigate and prosecute all the corruption scandals involving top Mapai leaders.39 The effort, which did not save the party from its electoral debacle, was not renounced by the new administration. On the contrary, the Likud, which in the past had suffered sorely from the old management methods of Mapai, vowed to change things and to create a better Israel. So did the successful Dash, Yigal Yadin's Democratic Party for Change, whose entire platform called for institutional reforms and legalism.40 And, while no major structural changes, such as electoral reform, elimination of unnecessary government portfolios, or the introduction of a constitution, took place, the first Begin administration demonstrated a certain humility and civility. There was a clear separation between party business and government affairs. Many qualified Labor officials, who had served the old regime, were asked to remain in their top positions and contribute their experience and knowledge. The peace process with Egypt, successfully initiated in 1977, further contributed to what appeared to be a new consensus of decency. It all changed during Begin's second administration. The electoral campaign of 1981 reshaped the political psychology of the Likud. All the early polls indicated a Labor comeback. The danger of losing power before Likud had fully tasted it created deep anxiety within the ruling party. Likud activists, including the usually civic-minded Begin, ap-

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proached the electoral campaign as their Armageddon. 41 The previous consensus of public decency faded away. All the bitter memories of the past, from the Sezon (a 1944-1945 violent Hagana operation against Begin's Irgun, in collaboration with the British) to the Altalena (an unauthorized Irgun arms ship sunk in 1948 under Ben-Gurion's orders), reemerged with great intensity. Likud charges of Labor discrimination against Oriental Jews added oil to the fire. Very few Israelis could recall a cruder or more violent electoral campaign. When it was all over, with a reinforced Likud in power, a new era began. All previous civility and humility were replaced by a brutal scramble for positions and influence. Both the Liberals and members of Herut behaved as if they had not been in government for four years. In fact, they conducted themselves like refugees who had just emerged from the desert of Judea, hungry and thirsty. None of the former non-Likud general directors of Likud ministries was retained, and a rat race to fill in much lower positions, by party loyalists, was launched. Many Herut activists, who were content between 1977 and 1981 with the great victory itself now wanted to translate it into concrete rewards and jobs. They made it very clear that, in their opinion, inexperienced loyalists of a Greater Eretz Israel were better civil servants than experienced territorial minimalists. Herat's junior partner, the Liberal Party, which had long ago given up its liberal ideology—or any ideology for that matter—lost most of its constituency, according to the polls. Party members remained in public office only out of Herat's fear that if reduced to their deserved representation, liberal Knesset members would ally with Labor and help it regain power. Confident of their political immunity, the Liberals managed to improve upon Herat's spoils system.42 Everything that was done by Herut in secret was conducted by the Liberals in public, in front of the press and television cameras. The allocation of lucrative official positions became the best way to advance one's influence within this corrupt political party. Prospective supporters had to be shown in public what every party chieftain could offer. Akiva Eldar, political correspondent of Israel's major daily, Ha'aretz, was once told by a Liberal minister that "every press report about political nomination [of his cronies] gives him more power in his party's central committee and he would, consequently, never deny it even if it was false." 43 The 1984 return of Labor to government and the initiation of the unity coalition did not curb the rejuvenated spoils system. There are many indications that it was, in fact, intensified. Each side set about trying to outdo the other by obtaining more positions of power and influence for its loyalists. Almost the entire Israeli civil service had become a battlefield between Likud and Labor, and even intraparty factions. The 1984 division

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of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs between two Labor directors general and the prolonged (three years) battle between the Likud and Labor for the nomination of the professional director of Israel's public television revealed a sorry deterioration. "Political nomination" of public officials and directors of government companies had in recent years become so apparent that the state comptroller, usually a very cautious and judicious person, had chosen to address it directly in her 1989 Annual Report. 44 Rare evidence of the dynamics of the new politicization of the state's civil service was provided by journalist Akiva Eldar, who obtained a confidential letter written to Israel's finance minister by Avraham Natan, Herut's controversial head of Israel's Civil Service Board: The root cause of the problem and its essence is the method according to which public officials are chosen in their parties as potential candidates for cabinet or Knesset seats. It is an open secret that these people need, in the various votes held in the party branches and central committees, the votes of their supporters who, according to the same methods, demand favors. This is the process through which that dependence is formed, like an i.o.u. Some of these elected representatives are compelled, in the process of repayment, to turn to government officials, among them the Civil Service Commissioner, and seek achievements lest their "record" be jeopardized. 45

The reintroduction of the spoils system of the 1950s was only one indication of Herut's Mapaization. It was soon supplemented by an innovative system of party finance. Herut was always weak financially. It never had a large and influential labor organization and did not have the skill and imagination to establish a Histadrut conglomerate of its own. Its poor financial arm, the Tel-Hai Fund, was almost always short of cash and in financial trouble. After their recuperation from the first delirium of power, Herut's operators started to look for an opportunity to improve their party's lot. The opportunity presented itself in the form of the land trade in Judea and Samaria. Following the government's ideological decision to open all the West Bank for Jewish settlement, it further resolved to let individual developers buy Arab land and sell it on the free market. Had the West Bank lands been properly registered and readily salable, there would have been no catch. But both conditions were lacking. The rural lands of the area were never properly registered, and all the potential landowners were warned by Jordan and the PLO that the sale of Arab land to Jews would result in a death penalty. Since many poor Arab landlords could not resist the magic appeal of money, the situation created vast opportunities for astute businessmen who could maneuver among anonymous sellers, shadowy documents, and encouraging author-

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ities. The issues at stake were attractive suburban lands bordering on the green line, thirty minutes from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The developers, who were ready to help Herut, were promised quick government approval of the only official license needed, a positive resolution by the settlement committee of the government. By the time the whole land issue was exposed, it was learned that, under Herut's ideological umbrella of settling Eretz Israel, a big industry had emerged. The promise of large sums of money drove many "idealists" to forge documents, cheat poor Arab peasants out of their land, improperly sell unavailable lots to prospective settlers, and advertise the operation as a great Zionist project. The process through which the legalism of the Israeli side of the old border was transformed to the illegalism of the West Bank was described by Yaari Rosen, a construction engineer, who became a land merchant: The trouble today is that we play in their courtyard with our rules. In those years, we played there according to their rules.... We first had a problem with the lawyers who said: "We cannot talk about that, we are not allowed to hear about that." We told them: "You cannot work here if you do not understand the Arab mentality. An Arab can never understand why should he do something for me without being paid. So I do not understand why we are so shocked by it. And they do not understand why we complain when somebody gives something to somebody else in order to get something done. This is the root cause of the problem.4

The involvement of several Herut officials with the land scandal has not become an issue of grave concern to its leaders. When asked, they are quick to point out that the historical record of Labor corruption is so much richer that for every case that can possibly be brought against them, they can provide dozens of opposite examples. They are, undoubtedly, right, but this form of "counterlegitimacy" is a sure recipe for the persistence of Israel's illegalism. It is convenient and not unjust to conclude this chapter by blaming the governing body of Israel and its leaders for all the recent miseries that have tarnished the name of their country. There are no excuses for the obstruction of justice in the case of the top officials of the Shin Bet, not even the security of the Jewish State. Other recent scandals, which demonstrated the total disregard of the unity government for the principles of the rule of law, apolitical public administration, and impartial use of the taxpayers' money are also indefensible. But the real issue is not personal. It is the problem of a whole political culture that produced these wrongdoers and has been extremely tolerant of many aberrations that took place long before a given party came to power. The political psychology of Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, the ministers involved in the Shin Bet Affair, was shaped when almost everything was permissi-

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ble. They all grew up in Palestine of the 1940s, when it was prestigious to cheat on the British and to engage in "illegal" settlement, "illegal" defense, and "illegal" immigration; but as the anecdote mentioned earlier, they did not notice that a Jewish state had come into being in 1948. And today we know why. They did not notice because their revered mentors did not notice, either. The Zionist founding fathers of Israel were not vicious or corrupt. They were great idealists and daring dreamers. They wished to build a better society and set an example for the rest of the world. Eager to do so as fast as they could, they ignored legalistic details and procedures. All they wanted was political power, free of constraints, to make the dreams come true. They made only one fatal mistake. None of them bothered to read Lord Acton and to stop at the page where it read: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." The real question about Israel is whether the time has not come for its present elites to go back to Lord Acton and find out what many people around this globe have known for more than a century.

Elite Illegalism, Democracy, and Zionism: Concluding Remarks This chapter has neither dealt directly with the broad economic and social consequences of Israel's elite illegalism nor with its impact on the morale and public spirit of the nation at large. But there is ample evidence to support the proposition that the consistent disrespect the Israeli elites display toward the rule of law, the public interest, and the principles of impartial public administration have been responsible for much of the nation's economic problems and its inability to better cope with many of its social maladies. The extremely low esteem in which the average Israeli holds the nation's political parties,47 and the prevailing sense of political inefficacy and blocked opportunities, 48 also seem related to these elite attitudes and behaviors. There is, in fact, a disturbing atmosphere of stagnation in Israel, a sense of collective fatigues: a decline of public spirit, work ethic, and creativity. Most of the nation's public institutions have not changed in a long time and are not likely to change under the present leadership. Political, economic, and social structures, which may have been functional for the needs of a little over half a million Jews who gained independence over forty years ago, still dominate the life of nearly fourand-a-half million Israelis today. It is not surprising that most of these structures are inefficient, obsolete and expensive to maintain. It is hard to ignore that one of their major functions is to help the existing leadership to perpetuate itself and remain in power. Does this mean that Israeli democracy is in danger? Should we expect

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some kind of an antidemocratic takeover in the Jewish State, the establishment of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime that would do away with the anachronistic political institutions of the state, but also with the democratic freedoms of the Israelis? Would the bitter and disappointed Israelis support a new order that would introduce a nondemocratic efficiency and clean the Aegean Stables in one strike? There is, it appears, no danger that such developments are likely to take place in the near future. As mediocre as the Israeli political elite seems to be at present, it is mostly not antidemocratic. The vast majority of Israel's leaders have grown up within a democratic framework and do not recognize any alternative. Furthermore, it is very hard to identify in present-day Israel antidemocratic counterelites who could possibly muster the support of a significant number of rebellious citizens. The army, police, secret services, and large trade unions are all democratic and are headed by individuals committed to democracy. The only antidemocratic model that attracts some public support is the model of Jewish theocracy, but the support it gets as a concrete alternative to the present regime does not exceed, in my estimation, 5 percent, at the most. The fact that a growing number of Israelis tell the pollsters that they are fed up with Israel's "excessive" freedom of speech and Would like to have a "strong leader" does in no way indicate a support for a full-fledged nondemocratic regime. 49 It expresses, so it seems to me, a particular exhaustion with the perennial conflict with the Arabs, and a longing for an exemplary leadership that would replace the present unattractive elite. The highly publicized collapse of Soviet totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and the success of democratic regimes in many other parts of the world further support the proposition that at present there are no prestigious alternatives to democracy as a government, ideology, and system of civic symbols—certainly not in Israel. What seems to be the real danger to Israeli democracy, which is directly related to the issue of elite illegalism, is the growing deterioration of its daily routine, the decline of the quality of civic life of most educated Israelis. The fact that the democratic form of government is becoming perhaps the most prestigious model of our time does not necessarily imply that all democracies are going to be prestigious. Future political scientists will probably develop political typologies that would stress more than ever before the plurality of the democratic experience. They are likely to distinguish developed democracies from backward and incomplete democracies and to put a high premium on the economic and cultural welfare of the citizens of these systems of government. They should probably apply the distinction between "political decay" and "political development" to the specific case of the democratic regime. 50 The fact that Israel will most probably remain a part of the democratic majority of the world

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would mean less and less to fewer and fewer Israelis. The citizens of the Jewish State who earn little, pay high taxes, serve in the reserves for up to fifty days a year, live in danger of hyperinflation, and support large and inefficient public administration and who are disregarded by their politicians and mistreated by their civil servants are not likely to question democracy, but Zionism. Many of them may reach the conclusion reached by a large number of diaspora Jews that in order to be a good Jew and a decent human being, one does not have to live in a Jewish State.

Policy Implications: Toward an Age of Reform There is no question that Israel needs a comprehensive overhaul. It is today exceedingly political, too centralized, and overbureaucratized. Not only does it experience continuous economic crises, but its entire political system exists in a stalemate and is badly suited to the needs of a modern democratic nation about to enter the twenty-first century. Israel's elite illegalism, which is mostly a cultural phenomenon, may be the root cause of all this, but there is no way to directly improve a political culture. There are many ways to act on it in an indirect fashion, however. Institutional and legislative reforms, it appears to me, are the closest means one can think of in this regard, carefully calculated steps that can gradually change collective behavior and reshape normative thinking. Over forty years after it was hastily established, Israel needs to embark on a series of constitutional and structural reforms that would substantiate the Zionist dream of a Jewish and democratic modern state. The reform orientation that I suggest is best summed up by the concept of the "Age of Reform." The concept is borrowed from nineteenth-century British history and the post-1830 era in which the British system of government was thoroughly reformed and democraticized. In the present context, the Age of Reform is both a descriptive and normative term. Descriptively, it implies a long series of structural reforms that touch upon every important sphere of a nation's public life. Normatively, it denotes the desire and hope that preliminary institutional reforms should create a momentum for a comprehensive reexamination of the nation's entire public domain. It implies the belief that structural and institutional changes may affect political culture and boost public spirit. Unlike many students of Israeli politics, I believe that the creation of a formal constitution should be set as a realistic goal. It should include a comprehensive electoral reform—introducing majoritarian elements to the election to the Knesset, and direct election of the prime minister—a bill of rights, and some element of checks and balances between the three branches of government. It should become both the legal and normative

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framework of Israel's public life. My answer to the skeptics who say that a piecemeal constitutional reform is more realistic than a constitution is that if the Knesset will ever pass an electoral reform and a bill of rights, it may just as well make the extra effort and approve a complete constitution. The symbolic, ritual, and educational value of a constitution is so high that the effort will be worthwhile. Since the introduction of a written constitution and an electoral reform have been widely discussed in Israel, I shall not detail the subject here. In addition to the grand constitutional changes, there are many areas in need of reform. The following are a few examples of such areas, but the list is by no means exhaustive. Reform is badly needed in Israel's political parties. Most parties in Israel, especially the old ones, resemble the Bolshevik model more than any other similar organization in the free world. They are disproportionately large, centralized, and oligarchical. They speak the language of democracy but practice Byzantine politics, featuring manipulations, machinations, "yes men," and cronies. Their great material assets and their monopoly over the selection of candidates to the Knesset (and most municipalities) make sure that talented young people are scared away from public office and that most of Israel's leaders are mediocre and uninspiring. This is, among other things, why the parties score so low on the popularity and respectability scales of most Israelis. Two special dimensions in the parties' structures should, in my judgment, be examined: the relationship between the individual party member and his representatives, and the selection of candidates for public office. A major effort should be invested in the development of new party models that may be both appealing to Israelis and acceptable to party officials open to reform. A proper party legislation to impose the new reform should also be considered. In the last decade, Isrealis have witnessed an unprecedented politicization of their public administration. There is no question that this development is just another facet of the general Israeli system of government and the dominant position held by the political parties in the public domain. But there is, nevertheless, a sense in addressing the issue in relative isolation. Most Israelis are aware of the need to keep the public administration clean of politics because there has been great progress in that field between the 1950s and the beginning of the 1980s, including proper legislation. The decline in that progress in the 1980s has been produced by several political changes, including the national unity coalition, which have not yet created irreversible norms of behavior. There is an immediate need to introduce proper legislation that would make politicization a criminal offense and make the fight against it a top national priority. In addition to its intense politicization and huge size, Israel's public

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administration suffers from overbureaucratization and red tape that sometimes makes the life of the average Israeli really miserable. Almost every private initiative in Israel requires a license, the signature of at least two clerks, and the payment of some tax. An Israeli who wants to open a shop or a small business may, on occasion, spend months in government offices before his application is either approved or rejected. To buy an apartment in Israel is relatively easy, but to have it registered as one's property is hell. The average Israeli bureaucrat has never heard of the term "civil service" and is rarely ready to consider the idea. He is certain that the public was created to serve the bureaucracy and not vice versa. While the average Israeli suffers quietly because he has no alternative, the national bureaucracy is the greatest disincentive for potential investors and well-intended entrepreneurs. Israeli bureaucracy may, in fact, be the main reason for the failure of the nation to create a viable and prosperous economy. No single action of the nation's public administration can cope with this huge problem, but a series of long-range reforms, such as the privatization of the economy and the reduction of government involvement in the public sector, seem necessary. The introduction of partial reforms, such as the one suggested in the Kubersky report, are highly recommended, provided they are not seen as a complete solution to the problem. One of the most notorious distortions of the concepts of good government and public interest in Israel involves the structure and size of the Israeli cabinet. The cabinet is today made up of twenty-five ministers, each of whom is entitled to all the privileges of a cabinet office. In addition, there are about seven deputy ministers whose privileges are almost as high. Out of the twenty-five ministries, only about ten are functional and meet the needs of a modern government. The rest are unnecessary at best, and damaging at worst. They include artificial ministries that are either created for junior coalition partners who crave disproportional power and influence, or "ministries without portfolios" that are handed to old-time party loyalists. Each artificial cabinet office is naturally a center of unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape, which make the Parkinson's Law an old-time joke. Everybody in Israel, including the beneficiaries themselves, admits that the inflated cabinet is an outstanding example of bad government and a direct negation of the public interest, but no one lifts a finger to bring an end to the calamity. The excuses are many: the "distorted" electoral system, the "skewed" coalition system, the Jewish organizational tradition, and others. The reform of the cabinet may, however, take place in the context of a larger change. If the Age of Reform advances sufficiently, there is hope that even this sacred cow, which many Israelis have been taking for granted for a long time, may finally be slaughtered. Many conservative observers believe that present-day Israel is a

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deterministic product of powerful and immutable political and miltary forces w h o s e effects can hardly be reduced. While unhappy about the present sense of national malaise, they argue that Israel is doing much better than most Third World nations, and that it is unfair and unjust to compare the young Jewish State with the United States or Sweden. "Give Israel another century or two," they say, "and it will easily catch up with the modern world." I d o not share this approach. I happen to believe that there is almost nothing deterministic in the life of Israel and that the country could and should have b e e n different had certain mistakes b e e n avoided. I also think that Israel d o e s not have another century or t w o in which to improve gradually, and that the last decade of the twentieth century may be crucial for its survival. It seems to me that behind the present passivity of most Israelis there is a genuine quest for change, and that this general sentiment may be galvanized into public action, provided the right leadership is found.

Notes An earlier version of this chapter was published in The Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 47,1988. 1. For an analysis of the Shin Bet Affair, see Pnina Lahav, "A Barrel Without Hoops: The Impact of Counterterrorism on Israel's Legal Culture," Cardozo Law Review 10, no. 3 (December 1988); Moshe Negbi, Above the Law (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988), chap. 1, in Hebrew. 2. Yitzhak Shamir quoted in Ha'aretz. 3. This is the main thesis of Ehud Sprinzak, Every Man Whatsoever is Right in His Own Eyes: Illegalism in Israeli Society (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1986), in Hebrew. 4. H. A. L. Hart, The Concept of Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 197. 5. See Amnon Rubinstein, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1974) pp. 155-165, in Hebrew. 6. See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown, 1965). 7. See Theodor Weinshai, "How to Change the Public Administration in Israel," Netivei Irgun Uminhal 131-132 (June 1975), in Hebrew. 8. See Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken Books, 1952). 9. For an elaboration of the notion of polinormativity in public administration, see Fred W. Riggs, Administration in Developing Countries: The Theory of Prismatic Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), pp. 176-184,277-285. 10. See Yonathan Shapiro, Israeli Democracy (Tel Aviv: Massada, 1977), pp. 62-63. 11. See Sprinzak, Every Man Whatsoever is Right, pp. 58-59. 12. Quoted in The Palmach Book (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 678-680, in Hebrew.

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13. Shapiro, Israeli Democracy, pp. 64-66. 14. Protektzia, the preferential treatment accorded by influential people to friends, and friends of friends, has become a key feature of Israel's political culture. For a full analysis of the protektzia phenomenon, see Brenda Danet, Roads to Redress: A Study of Israel's Hybrid Organizational Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 15. See Shabtai Tevet, David's Passion: David Ben-Gurion, A Man of Authority (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1980), p. 349, in Hebrew. 16. Shapiro, Israeli Democracy, p. 107. 17. See Avraham Avichai, Ben-Gurion: The Maker of the State (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), chap. 12, in Hebrew; Michael Bar Zohar, Ben-Gurion (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1977), vol. 3, pp. 954-955, in Hebrew. 18. See Peter Medding, "Mapai in Israel," in Political Organization and Government in a New Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 19. Ibid. 20. See S. N. Eisenstadt and Elihu Katz, "Some Sociological Observations on the Response of Israeli Organizations to New Immigrants," in Elihu Katz and Brenda Danet, eds., Bureaucracy and the Public (New York: Basic Books); also, Eliezer Don-Yehiya, "Conflict and Cooperations: The Religious Camp and the Labor Movement and the Crisis of Education," Ph. D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977, pp. 735-740. 21. On the inner working of the Gush, see Asher Yadlin, Testimony (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1980), chaps. 13,14, in Hebrew. 22. See Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), chap. 2. 23. On Ben-Gurion's attitude toward the former members of Etzel and Lehi, see Bar Zohar, Ben-Gurion, pp. 926-929. Cf. Yohanan Bader, The Knesset and I (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1979), pp. 24-26, in Hebrew. This is also based on the author's long talks with Dr. Israel Eldad. 24. On the young Shimon Peres and his politics and conflicts, see Mati Golan, Peres (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), chaps. 2-4. Also consult Moshe Sharett's terse remarks in Moshe Sharett, Personal Diary (Tel Aviv: Maariv Books, 1978), in Hebrew; for example, vol. 8, p. 2325. 25. See Shabtai Tevet, Moshe Dayan (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1972), pp. 556-559, in Hebrew. 26. See Pnina Lahav, "The Power and the Position: The Formative Years of the Supreme Court 1948-1955," Zionism 14 (1989), pp. 186-188, in Hebrew. 27. See United Nations Official Record of the Second Session of the General Assembly Resolutions, September 16 to November 29,1948 (Lake Success, New York, 1948), pp. 132-148. 28. See Shevach Weiss, The Knesset (Tel Aviv: Achiasaf Press, 1978), pp. 20-25, in Hebrew. 29. Ibid., p. 20. 30. See Natan Yanai, A Breach at the Top (Tel Aviv: Achiasaf Press, 1978), pts. 5-6, in Hebrew. 31. See Medding, "Mapai in Israel." 32. Maariv (Hebrew), August 27,1951. 33. See Arye Avneri, Sapir (Givatayim: Peleg, 1976), chap. 29, in Hebrew; Eliahu Salpeter and Yoval Elitzur, Who Runs Israel (Tel Aviv: Lewin Epstein, 1973), pp. 53-58, in Hebrew. 34. See Shaul Evron, Razi Gutterman, Dov Genihovski et al., The Break (Tel

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Aviv: Special Edition, 1975), in Hebrew. 35. See Shmuel Tamir, "The Seeds of Evil," in Evron et al., The Break, pp. 170-171. 36. See Shevach Weiss, The Switchover (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978), pp. 59-60, in Hebrew. 37. See Asher Yadlin, in Weiss, The Switchover, p. 213. 38. Ehud Sprinzak, "Extreme Politics in Israel," The Jerusalem Quarterly 15 (Fall 1977), pp. 40-41. 39. See Yechiel Guttman, The Attorney General Against the Government (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1981), chap. 30, in Hebrew 40. See Benjamin Akzin, "The Likud"; Ephraim Torgovnic, "A Movement for Change in a Stable System," in Allan Arian, The Elections in Israel, 1977 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1980); Nachman Urieli and Amnon Barzilai, The Rise and Fall of the Democratic Movement for Change (Tel Aviv: Reshafim, 1982), pp. 194-221, in Hebrew; Amnon Rubinstein, A Certain Political Experience (Tel Aviv: Edanim, 1982), chaps. 3-5, in Hebrew. 41. See Asher Arian, "Elections 1981: Competitiveness and Conflict," The Jerusalem Quarterly 21 (Fall 1981). 42. See Arye Avneri, The Liberal Connection (Tel Aviv: Zemora Bitan, 1984), chaps. 18-36. 43. Akiva Eldar, "A National Nominations Government" (Hebrew), Ha'aretz Magazine, January 10,1986. 44. See The State Comptroller: The 1988 Annual Report (Jerusalem: State Comptroller's Office, 1989), in Hebrew. 45. See Eldar, " A National Nominations Government. " 46. Haim Shibi, "The Holy Land, The Holy Fund," Yediot Achronot Magazine, December 12,1985. 47. See Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, Chapter 12, in this volume. 48. See Gadi Wolfsfeld, Chapter 10, in this volume. 49. See Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, Chapter 12, in this volume. 50. See Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 86-87.

10 The Politics of Provocation Revisited: Participation and Protest in Israel Gadi Wolf sfeld

Item: T h e Jewish mind invents something new. D u e to the increasing number of worker demonstrations lately, the " S h m i r a " company has decided to develop a special kit for d e m o n s t r a t i o n s . . . .The special kit can be rented for 1000 Shekels for each event and includes all of the equipment necessary for carrying out a demonstration: A jeep with an accompanying stage, a speaker's podium, microphones, amplifier, speakers, placards, flags, and even sandwiches and drink. Using the kit, protesters can arrive at any place in the country, set up, and immediately begin to demonstrate without any need for additional preparation. —Yediot Achronot (Hebrew Daily) January 25,1990

The Initial Thesis The political culture of Israel is a far cry from the "civic culture" described in Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's classic work.1 A basic premise of that study was that people in Western democracies are most likely to participate in politics when they have developed a strong sense of political trust and efficacy. Political action in Israel is based more on cynicism than trust; it is based on the central belief that "only the squeaky wheel gets the oil." The politics of provocation 2 is a cultural syndrome in which direct action becomes the predominant means of ordinary citizens to make demands on the political system. A strategy of provocation is based on the belief that politicians are much more likely to respond to pressure than persuasion. The politics of provocation have become the primary strategy of participation among Israelis because few have any faith in the institutional channels of redress. The development of this strategy during the 1970s and early 1980s was based on three trends in the Israeli polity: an increasing sense of political discontent, an increasing need for political

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expression, and a decreasing sense of institutional efficacy. These trends led to a sense of "blocked opportunities," 3 which can be defined as "a belief that institutional means of political access are either inaccessible or worthless to the average citizen." 4 The resulting increasing use of protest during these years is well documented. Samuel Lehman-Wilzig 5 points to the fact that by 1979 the level of protest had risen to five times that which had existed in 1960. The comparative data presented in The Politics of Provocation6 found that when compared to the United States and a large number of countries in Europe, Israel has one of the highest levels of participation in demonstrations. In the same study, Israel was also the only country in which protest was seen by citizens as the primary means of redress. When citizens were asked what they could do to change a law with which they disagreed, there was only one country in which "demonstrations" was the most popular choice: Israel. A great many of these protests tend to be illegal or even violent. An analysis 7 of over 450 protest acts that occurred between 1979 and 1984 revealed that about 30 percent of all protests were illegal, 23 percent of all acts involved some type of public disorder, and 15 percent of the total included some act of violence (these categories are not mutually exclusive). It is important to emphasize, however, that many of these acts are cases of "pseudo-violence" designed more for the media than to hurt anyone. Injuries were reported in only 19 percent of these acts of disorder and violence, and 70 percent of these injuries were classified as "light." In Israel, at least, the politics of provocation are often designed more as theater than combat. 8 It is also useful to remember that participation in illegal acts is not evenly distributed among the general population. The proportion of those who actually carry out illegal acts remains relatively small. The percentage reporting participation in such acts range from a low of 1.3 percent, who state that they have seized land within the last two years, to a high of 4 percent, who have broken the law in some type of labor action. 9 This is because illegal action tends to be highly concentrated in specific communities, such as the Haredim in Jerusalem, settlers on the West Bank, 10 and some of the more radical Arab villages in the Galil. In such protest-prone communities, the distinction between legal and illegal forms of political action becomes blurred, 11 and a significant proportion of the population becomes mobilized in provocative behavior. Surveys conducted in the community of Kiryat Arba on the West Bank, for example, reveal that over 30 percent of the population has carried out some form of illegal protest in the previous two years, while the figure in the Arab village of Sachnin is over 40 percent! 12

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T h e s e illegal protests have a m u c h g r e a t e r impact on t h e political system t h a n m o r e conventional action d u e t o the d i s p r o p o r t i o n a t e a m o u n t of publicity they generate. In this way even a relatively small n u m b e r of citizens a r e a b l e t o o f f e r significant lessons to t h e rest of the p o p u l a t i o n a b o u t t h e politics of provocation. A s f u r t h e r detailed below, t h e r e is g o o d reason to believe that m a n y Israelis have learned these lessons all t o o well. The Etiology of Provocative

Politics

My original study p o i n t e d t o a n u m b e r of factors in Israeli society t h a t c o n t r i b u t e t o this u n h e a l t h y state of affairs. It is clear that o n e of t h e reasons f o r feelings of political i m p o t e n c e can b e a t t r i b u t e d t o t h e n a t u r e of t h e electoral system. W h e n Israelis are asked why t h e r e are so m a n y d e m o n s t r a t i o n s , the most p o p u l a r r e a s o n given is that " t h e citizen d o e s not have e n o u g h o t h e r ways to express his o p i n i o n s to t h e authorities." 1 3 W h i l e contacting o n e ' s representative is a very c o m m o n source of redress in most W e s t e r n countries, Israelis d o not h a v e any particular r e p r e s e n t a tive t o contact. A n additional reason for so m u c h illegal political action is the relative lack of risk involved in carrying out such acts, at least for Jewish protesters. In m y s a m e analysis of protest groups m e n t i o n e d earlier, it was f o u n d t h a t illegal acts lead to arrests in only 12 p e r c e n t of t h e s e p r o t e s t s that a r e p e a c e f u l (such as t h o s e that d o not have a license), in 24 p e r c e n t of t h o s e that involve s o m e f o r m of nonviolent disorder (e.g., blocking streets), a n d in 37 p e r c e n t of violent protests (e.g., throwing rocks). P r o t e s t g r o u p leaders k n o w t h e n , that they have a b e t t e r - t h a n - e v e n c h a n c e of b r e a k i n g t h e law with impunity. E v e n t h o s e w h o are arrested for such offenses rarely s t a n d trial o r go to jail. Police o f t e n m a k e " d e a l s " with p r o t e s t leaders by promising to release t h o s e w h o w e r e arrested in exchange for p r o m i s e s of p e a c e . WTiile such a r r a n g e m e n t s n o d o u b t lead to a certain calm in t h e s h o r t run, they f u r t h e r a d d to t h e general a t m o s p h e r e of "illegalism" t h a t seems to p e r m e a t e so m u c h of Israel society. 14 Y e t a n o t h e r r e a s o n for the politics of p r o v o c a t i o n has t o d o with t h e n a t u r e of t h e news m e d i a in Israel. A t the time of this writing, Israel h a s only o n e n a t i o n a l televised news p r o g r a m ( M a b a t ) , which is viewed o n a daily basis by t h e vast majority of the p o p u l a t i o n . This o f f e r s p r o t e s t g r o u p s a t r e m e n d o u s p l a t f o r m t o air their d e m a n d s , a n d t h o s e w h o c a n n o t attract m e d i a a t t e n t i o n are d o o m e d t o oblivion. T h e only way to attract such a t t e n t i o n , however, is to carry out acts that a r e e i t h e r large e n o u g h or p r o v o c a t i v e e n o u g h to b e d e f i n e d as n e w s w o r t h y . W e a k e r p r o t e s t g r o u p s t h e r e f o r e must pay the " d u e s of d i s o r d e r " in o r d e r t o place their case on t h e n a t i o n a l agenda. 1 5

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The final reason for the politics of provocation is that it appears to work. It would appear that when group demands are easily met (say, with money), Israeli leaders prefer to respond to those demands and thus remove the issue from the public agenda. A total of seventy protest leaders were contacted in the original study and 87 percent of them reported at least partial success. This is, albeit, a small sample, and protest leaders may be more likely to brag of success than the rank and file, but it does offer some indication that Israeli protest can lead to success.16 In the study described in this chapter, we use data that has been collected since publication of the original study in order to reexamine the dynamics of participation and protest in Israel. The discussion is divided into three sections. The first section offers an update on some of the general psychological and behavioral trends that were noted in the initial research, while the second section presents new data in an attempt to examine the level of equality characterizing political participation in Israel. In the final section, some of the policy implications of these findings are considered.

Blocked Opportunities and Protest: An Update There have been many political changes in Israel since the original survey data were collected in 1984, the most notable being the initiation of the National Unity government in 1984 that continued until 1990. This coalition government included the vast majority of Knesset members, and the parliamentary opposition has become remarkably small. It is conceivable that such a development would have led to less discontent in Israel. Assuming that a good deal of dissatisfaction comes from those political groups that find themselves in the opposition, any co-optation of those groups into the government might lead to less dissent. The data does not support this view. They point rather to a polity that has become even more cynical about the political system and more convinced about the necessity of bypassing the institutional paths of influence. One of the more revealing findings of the initial study was the sharp rise in political discontent among Israelis. The level of discontent was evaluated on the basis of one particular question that is asked on a regular basis in the Continual Survey of the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Science Research. That question asks how the government is dealing with the "present situation" and the yearly percentage replying "poorly" or "very poorly" serves as an indicator of political discontent. The rise in political discontent over the years is displayed in Figure 10.1. The original study17 presented results until 1984. Although only 8 percent of the population was dissatisfied with government performance

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Figure 10.1 The Rise in Political Discontent

Percent Discontented

Year Labor Government

-*-

Likud Government

Unity Government Source: Guttman Institute for Applied Social Science Research

in 1967, the proportion of discontented reached a staggeringly high of 81 percent by the time the Labor Party was voted out of power in 1977. When the Likud began its rule that year, it began in a honeymoon period in which the level of discontent dropped to 32 percent. Seven years later, during the election year of 1984, discontent had returned to almost the level (72 percent) it was under Labor. The latest figures on Israeli discontent were provided by Shulamit Levi18 and include the period of the first National Unity government (1985-1988).19 As can be seen in Figure 10.1, the present attitude of the public can best be summed up by the saying: "A curse on both your houses." Despite the existence of the National Unity government, discontent among the Israeli public has remained very high. It is important to point out that the intifada began in December 1987, and so this continuing high level of dissatisfaction cannot be blamed only on the Palestinian uprising. These figures show that the political discontent expressed by the Israeli public is part of a long stable trend.20 The results from another survey question also illustrate the growing alienation of the Israeli polity. Israelis have been asked on a number of occasions how they "saw politics in Israel" and were given four choices:

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very positively, positively, negatively, or very negatively. In 1973 only 30 percent viewed politics in a negative manner, but by 1984 the proportion of cynics had grown to 56 percent of the population. When the identical question was asked in 1990, a remarkable 77 percent expressed this view.21 It is clear that the creation of the National Unity government has not done anything to alleviate the overall sense of political malaise in Israel. There is yet additional evidence on this point. It was argued earlier that the politics of provocation are based on a sense of blocked opportunities: a belief that the institutional paths of political influence offer little chance of success. Respondents in the first study were asked to agree or disagree with three statements that were intended to tap this sense of frustration: 1. "The only way to have an influence on the government is to make noise." 2. "The major reason why people go out and demonstrate is that there is no other way to have an influence on the government." 3. "It isn't nice to carry out a demonstration or to block a street, but sometimes there's no choice." There has been a dramatic rise in this sense of blocked opportunities since 1982, as can be seen in Figure 10.2. 22 The majority of the population now agrees with all three of these statements. The most remarkable and worrisome finding has to do with the "no choice" item: Fifty-five percent of the Israeli population now agrees that it is sometimes necessary to carry out illegal demonstrations. 23 This figure tells quite a bit about the political culture of Israel. A growing proportion of the population feels skeptical about institutional avenues of redress and appears to have more faith in the politics of provocation. Current

Levels of Participation

and

Protest

Have increasing feelings of alienation and discontent also led to a dramatic rise in protest in recent years? Apparently not. While the evidence on this point is far from perfect, it would appear that the dramatic rise in protests that marked the 1970s has been followed by a leveling-off period in the 1980s. While the potential for protest has clearly risen, the level of actual participation in such acts appears to have remained relatively stable. There are two major methods of measuring the level of protest; while neither method is completely reliable, each type points to similar conclusions. The first method is based on simply counting the number of protests that are reported in newspapers. 24 This methodology was used by Lehman-Wilzig 25 to track the number of Israeli protests reported

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Figure 10.2 Sense of Blocked Opportunities Percent Agreeing

/I

between 1948 and 1986 and by the present author to measure protest activity between 1979 and 1984 (as reported in the original study). While each set of data is based on different newspapers, they lead to similar conclusions. Lehman-Wilzig refers to the period between 1979 and 1986 as "the age of protest normalization" in which the number of yearly protests remained high (about two hundred a year) but did not continue to rise. A similar trend of stability was found in The Politics of Provocation: After 1979, the number of protests tended to rise and fall in reaction to the political circumstance of each year. The second method of measuring protest behavior is through survey data that looks at the proportion of the population that has actually participated in demonstrations. In the original survey carried out by the present author in 1984, a total of 16 percent of the adult Jewish population reported participating in at least one demonstration. Although the evidence collected since then is not totally consistent, there is little reason to believe that this proportion has grown. In three recent surveys (all of which used somewhat different question formats), the proportion that reported participating in demonstrations ranged from 12 to 23 percent of the population. 26

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It would appear that there is a contradiction between the fact that the sense of blocked opportunities has continued to rise but the level of protest has remained about the same. One reason for this anomaly may be that demonstrations have become a rather conventional form of political participation. If so, growing cynicism about the responsiveness of the political system may lead to a growing number of frustrated spectators who have given up all hope of political influence, even through protest.27 The 77 percent of the population that view "politics" in a negative light may also be expressing something more general about participation.28 It is also possible that we are witnessing a ceiling effect in protest participation, at least among the general population. It is well known that only a small proportion of citizens in any country tend to translate their political attitudes into actual behavior. In addition to any cynicism they may have about the effectiveness of such acts, only people with an unusually high level of motivation and opportunity actually participate in protest. Most of those who are politically dissatisfied tend to restrict their political participation to voting. It may be that, barring any major political crisis, the political mobilizers who were so successful in the 1970s have now exhausted their potential for new recruits.29 In any case, these findings certainly do not give any reason for optimism. Israelis are extremely dissatisfied with their political system and few have any faith in the conventional forms of political participation. There are two major ways of dealing with such political cynicism. The most frequent response is to simply avoid all forms of political participation (apart from voting). The second, less common, route is to turn to the use of direct action in an attempt to provoke the government into some type of response. It may be that many of the most recently disenchanted are simply choosing to withdraw.

The Equality of Political Participation in Israel The principle of equality is central to democracy. It is especially important in the area of political participation. If certain social groups are systematically left out of the participatory process, their opinions will remain unheard and the social elite will continually dominate the public agenda.30 These inequalities may result from either a collective unwillingness to participate due to a lack of social incentives or from an inability to participate because of external restrictions. In either case, the group remains underrepresented in the process of political influence. The conclusions of the initial study about the equality of participation in Israel were mixed. Education, for example, made very little difference in the area of institutional action, but there were significant differences in

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the area of protest. Contrary to conventional wisdom, protest was found to be a much more elitist form of political action than party politics. Women were much less likely to participate in institutional forms of action, but they were able to achieve some degree of equality in the world of protest. Finally, age was found to have no relationship with institutional forms of action, but the young were much more likely to participate in protests. We shall look at some more recent (1988) data to see if anything has changed and for the first time see some of the differences in participation between Jews and Arabs. 31 In each of the following analyses, the national average for each indicator has been set to zero in order to allow a more graphic presentation of which social groups participate above and below that average. 32 These tests have examined the effects of differences in gender, education, age, ethnicity, and religiosity on the various forms of political participation. Only those factors found to have a statistically significant effect have been placed in the graphs. The first analysis examines the relationship between social background and institutional participation. This rather broad term refers to the extent to which citizens report joining a political party, working in a political campaign, attending a political meeting, and/or working in their community to solve common problems. Institutional participation tends to differ from mobilized action in a number of ways. This type of participation is usually based on some type of organizational membership and therefore often involves a commitment over a longer period of time. Relatedly, those who participate in institutional forms of action are likely to be dealing with a wide range of issues, while those who participate in mobilized action often limit their participation to demonstrations concerning one particular topic over a much shorter time period. In general, the new data tend to support our previous conclusions about the relationship between social background and institutional participation. Neither education, ethnicity, nor religiosity have any effect on this type of political action. In contrast to many other Western countries, 33 the Israeli political parties have managed to attract people from a wide range of social backgrounds. This is an important finding and represents a significant achievement for Israeli democracy. 34 As can be seen in Figure 10.3, however, Israeli institutions receive very low marks in the area of feminine equality. Israeli women tend to participate at levels far below the national average while Israeli men are much more likely to participate (F = 8.87, p < .001). While part of the reason for this difference lies in the fact that women are less interested in politics than men, the gender gap remains even after controlling for such variations in motivation. Israeli women are the one social group that is being systematically excluded from institutional politics. This suggests, at

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Figure 10.3 Participation in Institutional Action 0.3

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0.2 -

Women

Men

GENDER (B«ta-.14)

Low

Med

High

AGE (BcU-.11)

the very least, that women's interests are much less likely to be addressed by the political institutions of Israel. In the original study, no link was found between age and institutional participation, but as can be seen in Figure 10.3, a relationship did emerge in the present study.35 It would appear that it is the middle-age groups (ages 30 to 55) that exhibit the highest level of institutional participation, followed by the oldest group (56 and up), while the youngest citizens (18 to 29) are the least likely to participate (F = 7.25, p < .001). There is certainly some logic to this finding, and similar results have been reported in other countries. 36 The theoretical logic would be that those in the middle-age group are the ones who reached the most appropriate stage of life for such participation. These years are devoted to a number of long-time commitments, whereas the young find themselves both less likely to "settle down" and even less likely to join political parties.37 The lower level of political involvement among the oldest group, on the other hand, may be tied to a more general retreat from activism. All these explanations remain little more than speculation, especially since no such relationship was found in the original study. The subject of the relationship between age and polit-

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Israel

ical participation in Israel is certainly worth pursuing further. Turning to the subject of political protest, it is critical to distinguish between legal and illegal protest. While the more traditional work in the field 38 emphasized the distinction between "conventional" and "unconventional" political action, this conceptualization mistakenly places legal and illegal forms of protest in the same behavioral category. R e c e n t cross-cultural evidence 39 shows that those who participate in legal protest are more likely to participate in other forms of legal action (e.g., campaigning) than in illegal protests (e.g., blocking streets). Therefore researchers should refrain from lumping legal and illegal forms of political behavior under the general rubric of protest. T h e analysis begins, then, by looking at the relationship between social background and participation in legal protest. 4 0 As can be seen in Figure 10.4, legal protest remains the most elitist of all forms of political action. Those who participate in protest tend to be much more educated than those who do not ( F = 23.29, p < .001), and one's level of education proves to be the single most important variable in explaining protest behavior, more important than even age. Since protest is one of the most popular forms of political participation in Israel and one of the only means

Figure 10.4 Participation in Legal Protests Amount of Protest

Low Med High EDUCATION (B«U'.21)

1 1 1 Low Med High AGE

(Beta*.16)

i

1 1 1 Rel Trad Sec RELIGIOSITY (Btlt-OB)

1

r Worn Men GENDER

(B»l»-.08)

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of overcoming an otherwise blocked political system, this finding has important implications for the distribution of political influence in the country. Protest is clearly not the great equalizer it is often purported to be. Why is institutional participation in Israel much more egalitarian than protest? One reasonable explanation can be furnished by looking at differences that have been found in other countries. 41 It has been determined that one of the factors determining the level of participatory equality is the extent to which political organizations have a powerful role in the country's political process. The centrality of political parties in Israel is well documented, 42 and parties attempt to mobilize citizens from a variety of backgrounds and classes. The organizational structure of protest groups, however, is much weaker and mostly local. The decision to participate in protests is likely to be based more on individual initiative than on organizational recruitment. When the process of participation depends on individual motivations and abilities, social inequalities are much more likely to emerge. 43 Returning to Figure 10.4, we find that age is the second most important factor explaining legal protest (F = 14.21,/? < .001). It is not surprising that the young are much more likely to engage in protest. This finding has been replicated in many other countries44 and is clearly tied to the growing acceptance of protest as a legitimate form of participation throughout the Western world. The other two factors, gender and religiosity, have a much weaker relationship with legal protest. Nevertheless, both trends are worth noting. Although women are less likely to participate in protest than men, the gender gap is much smaller in the area of protest (F = 7.53, p < .01) than in institutional participation. Women who want to be politically involved apparently find it easier to get involved in protest. Thus while institutional action is more egalitarian in terms of education, protest offers more equality between the sexes. Finally, those who label their level of religiosity "traditional" are somewhat less likely to participate in protest than those who call themselves religious or secular (F = 4.68,p < .01). It may be that those who find themselves in the center on this religious scale feel less intensely about other issues as well. In any case, these differences are rather small and remain more of a footnote to the other more significant results. We turn now to the subject of illegal political action. It is very difficult to analyze the social differences associated with illegal protest within the context of a national survey. The very small percentage of the population participating in illegal acts (or that will admit to carrying out such acts) makes it difficult to collect survey data for statistical analysis. It is possible, however, to look at the potential for illegal action.

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Figure 10.5 Potential for Illegal Action 1.5

1

0.5

0 -0.5

-1

-1.5

People in the survey were asked how likely would they participate in a wide variety of actions, some of which were illegal. 45 As can be seen in Figure 10.5, the youngest respondents exhibit a much higher potential for illegal action than either the middle or oldest group ( F = 23.16,p < .001). This apparent disregard for the law among the young may have serious consequences for the level of illegal activity in the future. It is possible, of course, that these younger citizens will simply grow out of this penchant for radical action. The alternative, more worrisome, scenario suggests that this potential for radical action will spread throughout the population in the coming years. 46 The final analysis deals with the differences in political action reported by Jews and Arabs. The evidence presented here is the first data ever made available on the political participation of Israeli Arabs. 47 As can be seen in Figure 10.6, the results are striking. The Arabs in Israel are much more politically active than the Jews. They are much more likely to work for a political party, get involved in community action, contact political leaders, and participate in demonstrations. This finding seems to run counter to the basic theme of this chapter. The Arabs in Israel are certainly even more likely than Jews to develop a

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Figure 10.6 Political Participation: J e w s and Arabs 70

Percent Participating

Jews Arabs PARTY WORK

Jews Arabs COMMUNAL WORK

Jews Arabs CONTACTING

Jews

Arabs

LEGAL DEMOS

sense of blocked opportunities, and they also have good reasons to be alienated from a political system dominated by Jewish concerns. Why then, would Israeli Arabs exhibit such a propensity for both institutional action and protest? The answer surely lies in the nature of Israeli Arab politics. The major parties that represent the Arabs (Chadash and Mitkademet) are considered radical parties and are just as likely to be involved in organizing demonstrations as in carrying out the more traditional functions of a political party. These parties apparently have been very successful in mobilizing the Arab population of Israel for both institutional and mobilized action. A shared sense of community and purpose among the Israeli Arabs have no doubt accelerated this process of mobilization. The example of the Israeli Arabs offers yet another illustration of the fact that political discontent is more likely to lead to political action than withdrawal. The fact that the Arabs overwhelmingly vote and work for radical political parties can hardly be considered an endorsement of the Israeli political system. Rather, the Arabs are willing to express this discontent within a variety of modes. In any case, Israeli Arabs are even more likely than Jews to participate in politics than many ethnic minorities

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around the world. The fact that Israeli Arabs are doing a great deal of "public speaking" does not, however, imply that anyone in the Israeli government is actually listening. In order to summarize these data, it is useful to build a profile of typical participants. The person who is most likely to take part in institutional politics in Israel tends to be a middle-aged male, while the person most likely to participate in demonstrations tends to be young and well educated. It is also important to emphasize a point that concerns a relationship that was not found. Ethnicity did not prove to be a significant variable in explaining any form of political participation. Any ethnic differences that emerged (say, in the area of legal protest) were more than accounted for by variations in education, When one considers the vast amount of literature on the social and political differences between Eastern and Western Jews in Israel, it is encouraging to find no such gap in the area of political participation. In general, it can be said that Israel gets a mixed grade in the area of participatory equality. Certain social groups are systematically left out of the process of political influence, but many others are included. In this respect Israel tends to resemble the state of most other Western democracies that stress the need for greater political equality but never quite achieve it. Policy Implications In this section we attempt to offer some of the policy implications of the two major issues discussed in this chapter: inequalities in political participation and the extent of political cynicism. The greatest problem in the area of social inequality is the lack of political participation by women, especially in political parties. Ironically, many of the political party reforms now being suggested may actually lead to even less equality for Israeli women. While the increasing use of primaries to choose the party slate has many advantages, it works to the disadvantage of women candidates, who have to attract the votes of the mostly male party rank and file. The only way to overcome these differences is for women who are active in political parties to mobilize more of their compatriots to join parties and to continually press for the inclusion of women in the decisionmaking apparatus of all these organizations. The second major source of inequality is the tendency for protesters to be disproportionately from the better-educated sector of the population. The fact that protest is an elitist form of activity is, it seems, in some ways an even more difficult problem to solve. As discussed, protest tends

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to based on individual initiative, and the better educated are simply more motivated to protest. On the other hand, if the inequality of political protest became better known among organized protest groups, such groups might make a more concerted effort to recruit new members from a wider social base. W e turn now to the major issue of this chapter: political cynicism. Political cynicism leads to a choice between the lesser of two evils: inactivity or provocative politics. The politics of provocation is a basically unhealthy form of political communication. Protest is rooted in the soil of distrust and its fruits are often bitter. The use of protest does not offer a genuine substitute for institutional participation. It is a short-term, specific form of political behavior whose tone is almost always negative and often carries with it the threat of violence. Evidence presented in beginning of this chapter showed that the trends in Israel point to even more cynicism than in the past. The majority of the population now subscribes to the underlying beliefs of blocked opportunities. These convictions, it was argued, are based on a realistic evaluation of the available channels of political communication. Any attempt to alleviate the problem must center, then, on the development of alternative paths of political influence. One source of redress may be electoral reform. There has been a great deal of debate in Israel about the pros and cons of various reform packages (see Chapter 5 of this volume). It is understandable that a good deal of this debate has focused on the impact various revisions would have on the relative power of the established political parties. Electoral reform may also, however, offer at least a partial remedy for the feelings of blocked opportunities and political inefficacy discussed previously. One of the major advantages of a system that is at least partially based on regional representation is that it offers a very clear channel of political communication. This is especially important when one bears in mind that a great deal of protest is communally based. Individual residents and community organizations should find it much easier to gain access to the political bureaucracy if politicians were directly accountable to that community. 48 The opening of a new channel of communications could release some of the pressure resulting from having the other channels blocked. The success of such reform, however, depends on the nature of its actual implementation. 49 If the national concerns of the political parties continue to dominate the electoral rhetoric at the local level, voters will feel obligated to vote along traditional ideological lines.50 The answer to this question depends on the extent to which any electoral reform encourages the creation of a new and independent political leadership that feels as much an obligation to its constituency as to the political party it represents.

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A decentralization of political power would be a second reform that could ease the frustrations of the Israeli polity. The government and the Knesset now totally dominate the process of resource allocation in the country, and citizens who want to make demands on the political system always turn to Jerusalem. Citizens would find it easier to approach a local government if the municipalities were given more authority. This process might also lead to the development of a more independent political elite, such as the elite that resulted from the direct election of mayors in Israel. These processes of regional representation and the decentralization of resource allocation would also deal directly with the issue of community protest mentioned earlier. Community solidarity could be used in more constructive ways if such communities were given real political power. These reforms would not completely eliminate the need for community protest concerning national issues, but many issues could be resolved at the local level.51 Along with these carrots, the political system must also provide a few sticks. While the present evidence dealt with the individual level analysis, analysis of the behavior of protest groups shows a significant proportion of those groups break the law.52 Therefore the penalties for crossing that line must be more strictly enforced in order to raise the cost of illegal protest to the protester. Such a change in policy, however, would only be seen as legitimate when it was combined with a more general political reform. It would be wrong to close off the one existing channel of political communication unless alternative avenues were opened. It is also critical that these laws be applied equitably and reasonably to all protest groups regardless of the nature of their membership or goals. One cannot hope to win respect for the law if the authorities discriminate between groups or if enforcers use the law as an excuse for their own form of violence. In any society, such respect must be earned. It is not a given. The Israeli mass media also has an important role to play in this process. As stated, protest groups in Israel have an unusual dependence on the mass media due to the lack of alternative paths of political influence. The only way to gain access to the press seems to be to carry out media events that are unusually disorderly and violent. The press could certainly offer alternative means of airing citizen demands by allowing groups greater access. The recent increase in local newspapers 53 and the promise of community television channels could certainly contribute to this process. However, the importance of these changes will again depend on the distribution of political power within Israel. The importance of the local media is directly related to the stature of local government and the extent to which national representatives depend on their constituents. In the present situation, almost all protest groups find themselves competing for

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a very limited amount of space in the national media, and the only way to successfully compete for that space is through disorder and violence. The question remains as to whether the Israeli public is capable of such changes in orientation. Even if the political system were to become more open, there is no guarantee that Israelis would give up their preferences for protest. There can be little doubt that many groups, especially those on the fringes of the political continuum, would still feel the need to turn to more radical actions. The changes that have been suggested, however, should provide alternative paths of political influence for the vast majority of the Israeli public that has no inherent stake in political disorder. The point of this chapter is certainly not to suggest that protest is bad. Protest serves as an important check on the excesses of any government, and it is an especially critical means of participation in Israel. To paraphrase an Americanism: "It may be a crooked wheel, but (for now) it's the only wheel in town." The most significant problem is not that people in Israel tend to protest, but rather the underlying beliefs of political distrust and the growing disrespect for the law that accompany such behavior. It is hoped that in a more open political system, protest will no longer serve as a cynical substitute for a more long-term commitment based on a heightened sense of political efficacy. The ultimate goal of any political reforms is to build a solid core of democrats in Israel who believe that genuine political participation is both important and worthwhile.

Notes 1. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963). 2. G a d i Wolfsfeld, The Politics of Provocation:

Participation

and Protest in

Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988). 3. Jeffery M. Paige, "Political Orientation and Riot Participation," American Sociological Review 36 (1971), pp. 810-820.

4. Wolfsfeld, The Politics of Provocation, p. 12. 5. Samuel Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, Bottle-Necked System: The Evolution and Roots of Israeli Public Protest, 1949-1986 (Bloomfield: I n d i a n a

University Press, 1990).

6. Wolfsfeld, The Politics of

Provocation.

7. Ibid. 8. This description does not refer to protests in the occupied territories, where both the violence and the risk of injuries are very real. 9. The data being presented here are based on a survey conducted as part of a cross-cultural study of political violence. The survey was carried out by the firm of Mod'in Ezrachi in January 1988. In order to encourage accurate responses,

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respondents were given a self-administered questionnaire containing a large number of participatory acts and asked to put them in a sealed envelope. Data were also collected in two "protest-prone communities": the Jewish town of Kiryat Arba and the A r a b town of Sachnin. 10. David Weisburd, Jewish Settler Violence: Deviance as Social Control (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 1989). 11. Gadi Wolfsfeld, K. D. Opp, H. Dietz, and J. Green, "The Structure of Political Action: A Cross-Cultural Analysis." Paper presented at the Twelfth Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Tel Aviv, Israel, June 1989. 12. These data were collected in the spring of 1990 as the second part of the panel study described in footnote two. Note that the figures are even higher if one looks back over a four-year period rather than the two-year period that was asked about in each survey. There is good reason to believe that the amount of illegal activity in Sachnin has risen since the start of the intifada. Arabs in Sachnin report higher levels of participation in illegal demonstrations, confrontations with the police, and confrontations with other political groups. 13. Samuel Lehman-WiLzig, "The Israeli Protester," The Jerusalem Quarterly 21 (1983), pp. 127-138. 14. See Ehud Sprinzak, Chapter 9, in this volume. 15. Gadi Wolfsfeld, "Media, Protest, and Political Violence," Journalism Monographs 127 (June 1991); Gadi Wolfsfeld, "Collective Political Action and Media Strategy: The Case of Yamit," Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (1984), pp. 1-36; Gadi Wolfsfeld, "The Symbiosis of Press and Protest: An Exchange Analysis," Journalism Quarterly 61 (1984), pp. 550-556. 16. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, uses a different methodology and comes to the opposite conclusion about the relative success of Israeli protests. 17. Wolfsfeld, The Politics of Provocation. 18. Shulamit Levi, "What D o You Think About the Way the Government Is Handling the Problems in the Current Situation." Research report from the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Science Research (Jerusalem, 1991). 19.1 want to thank Shlomit Levy of the Guttman Institute for kindly providing me with the latest results from the Continuing Survey. 20. As Levi, "What Do You Think," points out, the public generally supports the government during times of crisis but then returns to its previous levels of skepticism. 21. All three surveys were carried out by the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Science Research. The 1973 survey was part of Asher Arian's election study, whereas the question was asked in 1984 and 1990 at the request of the present author. 22.1 want to thank Galia Golan and Noami Chazan for allowing me to include these questions within a larger survey conducted by them on the topic of "Women's Attitudes Towards Peace and War." The data were collected by the Dachaf Institute in the fall of 1989 and included a total of 1,010 respondents. 23. This is actually a conservative estimate. All of the statements included a response category of "unsure." The percentages reported here only consider those who actually agreed (i.e., agree and strongly agree) with the claims of blocked opportunities. The proportions are even more dramatic if one removes the undecided from the analysis. The percentage agreeing with the "make noise" item rose (1982-1989) from 30 percent to 58 percent, those who agree with the "main reason" item increased from 60 to 70 percent, and the proportion who concurred

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with the "no choice" statement rose from 38 percent to 66 percent. 24. While the newspaper is an imperfect source of information about protests, it probably does offer a fairly good indicator of those protests that have some type of public impact. It also should offer a reasonable estimate about changing trends in protests unless the news media's ability or willingness to cover protests tends to change over time. 25. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People. 26. Respondents were asked whether they had participated in any acts of demonstration within the last three years, and 23 percent reported that they had taken part in a demonstration. The second survey was carried out by Dachaf in July 1988 (see footnote five), and 16 percent responded positively when asked by the interviewer whether they had participated in a demonstration within the last three years. The final survey was carried out by the Guttman Institute of Social Science Research in March 1990. Despite the fact that respondents were asked about participation within the last ten years (as in the original survey), only 12 percent reported participation. It would appear that participation in demonstrations is still a somewhat sensitive issue for many Israelis. There is good reason to believe, however, that all these surveys underestimate the actual level of protest because none of the surveys include either Arab Israelis or Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank and Gaza. 27. Indeed this was considered a dominant feature of the political culture of Israel before the rise in protest behavior. See Itzhak Galnoor, Steering the Polity: Political Communication in Israel (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982); E. EtzioniHalevy, with R. Shapiro, Political Culture in Israel (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977); Asher Arian, Politics in Israel: The Second Generation (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1985). 28. The other forms of participation also have not risen. In the poll taken by the Guttman Institute in March 1990, about 7 percent reported "investing time for a party or a political candidate" and 21 percent in community activities. These figures are very similar to the ones found in the 1984 study (8 and 19 percent, respectively). 29. It is also important to remember that a great deal of protest has little to do with political discontent. As Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People, points out, it is important to distinguish between different types of protest. The number of political protests may go up in the same year that the number of economic protests declines. These changes would have important implications not only on the overall number of protests but also on the sectors of the population that could be mobilized. The proportion willing to engage in economic protest is probably very different than the segment willing to get involved in protests about religious issues. 30. Sidney Verba and Norman Nie, Participation in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Sidney Verba, Norman Nie, and J. Kim, Participation and Political Equality (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 31. See footnote 9 about the collection of this data. 32. The statistical technique used here is known as Multiple Classification Analysis, which is based on an analysis of variance. The differences that are presented are based on adjusted deviations in which the effects of the other independent variables are removed. The betas that are presented in the graphs refer to the relative importance of each independent variable in explaining the dependent variable, while the F statistic (and its accompanying probability) quoted in the text refers to the statistical significance of these differences. 33. Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality.

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34. It should be remembered that this type of survey analysis tells us nothing about the social hierarchy within these organizations. Social inequality may be manifested when one looks closer at what positions and duties are given to various social groups. 35. This may in part be due to slightly different measurement scales used in the two surveys. 36. Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality. 37. Looking closer at the individual items of the institutional action scale, we find that the curvilinear relationship holds for community work and attending meetings. The youngest are also the least likely to join a political party or participate in a political campaign, but there is no difference between the middle and oldest groups when it comes to either joining a political party or participating in a campaign. 38. Samuel H. Barnes and Max Kaase, eds., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979). 39. Wolfsfeld et al., "The Structure of Political Action." 40. The list of legal protest acts were signing a petition, participating in a legal demonstration, and working for a protest group. 41. Barnes and Kaase, Political Action; Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality. 42. Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Peter Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 43. Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality. 44. Barnes and Kaase, Political Action. 45. Respondents were asked how likely was it that they might carry out each act in the near future. The reply categories ranged from "under no circumstances" to "extremely probable." The illegal acts were: taking part in a demonstration that broke the law, seizing a building or office, participating in activities that may result in property damage, participating in protest activities at the workplace that are against the law, participating in confrontations with other political groups or individuals, seizing land, taking part in public disorders, and taking part in a resident's reprisal raid. 46. It is worthwhile noting the differential effects of education and age in the area of protest. Although the better educated show a much higher level of participation in legal protest, they do not exhibit any greater potential for illegal action. The younger generation, on the other hand, is more likely to participate in legal protest and has a greater potential for illegal action. It would seem that the better educated draw a much firmer line between the two forms of protest. 47. Sadly, due to the expense involved, virtually none of the national surveys carried out in the country include Israeli Arabs. In the original study, it was not possible to examine the differences between Arabs and Jews. I want to thank Dr. Majid El-Haj of the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Science Research for allowing me to include these questions in a representative survey of 250 Arab Israelis conducted by him in April 1990.1 also want to express my gratitude to the Kahanoff Foundation, whose generous grant has made it possible for the Guttman Institute to now include the Arabs in its national surveys. 48. The assumption here is that electoral reform that includes regional representation will also increase the personal accountability of the representatives. Not all forms of regional representation emphasize this factor. See Hanna

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Diskin and Avraham Diskin, How to Choose: Methods of Parliamentary Elections (Jerusalem: Institute for the Study of Israel, Report 31,1988), in Hebrew. 49. The proposal for direct election of the prime minister, for example, is unlikely to have much effect on the problems that have been presented. 50. A pessimistic observer might point to the example of student elections in Israel, elections in which student voters are confronted with parties that actually represent the national political parties. The major issues that are debated have very little to do with their lives as students. 51. A decentralization of political power might also encourage more women to get involved in institutionalized participation. If, however, one is to judge by the proportion of women leaders, Israeli women are no more likely to be elected to local office than to national ones. Israeli Women's Lobby 1989, "The Number of Women in Israeli Politics 1989," Information Paper no. 1, Jerusalem. 52. Lehman-Wilzig, Stiff-Necked People', Wolfsfeld, The Politics of Provocation. 53. Dan Caspi, Media Decentralization (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1986).

11 Trends in the Commitment to Democracy: 1987-1990 Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar and Yochanan Peres

At the start of the 1990s, it seems that democracy is expanding in all cultures and in all continents. Communist states, traditional kingdoms, military dictatorships and race-segregated regimes are, at least on the face of things, turning to democratic, multiparty systems of government, and, more than at any time previously, tend to respect individual freedom and minority rights. Yet, as recently as the 1960s, political democracy was clouded by an atmosphere of shrinkage and defensiveness all over the world. Young and fragile democratic regimes in Africa, Asia, and even in Europe (Greece, for example) were replaced by military dictatorships; in pro-Western authoritarian regimes, pro-Communist revolutions occurred. Even wellentrenched democratic regimes (the United States, Germany, France) felt threatened by mass demonstrations and widespread acts of protest over such diverse issues as racial inequality, unpopular wars, disarmament, and environmental protection. 1 More recently, the world has witnessed the efforts to achieve and maintain democracy in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe, while wondering whether such efforts would be able to sustain the antidemocratic threats associated with the pressures of economic deterioration and malaise prevailing in most of these countries. These observations quite naturally bring back the memories of Europe during the 1930s and again raise the question of the viability of democratic regimes in times of deep and prolonged crises. Is democracy capable of tackling such phenomena as mass unemployment, economic disaffection, internal cleavages, and external threats, especially when such phenomena take place simultaneously?2 A negative answer to this question would likely conceive of democracy as a political model applicable only to conditions of economic prosperity, internal stability, and international security. Needless to emphasize, such conditions do not prevail in most of the world today. It is against this background that Israel stands out as a stable democracy since its establishment in 1948, despite the fact that its economy has almost always been in one kind of crisis or another, and even though its 221

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population, while lacking a deep-rooted tradition of democracy,3 is deeply divided over a number of fundamental issues, the most important being the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict. From the viewpoint of external security, this conflict has constituted a constant military threat to Israel and has gotten the country involved in repeated, and sometimes existential, wars since the first days of statehood. As to its implications for internal politics, the last twenty-five years have been characterized by a cleavage of unprecedented severity regarding the fate of the territories captured in the 1967 War and the attitudes toward the Palestinians, both the inhabitants of the occupied territories and those living in Israel proper. This sociopolitical cleavage has encroached on almost every issue on the public agenda, including those that were in the past considered irrelevant to the conflict. Doves and hawks argue about such matters as economic policy (Should there be investment in development towns or in settlements on the West Bank?); immigrant absorption (Should the new immigrants be encouraged to settle in the occupied territories?); religious meanings (Is there something holy about the occupied territories and is it a religious tenet to hold onto them?); moral behavior (Should Israelis who retaliate against Palestinians be punished as severely as Palestinians who harm Israelis?); and educational curriculum (Should the map of Israel that is studied in the schools include the West Bank—i.e., Judea and Samaria?). Over and above these diverse issues, there is the existential argument; many people in both camps believe that accepting the policies of the other side endangers the very existence of Israel as a sovereign state or, at the least, its basically Jewish and democratic characteristics. A conflict that is perceived as "existential" is likely to undermine two basic elements of democracy: patience and tolerance.4 Democratic patience assumes that the minority of today may become the majority of tomorrow; therefore, it is possible to reconcile oneself with the temporary victory of one's political opponents. However, when survival becomes uncertain, after what appears to be a fateful error on the part of the other camp, tolerance is likely to turn into zealotry. In other words, the ability to bridge fundamental disagreements with democratic procedures (debates and elections) becomes less credible. Since the end of 1987, the Palestinians have changed their policy toward Israel: The armed struggle has receded (although it has not entirely ceased) and has been replaced by a violent popular struggle (the intifada), generally conducted without the use of firearms.5 Despite the fact that this mode of struggle has brought about a reduction in the loss of Israeli lives, it has intensified the conflict by creating direct confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians; practically the entire Palestinian population (not

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just a minority of Palestinians who can be called terrorists and not members of the "peace-loving" masses) constitutes a potential threat to every Israeli person or entity found in the occupied territories. During its early phases, most Israelis believed the intifada was an essentially external event, a nuisance difficult to eradicate but kept within tolerable limits. However, except for brief intervals, the Palestinian uprising has, in fact, increased its momentum and, rather than being suppressed, has occasionally even penetrated Israel proper, threatening the personal security of ordinary citizens. The two major political camps have been affected by these developments in opposite ways. The right, insisting that the response to the intifada has been too soft, calls for harsher military and political countermeasures. The extreme right advocates a policy to expel—"transfer" in the local jargon—the Palestinians from the occupied territories. The left, in contrast, argues that the intifada, like the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole, can only be resolved through moderation and political compromise. According to the extreme left, establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories is the only possible compromise. Although only a small minority of Israeli Jews hold this latter view, it is supported wholeheartedly by virtually the entire Arab community of Israel. Quite predictably, the right accuses the latter of disloyalty to the state and considers the Israeli Arab community a security risk; also, predictably, similar accusations have been made against the Jewish left. This account of events, albeit abbreviated, suffices to describe the nature of the political strife and the intensity of the political discourse within Israel. As recent historical experience has shown, such a climate can provide fertile ground for popular nationalist sentiments of the kind that lend themselves to manipulation by antidemocratic leaders. Indeed, one of the intifada's primary consequences for Israel has been a polarization of opinion, with nearly equal representation of supporters of the compromising and noncompromising views.6

Main Issues Under Investigation In spite of the external and internal difficulties described above, Israel's adherence to democracy appears to have prevailed with little or no disruptions, at least by conventional criteria.7 However, the viability of a democratic society is, to a large extent, dependent on and reflected in the attitudes of ordinary people, particularly when political and economic conditions are not favorable for democracy.8 The main goal of this chapter is, therefore, to analyze Israeli public opinion regarding democracy. The

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following two issues will be discussed: 1. What values and aspects of democracy receive greater support in Israeli public opinion as against those that are shrouded in doubt (or over which other principles and objectives are preferred)? 2. To what extent and in what direction has the attitude toward democracy on the part of the Israeli public changed between 1987 and 1990—i.e., from the time of the outbreak of the intifada up to the end of its third year?

Method of Inquiry The empirical basis of this chapter is a series of surveys executed between January 1987 and December 1990. Since the surveys were designed to trace the changing status of democracy in the eyes of the Israeli public, the same questions were presented each time. Budgetary exigencies, however, along with the emergence of new issues on the public agenda, precluded the inclusion of all the questions in all the surveys. Our conclusions were thus made under less than optimal conditions: When seeking to compare opinions at two or more different points in time, one can only use those questions that were asked at all relevant times. The surveys were conducted on a series of samples, each comprised of approximately 1,200 men and women who were interviewed in their homes. Each sample was an area sample and was organized in a combined stratified and cluster sample method. Israel was divided into several geographic regions, distinguished by the demographic traits of their residents. These regions (excluding the kibbutzim and the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories), which constituted the strata in our sample, are: 1. The three largest cities (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa) 2. Cities established before national independence (1948) 3. New cities (whose present population arrived in large part after 1948) 4. Rural settlements founded before 1948 5. New rural settlements (founded after 1948) Several cities or settlements were chosen at random from each of the last four strata (in the first strata, all three cities were included). These comprise the sample's clusters. Each city (or settlement) so included was divided into statistical areas (as the Central Bureau of Statistics, or CBS, has published their population size). Within each statistical area, a number of households were randomly chosen in a way that allowed for correct

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representation of the area within the city and the city within the strata (for instance, pre-1948 cities). In each household, an adult (someone over 18) was interviewed. This person was also randomly chosen out of that household's adult population. A list was prepared by each interviewer containing the names of all the persons living in the sampled households, ordered by age. Each third adult on this master list was interviewed. This ensured a correct representation of household sizes, husbands, wives, and adult children living with their parents. In the end, we achieved a rather precise representative sample of the adult civilian Jewish population living within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. The most serious limitation of the sample (one that unfortunately appears in almost all public opinion surveys made in Israel) is the nonrepresentation of the Arab public, which constitutes approximately 18 percent of the country's adult population (see the Statistical Abstract for Israel, 1990, Israeli Bureau of Statistics, Table 2.21). We are aware of the resulting partiality of our conclusions. However, the reasons for not including the Arab sector in the surveys were two-fold: 1. The need to conduct the survey in a second language (Arabic) entailed considerable expense. 2. There is little point to a common analysis of Jewish and Arab responses on many political questions (for instance, on the question, Have Arab citizens of Israel the right to demonstrate?). Answers by Arab interviewees must be analyzed separately, and such an analysis would require a subsample whose size would have to be much larger than 18 percent of the general population. (We hope that the funds required for the inclusion of a sample of the ArabIsraeli population will be available for our next survey.) The findings will be presented in two major ways: 1. A comparison of the responses to various questions that probe different aspects or dimensions of the commitment to democracy. The main differentiation emphasized in the analysis is that between values (overall evaluations) and attitudes (preferences or hypothetical decisions in a specified context). At this stage, data collected at various points in time will be accumulated and processed. This procedure was adopted only after it had been confirmed that the disparities over time were significantly smaller than the gaps between different questions asked simultaneously. 2. A comparison of the commitment to democracy at different points in time (from February 1987 to December 1990). Since this period starts before the beginning of the intifada and ends just before the

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outbreak of the Gulf War, it stands to reason that the changes in democratic convictions during this period were influenced by the intifada. It should be emphasized, however, that other internal and external developments occurred during the same period as well; thus in the absence of a "control group," the attribution of the change in attitudes to the intifada over time is only a (plausible) hypothesis. In order for this study and its results to be easily accessible, we have avoided complicated or abstract statistics. Data are presented so that the reader will be able to follow the answers to the original questions and discover the interrelationship between variables, as well as changes measured over time.

Findings Commitment to Democratic Values Since its inception, Israel has officially considered itself to be a Western democracy; its commitment to democratic values is, for instance, integral to its Declaration of Independence. However, as we have already noted, the majority of the Jewish population immigrated to Israel from countries having little or no democratic traditions. Given this background, and in light of the turmoil created by the intifada and related events, the question is: To what extent are the democratic principles enumerated in the Declaration still acceptable to the public? We asked the interviewees to respond, by agreeing or disagreeing, to three statements taken from the Declaration (without revealing to them the actual source). The Commitment to Democracy Versus Other Values At first glance, the picture emerging from the findings presented in Table 11.1 is encouraging: Between 70 to 85 percent of those interviewed support the principles of freedom and equality in Israel; only 6 to 15 percent oppose them. However, a more realistic interpretation of these results must take into account the fact that our statements did not put any price on democratic values: No security risk, no despised minority behaving in a socially unacceptable manner, and no elected government pursuing policies opposed to the opinions of the interviewees was made part of their choice. None of these factors complicated the interviewees' expression of near-pristine democratic principles. When a price tag is attached to it, commitment to democracy tends to

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Table 11.1 Israel must grant equal social and political rights to every citizen regardless of religion, race, and sex. Percent Disagree 15 N o t sure 14 Agree 71 Total 100 ( N = 2,331) Israel must grant f r e e d o m of conscience and religion. E£I££M Disagree N o t sure Agree Total ( N = 2,329)

6

15 79

100

Israel must grant f r e e d o m of language, education, and culture. Disagree N o t sure Agree Total ( N = 2,320)

Percent 7 9 84 100

decline. This is evidenced in the series of questions and answers presented in Table 11.2. The picture derived from the data presented in Table 11.2 differs considerably from that of the previous table. Here approximately half of the interviewees express democratic stands while 20 to 40 percent support proposals or ideas of an explicitly nondemocratic nature. The hypothetical situations described in the questions are a fair reflection of the existential conflict raging within Israeli society: 1. For half of the respondents, a government with policies opposed to their own is worse or just as bad as doing away with democracy. In other words, under certain conditions, these people may be prepared to impose their own views on the majority of the population. 2. In the opinion of approximately one third of the interviewees, complete preference should be given to security considerations over democratic rights, to the point of placing significant limitations on democracy, even when the threat to security is, at most, "marginal." 3. Approximately 40 percent of those interviewed expressed the desire for a strong leader who will impose order irrespective of democratic controls (elections and Knesset majorities).

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Table 11.2 Which do you prefer, a democratic government whose opinions and actions are opposed to your own, or a nondemocratic government whose policies you agree with? Percent Nondemocratic government with which I agree 22 Both are equally bad 28 50 Democratic government opposed to my opinions Total 100 (N = 3,365) The most marginal threat to the country's security is sufficient to justify a serious curtailment of democracy. Eeicenl Agree completely Hsm'i Agree 23?( ' Not sure 15 Disagree 23>f51-j Disagree completely 28 v ' Total 100 (N = 4,492) Under the present circumstances, it is best to have a strong leadership that will "impose order" in Israel without having to depend on elections or Knesset votes. Percent Agree completely 19., Agree 23* Not sure 10 17>f48) Disagree Disagree completely 31 v Total 100 (N = 4,497)

Thus we can see that the domestic debate in Israel over policy, leadership, and security severely qualifies the near general abstract commitment to democratic values. More precisely, when support for democracy begins to exact a price, it falls from a clear majority of 75 percent to a parity between pro- and antidemocratic stands. In a society like that of Israel, facing real questions of existential proportions (war and peace, establishment of permanent borders, and defining national identity), situations may frequently occur in which the insistence on every detail of democratic procedure appears as actually endangering the social and institutional basis of democracy. In other words, democracy is liable to disintegrate as a result of an exaggerated democratic tolerance, or be strangled by too much protection.

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Trends over Time

To what extent has democratic commitment in Israel declined between 1987 and 1990? The analysis thus far presented proves public opinion about democracy to be a multidimensional matrix of values and convictions. This observation suggests that changes in public opinion over time may not be uniform. There will be aspects of democratic commitment that increase, others that decrease, and still others that stay constant. Because the majority of the questions in the surveys (except for those statements taken from the Declaration of Independence) challenge a democratic conviction with a competing one (for instance, whether a marginal threat to the state's existence justifies a significant curtailment of democratic rights), it can be assumed that changes in public opinion will also be shaped by changes in attitude toward those alternatives. Copious and variegated developments occurred during the period under survey. Since December 1987, Israel has witnessed the outbreak of civil revolt in the occupied territories. More recently, democratic revolutions in the Communist bloc and, in their wake, the mitigation of interbloc tensions have facilitated the immigration to Israel of Jews from the former Soviet Union on a scale unknown since the early days of statehood. At the close of this same period, Iraq invaded Kuwait, threats directed at Israel by Iraq escalated, and military preparations for war in the Persian Gulf began. The war itself did not occur during the period reported here. Our last interviews were conducted in December 1990, a month before the commencement of armed hostilities in the Gulf. The multiplicity and variety of these events make it difficult to isolate and measure any single influence. We will, however, make an attempt to identify the traits these events have in common in order to better understand their impact on democratic values and convictions. The intifada was the event that most directly and unceasingly touched daily life in Israel during the entire period under study. Thus, in our opinion, it should be considered the primary source of influence on the potential deterioration of prodemocratic opinion in Israeli society in those same years. The intifada itself contains a number of elements, each wielding different degrees of influence on different sections of the Israeli Jewish population. First of all, the intifada weakened, or even ended, what had been a quasi-normal relationship between Israelis and the Palestinians living in the territories: tourism, shopping trips, and commercial relations (both directly between Israel and the territories, and with Arab countries, with the territories acting as a conduit). Second, an ever-growing portion of Israel's security forces (army, police, special forces) were employed in the attempt to suppress the intifada. The houses of suspects were detonated or sealed off; schools and universities were closed; there were mass arrests

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without trial and expulsions of Palestinian leaders convicted of rebellion; and "non-lethal" weapons were introduced into use (clubs, rubber bullets). All these were elements in the Israeli response to the violent uprising of the Palestinians. It would not be melodramatic to describe a mass civil uprising and its suppression, occurring at a distance of just a few miles from Israel's population centers. These occurrences presented a severe contradiction to democratic principles. Moreover, since the intifada was also characterized by more "moderate" voices in the Palestinian leadership and was largely contained to Israeli soldiers and the Jewish settlers in the territories, it did not function as a unifying external force. In actual fact, the domestic Israeli controversy over the future of the territories was heightened. Israeli public opinion almost unanimously maintained the intifada to be intolerable and requiring a solution. But it was this general agreement that radicalized the debate: Should more severe methods of suppression be employed? Or is a political solution (i.e., compromise with the Palestinians) inevitable? This dilemma provoked growing doubts about the efficacy and even the possibility of a democratic solution. Thus the ideological polarization makes it more difficult for either side in the debate to accept the majority decision, if that decision is opposed to its own. The disintegration of the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was perceived in the West and, it seems, in Israel as well as a victory for the democratic way of life. Recent immigration from the former Soviet Union only brings home the extent of this public's thirst to experience a free and Western life-style. As long as the mass immigration continues, the Jewish majority in the territory west of the Jordan River will grow. This may alleviate fears that the rule of the majority is in contradiction to the wish to maintain the Jewish character of the state of Israel. The transformation of the Communist world (including the emigration from there) is thus expected to strengthen democratic consciousness in Israel, but its impact will probably not be as significant as that of the intifada. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait exacerbated tensions between Jews and Arabs. On the one hand, the Palestinian cause supplied the Iraqis, if only symbolically, with a justification for their action. On the other hand, Palestinians and even Arab citizens of Israel expressed support for Iraq's actions. This support ranged from a passive sympathy to enthusiastic identification with the Iraqi policy. The contribution of these developments to a weakening of tolerance, an important facet of democratic life, is undeniable. In other words, it stands to reason that the crisis in the Gulf, in its first stages, aggravated the impact of the intifada on Israeli democracy. At this juncture, we wish to compare our data (collected from parallel,

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Table 11.3 Change in Commitment to Democracy Over Time: 1987-1990

Indices (and their components)

1. General commitment to democracy (average percentage) A. "Equal political and social rights" B. "Freedom of religion and conscience" C. "Freedom of language and culture" 2. Opinions of democratic government in Israel (average percentage) A. Preference for strong leadership, independent of elections. B. A marginal threat to security justifies curtailment of democracy C. Preference for democratic government even if it opposes one's personal positions

Period of Survey T1 1987

T2 1988

76 = 78 71 < 76 78 = 77 79 = 79

T3 1989-1990


58 61 = 58

> >

51 42

61 > 56

>

43

69 > 55

>

46

=

= =

Note: > indicates a significant difference of P £ .05

but not identical, samples) over time; that is, at three different time periods: • T l . Before the intifada: January and July 1987 • T2. A short time (up to a year) after the beginning of the intifada: January and October 1988 • T3. Two to three years after the beginning of the intifada and a short time before the war in the Gulf: August 1989 until December 1990 Because not all of the questions were included in all the surveys, we had to merge results from several surveys taken during approximately the same period. Table 11.3 includes two series of questions. At the head of each series is the average percentage of prodemocratic responses for the questions in each series. Table 11.3 indicates stability (and even a slight rise) in the commitment to general democratic values, yet a downward trend in democratic attitudes (when put in a specific context that involves a price in terms of other values). Five of the six comparisons of attitudinal questions (three questionnaire items administered three times) indicate a significant decline in the percentage of respondents expressing a democratic position. One may wonder whether these tendencies exist in all segments of the Jewish Israeli society. A detailed examination (which, for lack of space,

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will not be presented here) reveals similar tendencies within several social categories (educational levels, continents of origin, degrees of religious observance).

Conclusion The aim of this section is to discuss to what extent our findings suggest an answer to the problems raised in the beginning of this chapter. The fact that most Israelis can trace their origins to countries without any democratic tradition (Eastern Europe and the Middle East), in conjunction with the severity and, indeed, existential nature of Israel's public agenda, provides ample reason to be apprehensive about the possibility that Israel's democracy may have lost much of its public legitimacy. The data indicate that a large majority (70 to 85 percent) supports general principles of democracy, such as equality before the law and freedom of conscience. Thus there is a positive substructure for democracy. However, it is the resiliency of that structure that is open to question. What kinds of pressures are liable to convince a majority of Israelis to reject their prodemocratic convictions for autocratic ones? Skepticism about the society's ability to face current challenges while protecting democratic principles was expressed when the interviewees were forced to choose between democracy and alternative aims and values (such as government efficiency and national security). Approximately one-third of the respondents were prepared to suspend democratic procedures in a situation of "the vaguest threat" to national security. Approximately 42 percent desire a strong leader capable of "imposing order"; approximately 50 percent prefer a norcdemocratic government whose politics they are in sympathy with rather than a democratic government that pursues policies opposed to their own. In other words, when compelled to pay a price, the widespread support for democracy loses its breadth. True, this frailty of prodemocratic sentiment does not necessarily translate into an enfeeblement of the democratic system: A "strong leader" has yet to be crowned and democratic rules have yet to be suspended in the face of innumerable security threats. However, a lack of trust in democratic institutions and procedures is liable to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The dynamic relationships (the changes over time) described by our study are consistent with our static findings. A commitment to general democratic values (those without any "price tag") is stable and even increases slightly over the period of this study (the period of intifada, 1987-1990). However, the commitment to democracy, when confronted with other values (particularly nationalist ones), declines over time. It is

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possible to interpret these data as indicating an increased sensitivity to national security questions, or an aspiration to strong government, or an increase in the intensity of conflict over national policies. This intensity leads to a focus on the content of policy and makes the framework in which policy is made (that is, the democratic constitutional process) less relevant. This analysis sharpens the distinction between two concepts: values and attitudes. Values are abstract and less connected to time and place. Attitudes, in contrast, are responses to an explicit situation and are usually the product of a clash between opposing values. On the basis of these definitions, it can be postulated that attitudes are more likely than values to change over time (and vary with changing conditions). A weakening in democratic attitudes in the face of constant values increases the average disparity between the values and convictions. In other words, the internal conflict between the preferred form of government and preferred concrete policy escalates. In fact, the disparity between the mean scores of attitudes and values did rise between 1987 and 1988, from 15 to 28 (see Table 11.3). We can therefore discern fractures in the democratic system, not necessarily as a result of a decline in the support for its principles and foundations, but as a result of a growing chasm between abstract values and practical preferences.

Notes 1. For relevant studies, see Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism (New York: Praeger, 1968); Kenneth Keniston, Young Radicals (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968); Jack Citrin and David J. Elkins, Political Disaffection Among British University Students (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1975); Bern a r d E . B r o w n , Protest

in Paris: An Anatomy

of A Revolt

( M o r r i s t o w n , N.J.:

General Learning Press, 1974); Alan Marsh, Protest and Political Consciousness (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977); Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975); Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence

Gap: Business,

Labor,

and Government

in The Public

Mind

(New

York: Free Press, 1983). 2. On the bearing of external threats or wars on the viability of democracy, see Gad Barzilai, "Democratic Regimes During War and Post-War Periods," International Problems 29 (1990), pp. 20-36; Arthur, A. Stein, "Conflict and Cohesion," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 20, no. 1 (1976), pp. 143-172; Harold, D. Lasswell, "The Garrison State," American Journal of Sociology 46 (1941), pp. 455-468; Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stephan, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins, 1978). 3. For a detailed analysis of constraints on Israeli democracy, see Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Political Culture in Israel (New York: Praeger, 1977); Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, The Transformation of Israeli Society (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985); Ernest Krausz, Politics and Society in Israel (New Brunswick, N.J.: Trans-

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action, 1985); Alan Arian, Ilan Talmud, and Tamar Hermann, National Security and Public Opinion in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988). 4. See John L. Sullivan, Political Tolerance in American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Michal Shamir, Kach and the Limits of Political Tolerance in Israel (Tel Aviv: Golda Meir Institute, Tel Aviv University, 1987). 5. On the background and development of the intifada, see Shaul Mishal, Stones and Leaflets in the Intifada (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1989), in Hebrew; Arie Shalev, The Intifada—Causes and Effects (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center, Tel Aviv University 1991); Alan Arian and Raphael Ventura, Public Opinion in Israel and the Intifada (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1989); Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel's Third Front (New York: Simon and Schuster). 6. See Yuchtman-Yaar, Chapter 12, in this volume. 7. The question is whether what exists and functions in Israel should be called democracy, when at least one-third of the population under Israeli rule does not enjoy elementary civil rights (freedom of expression, freedom of movement, the right to vote, for example). Clearly, the answer to this semantic argument depends on the definition of democracy. A complete congruence between a subjugated population and a population having full rights is most certainly a democratic ideal, but it is highly doubtful whether this can be used as a defining criterion without making an exception of most democracies throughout history. We will content ourselves with a more modest definition; democracy is a regime in which different political groups compete for the right to govern in free elections while upholding the rights of free expression and organization of the electorate. The statement that Israeli democracy exists and functions should be understood in the framework of this definition. 8. For recent discussions of the relevance of public trust and support of democratic principles and institutions, see Rüssel S. Dalton, Citizen Politics in Western Democracies (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1988); Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977); Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap (New York: Free Press, 1983.)

12 The Israeli Public and the Intifada: Attitude Change or Entrenchment? Ephraim

Yuchtman-Yaar

Beyond the ongoing debate about the origins of the intifada, the popular uprising of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, and its consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there seems to exist general agreement that this event brought about a new and probably irreversible phase in the pattern of relationships between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. Within the framework of these developments, it is indisputable that the most dramatic and pervasive changes have taken place among the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These changes have affected the microenvironment of individuals and their families, as well as the macrolevel of whole communities. In fact, practically the entire Palestinian population of the occupied territories has been involved in the intifada, directly or indirectly, actively or inactively. This involvement has often been costly in terms of human life, civil liberties, economic welfare, education system, and other disruptions in ordinary life. However, against these costs, and perhaps because of them, the intifada has generated a strong sense of national identification and solidarity among the Palestinians, and these processes in turn, along with the political support of the international community, have strengthened and encouraged the Palestinians' capacity to absorb the penalties and continue with the uprising.1 Compared to the experiences of the Palestinians, the penetration of the intifada into Israeli life has been limited in scope and intensity. Y e t this public, too, could not entirely escape the impact of the intifada. T o be sure, the majority of Israelis are passive witnesses, who watch and read about the events in the occupied territories rather than participate in them personally. But in a small country like Israel, which is characterized by a wide and intensive coverage of the domain of national security through the mass media, as well as by the deep involvement of the public in that sphere, the intifada penetrated every home and family on a daily basis since its very beginning. Furthermore, in many families there are sons or husbands who serve in the occupied territories as part of their military duties, including the reserves, and the experiences of these men are shared 235

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with relatives and friends. Finally, since its inception, the intifada has given rise to various citizen action groups that operate, at least in part, outside the framework of the political parties. These voluntary groups have further contributed in bringing the intifada closer to the Israeli scene, on the street and at home. Given this background, the main question addressed in this chapter is whether the intifada has exerted influence on the political attitudes of the Israeli public, and, if so, what is the nature of that influence. In particular, we will be concerned with the public stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its ideological orientation as reflected in the left/right concept, and its preferences in electoral behavior. However, before turning to the empirical evidence concerning these questions, we wish first to introduce some conceptual and methodological considerations.

Conceptual Considerations Conceptually, the most relevant literature for our purpose is the study of attitude change, which has been a central topic in the research tradition of social psychology. Accordingly, we will briefly review some basic concepts and approaches in the study of attitudes that seem relevant to the questions with which we are concerned. In the sociopsychological literature, attitudes are conceived of as relatively stable dispositions of individuals toward concrete or abstract objects, including persons, institutions, events, or ideas.2 And while formal definitions of attitudes vary, it is generally agreed, first, that the central attribute of an attitude is its evaluative nature and, second, that the evaluative dimension contains cognitive, affective, and behavioral components/ Consequently, both the structure of attitudes and the dynamics of attitude change are typically discussed in terms of the relationships among these components. The most widely accepted assumption in this discussion is expressed in the principle of internal consistency. According to this principle, there exists an inherent tendency toward coherence among the components comprising each attitude, and this psychological propensity accounts for the relative stability of attitudes over time. As noted by Ajzen, 4 some theorists maintain that the drive toward consistency among thoughts, feeling, and action is more apparent than real. However, most scholars hold the position that internal coherence is a desirable or even vital psychological state, and that the motivation to achieve and maintain it constitutes a fundamental property of human nature. 5 Consequently, when cognition and affect are at odds, the need for consistency is assumed to activate processes that generate changes in beliefs or feelings in a way

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that will bring them in line with each other. As argued by Epstein, 6 coherence and consistency are indispensable in our quest for meaning, understanding, and making sense of ourselves and our worlds. Once a coherent picture of the world is established, it tends to persist and resist change. Of course, gradual shifts in our views and attitudes occur all the time, but drastic changes are resisted because they may challenge fundamental assumptions, values, and ways of life.7 One of the major ways through which coherence and consistency affect attitudes and behavior is revealed in the processes of attention and selection of information. In arriving at a personalized construction of reality, we must select from, and give meaning to, the vast amount of information to which we are exposed. These processes involve different types of personal filters that determine the nature of selection and inferences we make in the absorption of information. The drive toward coherence and consistency is a powerful personal filter that typically results in biased attention, selection, and inference. Put simply, we prefer information that confirms, rather than disconfirms, our beliefs and attitudes.8 In this regard, attitudes operate as scripts9 that are cognitive structures formed and organized on the basis of personal history and experience. Once a script is activated, it influences expectations, perceptions, interpretations, and behavior. Such influences are likely to be particularly significant to the extent that there is a strong vested interest and deeper emotional involvement in the attitude domain10 and when it is highly salient.11 Notwithstanding the role of psychological factors in mediating the individual's construction of reality, a powerful source of such influence is provided by the social environment. The individual is embedded in a complex set of groups and institutions that provide and filter the information on the basis of which he assesses his cognition, feeling, and behavior. If each person is considered a filter through which information passes, then most information is already squeezed and interpreted through many social filters on the way to that person, as has already been found in the classical study of Katz and Lazarsfeld.12 However, in pluralistic and democratic societies, the availability of multiple sources of gatekeepers of information and evaluation in all domains implies that individuals are free to select sources of influence according to their own dispositions. Under such circumstances, social influences are likely to generate attitude changes to the extent that their messages are uniform. Otherwise, as the principle of consistency tells us, contrary information and interpretation will be ignored or dismissed as invalid, so that people will be mostly under the influence of information that confirms their already existing beliefs. What are the implications of this brief discussion for the main question of this research? Granted that the attitude domain with which we are

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concerned is of high salience and centrality for most of the Israeli public, and given that this public is continuously exposed to the views of a wide variety of "influentials" about the intifada, we suggest that both the personal and social sources of information processing have operated so as to maintain or even reinforce prevailing attitudes in the political domain. At the aggregate level, this hypothesis implies that we should expect little or no shifts in the distribution of attitudes insofar as crossing the line of the evaluative dimension (pro versus con) is concerned. On the other hand, it is likely that changes within either side of that line might have occurred, making people more entrenched in their positions. In other words, our main hypothesis is twofold: first, that the intifada has not generated a significant shift in the direction of political attitudes and, second, that existing attitudes might have been reinforced so that the Jewish population has become more polarized in this domain. Before we turn to the empirical examination of these hypotheses, a couple of methodological notes are in order.

Methodological Comments The data used in the empirical analysis are based on two surveys of national samples that represent the Jewish population of Israel, with the exception of the kibbutz community and the Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. The first of these surveys was conducted in the second half of 1987 (N = about 1,900), prior to the outbreak of the intifada, while the other survey took place toward the end of 1989 (N = about 1,100), when the intifada was two years old. In accordance with the formulation of the research questions, the first and major task of the empirical examination is to compare the findings obtained before and after the beginning of the intifada. Such comparisons are usually made under the assumption that significant differences that might be revealed between the "before" and "after" measurements can be attributed to the influence of the variable of interest rather than to other events or processes that may have taken place at the same time. Of course, such an attribution cannot be made with a reasonable degree of confidence without the use of control groups. Since such means of control are impossible to have for the research questions with which we are concerned, it follows, technically speaking, that any potential difference that might be detected between the before and after samples cannot be taken as evidence that the change was generated, directly or indirectly, by the intifada. Despite this reservation, it seems reasonable to argue that because the intifada has been the most intensively debated issue on Israel's political

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agenda in recent years, it is difficult to accept the thesis that changes in attitudes that fall in the domain of that debate have nothing to do with it. In other words, while we cannot rule out the possibility that potential changes in such attitudes may result from different sources of influence, the intifada is a serious "candidate" to be among these sources, particularly if the changes are consistent with prior conceptual considerations. The second methodological note refers to the aggregate nature of these comparisons. This observation implies that on the basis of the data at our disposal, we cannot detect changes at the individual level of analysis. For example, a process in which the proportion of individuals who have changed their attitudes in one direction is the same as the proportion of movement in the opposite direction cannot be identified by aggregate data. In other words, it is important to note that comparisons based on aggregate data allow only the net result of shifts among individuals to be uncovered. However, this limitation can be partly overcome to the extent that the compared samples can be divided into different subgroups, as will be demonstrated in the empirical analysis of our data.

Procedure and Results The public attitudes in the political domain have been assessed with respect to three critical issues that presumably tap different aspects of the same underlying dimension in Israel's political culture: militant nationalism. The first issue concerns the debate over the "land versus peace" dilemma. Accordingly, respondents were asked to indicate which of the following alternatives they were willing to support for the sake of a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians: • to return all the occupied territories • to return everything except for Jerusalem • to return everything except for Jerusalem and some border modifications • to return parts that are densely populated by Palestinians • to keep all the occupied territories The second question probes into the respondents' more global ideological orientations as indicated by self-placement on the following continuum: left, moderate left, center, moderate right, and right. The third aspect pertains to the behavioral intentions of the respondents in the political domain as indicated by their voting preferences at the time of the interviews. Accordingly, they were presented with a list

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Table 12.1 Intercorrelations Among Political Attitudes (Pearson's Coefficients) for 1987 and 1989

Territories Territories Left/Right Voting

1987 Left/Right

— — —

.42' —

a

—

=.76

Voting .41* .57* —

Territories

1989 Left/Right .53* —

— —

—

a

=.82

Voting .48* .63* —

Note: 'p < .01 " C . R . Cronbach's Alpha

containing the entire spectrum of political parties and asked to choose the party they would have voted for had the elections been held at that time. As noted above, our assumption was that each of the positions on these three issues can be taken as a partial indicator of a higher order concept that we referred to as militant-nationalism. Such an assumption implies that these positions should at least be moderately interrelated in the expected direction at both times of measurement. In order to examine these interrelationships, the voting variable was recorded so as to order the parties in terms of the left-right distinction. Preliminary analyses have suggested that all the parties can be grouped into three categories without a significant loss in information: Left (Mapam, Ratz, Shinui, Hadash, and the Progressive List), Center (Labor), and Right (including the Likud, the religious parties, Tehiya, Tsomet, and Moledet). This does not mean, of course, that on other issues there are no potential differences between the supporters of the various parties within each grouping. However, with respect to the political attitudes that we have examined, the differences are marginal. Based on these considerations, we computed the paired correlations of the three variables, as well as Cronbach's coefficient of reliability, with the results presented in Table 12.1. The findings reported in Table 12.1 show that, as expected, the three attitudes are statistically interrelated at least to a moderate degree and that, when taken together, they seem to reflect a common dimension, as indicated by the measure of reliability. Note that in the second period, the correlation coefficients are consistently higher. This is an interesting finding that we will comment on later in this chapter. The comparisons between the distribution of attitudes in 1987 and 1989 are presented in Table 12.2. Panel A of Table 12.2 exhibits the attitudes toward the controversy about the future of the occupied territories. Comparing the findings for

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Table 12.2 Frequency Distribution of Political Attitudes in 1987 and 1989 (Percentages) 1987

1989

A. Territories Return all/most Return some Return none Total N

26.2 33.6 40.2 100.0 1,901

33.6 27.2 39.2 100.0 1,079

B. Left/Right Left Center Right Total N

23.7 36.2 40.1 100.0 1,909

27.4 25.8 46.8 100.0 1,078

C. Voting Left Bloc Labor Right Bloc Total N

9.7 42.8 47.5 100.0 1,567

14.7 33.9 51.4 100.0 1,019

1987 with those of 1989, we observe a small but noticeable increase (from 26.2 percent to 33.6 percent) in the size of the group willing to return all or most of this land for the sake of peace. On the other hand, the number of the rigid noncompromisers has remained stable, accounting for about 40 percent of the respondents in both periods. These trends suggest that Israeli society has become more polarized on this issue, with the doves coming closer in numbers to the hawks. Turning to Panel B, which compares the orientations of the respondents with respect to the left-right continuum, we see that both the right and the left have gained at the expense of the center, with the right gaining somewhat more than the left. The proportion of those identifying themselves with the center shrank over this period from 36.2 percent to 25.8 percent, while the left and right gained by 3.7 and 6.7 percent, respectively. Thus on this more general ideological measure, as well as on the more specific territorial issue, a trend toward an increasing polarization of the Israeli public is once again observed. This same pattern is also reflected in the last panel of this table, which reports the actual voting intentions of the respondents in the two time periods. If one views the Labor Party as occupying a more intermediate

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position within the Israeli polity, one observes a loss of support for this party in favor of alternatives of both the right and the left. However, in this case the parties of the right and the left benefited nearly equally from the shrinking of the Labor Party. The net result is once again an indication of enhanced polarization of attitudes between the more conciliatory left and the more hard-line right. It is worthwhile to note that a growing polarization of attitudes along the same lines had already occurred during the first year of the intifada. 13 The observation that this trend has persisted by the end of the following year testifies to the significance of the left/right cleavage in Israeli public opinion and to the impact of the intifada on this cleavage. Note also that the uniform trend of increased polarization, as revealed by the findings reported in Table 12.2, is consistent with the conceptualization of the three attitudes that we measured as different indicators of the "higher order" construct of nationalism. However, since the correspondence in this trend pertains to aggregate comparisons, they are not at all informative as to from where the changes in attitudes came. For example, we have noticed a simultaneous increase in the proportion of those who are dovish concerning the territorial issue, who label themselves as left, and who vote for parties on the left. But this apparent congruence does not necessarily mean that the increment in the number of doves comes from the ranks of the left, in both meanings of the term. In order to examine whether such a transfer actually took place, we must juxtapose the three attitude distributions at each point of time. This is shown in Tables 12.3 and 12.4, where the attitudes toward the occupied territories are taken as dependent variables, and the two other attitudes as the independent variables. Looking first at the changes in attitudes toward the territories according to the left-right orientation, the figures in Table 12.3 indicate that the increase in moderation between 1987 and 1989, as revealed by Table 12.2, has occurred only within the categories of left and center. Put simply, the gains in dovish attitudes have come entirely from the groups that had already been prone to return the occupied territories in exchange for peace. Thus, in 1987, 52.2 percent of the left adopted this view, whereas by 1989 the corresponding figure went up to 65.5 percent. Similarly, the proportions of doves in the center changed from 25.6 percent in 1987 to 42.3 percent in 1989. In contrast, no changes in this direction can be noticed for the right. On the contrary, there has been a slight increase in the support of a hawkish stance in this group, from 61.0 to 62.5 percent. Turning now to Table 12.4, it can be seen that the pattern revealed in the previous set of findings is repeated more sharply when the distinction according to the voting variable is considered. In 1987,59.2 percent of the supporters of parties on the left held a dovish attitude. By 1989 this view was shared by 75.7 percent of this political group. A similar trend can be

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Table 12.3 Cross Tabulation Between Attitudes Toward the Territories and the Righl/Left (Percentage Distributions)

Attitude Toward Territories Return all/most Return some Return none Total

Left/Right Self-Identification Left Center Right 1987--1989 1987--1989 1987--1989 52.5 34.5 13.0 100.0

65.5 23.7 10.8 100.0

25.6 42.3 40.6 32.7 33.8 25.0 100.0 100.0

12.3 26.6 61.0 99.9

11.5 25.9 62.5 99.9

Note: N: 1987 = 1,909; 1989 = 1,041 R: 1987 = .42; 1989 = .53

observed among the supporters of the Labor Party, where the size of the dovish group went up from 36.2 to 52.4 percent. Thus by the end of 1989, the Labor Party appears divided on the territorial issue into roughly equal parts, in contrast to the solid majority supporting compromise within the ranks of the left bloc. As for the voters of the right bloc, no significant changes have apparently taken place among them. The rigid hawkish view of "return none" was adopted by 65.5 and 63.6 percent of that bloc in 1987 and 1989, respectively. Taken together, the findings reported in Tables 12.3 and 12.4 strengthen the argument that the Israeli polity has become more polarized in recent years, at least at the grassroots level. Furthermore, we noticed earlier that the interrelationships among the three measures of nationalism were stronger in 1989 than in 1987. This result is a reflection of the

Table 12.4 Cross Tabulation Between Attitudes Toward Territories and Voting Preference (Percentage Distributions)

Attitude Toward Territories

Left Bloc 1987-1989

Voting Preferences Labor 1987-1989

Return all/most Return some Return none Total

59.2 75.7 30.9 16.0 9.9 8.3 100.0 100.0

36.2 52.4 43.5 34.6 20.3 13.0 100.0 100.0

Note: N: 1987 = 1,509; 1989 = 995 R: 1987 = .41; 1989 = .48

Right Bloc 1987-1989 10.3 24.2 65.5 100.0

11.7 24.7 63.6 100.0

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Table 12.5 Cross Tabulation Between Attitudes Toward the Territories and Demographic Variables (Percentage Distributions) Return All/Most 1987-1989 A. Education Elementary

Return Some 1987--1989

Return None 1987 -1989

20.3

24.4

31.9

21.5

47.8

High School

23.2

26.9

31.1

28.0

45.7

Academic

33.5

55.1

38.8

28.4

27.7

B. Ethnic Group Sephardi

20.2

21.4

30.8

25.7

49.0

Ashkenazi

31.4

43.7

36.1

28.7

32.8

C. Religiosity Religious

9.1

13.9

25.0

24.8

65.9

Traditional

17.4

24.3

33.8

24.5

48.8

Secular

35.9

43.5

35.8

29.0

28.4

54.1

Total 1987--1989

100 207 45.1 100 N = 1,128 16.5 100 N = 629

100 135 100 628 100 285

52.9 100 N = 921 27.6 100 N = 1,038

100 482 100 572

61.4

100 101 100 375 100 568

N =

100 152 51.2 100 N = 668 27.5 100 N = 1,032 N =

process of polarization as well as of crystallization of political attitudes on either side of the nationalist continuum. The left has become more left and the right more right. Notice also that if we use the criterion of voting intentions, the popular support for the two orientations is practically equal in size. This observation is important not only because it is related to the enduring "tie" in the political power between the parties on the left and right: When a society is polarized, and when the opposing sides are of equal size, the society is more vulnerable to severe conflicts, especially if the conflict is about fundamental issues rooted in that society. The analysis so far has focused on overall changes in the political attitudes of the Israeli population between 1987 and 1989 and the interrelationships among these indicators of militant nationalism. The next issue to be examined is the extent to which the attitudes in this domain vary systematically with sociodemographic characteristics of the Israeli population. This question is addressed in Tables 12.5 through 12.7 by looking at the relationships between these measures and three sociodemographic characteristics that have often been found to have important influences on the political attitudes of the Israeli public: education, ethnicity, and religiosity.14 Table 12.5 demonstrates significant connections between the territo-

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rial question and all three of these variables. For example, hawkishness decreases with education at both points in time, but this relationship increases in importance in the later time period. Among less-educated respondents, we observe a process of polarization from 1987 to 1989, as we did among the population as a whole, but in this case the shrinking of the center led to greater gains for the hawks than it did for the doves, with the result being that the proportion of those with hawkish sentiments within this category rose from 47.8 to 54.1 percent. Within the mosteducated category, however, this polarization did not occur, as these respondents show instead a uniform shift toward the more moderate position. As a result of this shift, the dovish subgroup within this population increased dramatically from 33.5 to 55.1 percent. Table 12.5 shows a similar pattern with respect to ethnicity, with Israelis of Sephardic origin espousing a more hawkish position and the Ashkenazic a more dovish one, and this relationship, once again, becomes stronger over time. Among Sephardic Jews, the shrinking of the center produces greater gains for the hawks than for the doves, while among the Ashkenazic Jews, we again observe a more uniform shift toward a more dovish point of view. The similarity between the apparent effects of ethnicity and those of education, as well as the known correlation between these two variables, suggest the need for a multivariate analysis, the results of which will be reported below. Religiosity clearly also has an important impact on the territorial question, with religious Israelis being more likely to reject any form of territorial compromise than their more secular compatriots; but in the case of this characteristic, the relationship does not strengthen over time. This may be due to the fact that the effect of religiosity was already so strong in the earlier time period that it had little room to grow over time. Among the religious respondents, for example, hawks already outnumbered doves in 1987 by 65.9 to 9.1 percent. With such extreme uniformity as a starting point, it may not be surprising that this group appears to have become slightly less hawkish over the next two years. In both periods, however, dovish sentiments were largely confined to the more secular Israelis, and grew within this population from 35.9 to 43.5 percent. The finding related to the relationship between the social characteristics of the respondents and their identification in terms of the right/left continuum are presented in Table 12.6. Turning first to the figures for 1987, we observe that positions on the left/right continuum are systematically related to the three demographic variables in the familiar direction, so that lower education, Sephardic origin, and religiousness are more frequently associated with a rightist identification. Notice also that in the case of the trichotomous variables of education and religiousness, the intermediate categories tend to identify more frequently with the right

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Table 12.6 Cross Tabulation Between the Right/Left and Demographic Variables (Percentage Distributions) Left 1987--1989 A. Education Elementary

Center 1987- 1989

Right 1987- 1989

15.1

15.7

39.2

22.9

45,7

High School

19.9

24.3

37.2

23.8

43.0

Academic

33.2

40.6

33.2

32.6

33.5

B . Ethnic Group Sephardi

16.1

17.0

34.5

19.6

49.4

Ashkenazi

30.4

35.8

37.6

31.0

32.0

C. Religiosity Religious

6.5

6.8

24.3

18.4

69.2

Traditional

10.9

19.7

37.7

22.9

51.7

Secular

35.7

36.6

37.6

28.4

26.7

Total 1987--1989

61.4 100 N = 199 51.9 100 N = 1,138 26.7 100 N = 635

100 140 100 622 100 288

63.4

100 909 33.2 100 N = 1,056

100 489 100 567

74.8 100 N = 247 57.3 100 N = 660 35.0 100 N = 1,056

100 103 100 375 100 566

N =

than the left. For example, the percentage of respondents who label themselves as left in the lower and middle levels of education is 15.1 and 19.9 percent, respectively, whereas at the higher level of education this percentage amounts to 33.2 percent. Correspondingly, identification with the left is limited to 6.5 and 10.9 percent among the religious and traditional respondents, respectively, while 35.7 percent of the secular respondents label themselves as such. By 1989 the pattern of these relationships was maintained and even strengthened, as indicated by the size of the correlation coefficients (see Table 12.1). This trend is associated with the already-observed phenomenon of the shrinkage of the center. The additional information that we get from Table 12.6 regarding this phenomenon is that it applies consistently across all the subgroups of the respondents. However, the shift from the center to the right and to the left is not numerically balanced, with the right gaining generally more from this trend than the left. By way of illustration, against an increase of 0.6 percent in the left within the loweducation group, there has been an increment of 15.7 percent in the leaning to the right in the same group. Similarly, of the 9.2 percent loss to the center among secular respondents, 0.9 percent joined the left, as against 8.3 percent who joined the right. The major exception to this

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Table 12.7 Cross Tabulation Between Voting Pref erences and Demographic Variables (Percentage Distributions) Left Bloc 1987--1989

Labor 1987--1989

Right Bloc 1987--1989

Total 1987--1989

60.5 67.7

100 N = 152 50.0 55.2 100 N = 910 31.3 33.1 100 N =501

100 133 100 594 100 263

59.6 70.1

100 N =733 32.2 35.3 100 N = 824

100 465 100 533

90.7 89.7

100 97 100 349 100 538

Education Elementary

1.3

3.0

38.2 29.3

High School

7.3 11.3

42.7 33.5

17.6 29.3

51.1 37.6

Academic Ethnic Group Sephardi Ashkenazi

5.5

8.2

34.9 21.7

14.2 20.5

53.6 44.3

Religiosity Religious

1.1

3.1

Traditional

2.5

7.4

35.8 27.8

16.8 21.4

58.6 43.1

Secular

8.2

7.2

100 N = 194 61.7 64.8 100 N = 517 24.5 35.5 100 N = 844

overall pattern of change concerns the respondents with higher education. This is the only group where the left gained (7.4 percent), while the right suffered a loss (6.8 percent). The relationship between demographic variables and voting intentions is shown in Table 12.7. As was the case with the two other indicators, there is an inverse relationship between level of education and support for the right bloc, and this relationship appears to gather strength between 1987 and 1989. Within all three educational categories, one observes an erosion of support for the Labor Party in favor of competitors to both the left and the right; however, among the less-educated respondents, it is the right that benefits more, while in the most-educated category, it is the left that reaps most of the gain. The result is that among less-educated respondents, support for right-wing parties rose from 60.5 to 67.7 percent, while in the most-educated group, support for parties to the left of Labor rose from 17.6 to 29.3 percent. A similar pattern holds for the relationship between voting preferences and ethnicity, with Israelis of Sephardic origin showing a strong preference for the right-wing parties, and those of Ashkenazic origin being

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most inclined to express support for the left; this is once again a relationship that strengthens over time. In regard to the effects of religiosity, however, we once again encounter a relationship that is extremely pronounced in the opening period, but becomes weaker rather than stronger over time. Thus the overwhelming preference of religious Israelis for right-wing parties was no greater in 1989 than the 90.7 percent figure already registered in 1987; among secular Israelis who defected from the Labor Party between 1987 and 1989, a greater percentage chose right-wing alternatives (10.0 percent) than were inclined to turn to the left (4.6 percent). As noted earlier, since the three socioeconomic characteristcs tend to overlap to some extent, it is proper to perform a multivariate analysis in order to assess the extent to which each of these variables exerts an independent influence on the attitude measure. In order to save space, and in light of the relatively high level of reliability of the index that was constructed on the basis of interrelationships among the three political attitudes, this index of militant nationalism was used as the dependent variable in the multivariate analysis, with the results shown in Table 12.8. The figures presented in Table 12.8 indicate that all three demographic variables have independent effects on the index of militant nationalism at both points in time. The most pronounced of these effects is revealed by the religious factor, although by 1989 its importance decreased so that the influences of the three variables have become more balanced. Overall, what we see is that militant nationalism within the Israeli polity has its roots in all three of these major social characteristics, as these attitudes are significantly more widespread among Israelis who are less educated, Sephardic in origin, and religious in orientation. In fact, when we tested for the additivity of these influences on the

Table 12.8 Regression (Standardized Coefficients) of Index of National Militancy on Demographic Variables Independent Variables

Education Ethnic Group Religiosity R2 F N Note: ' p < .001

1987

1989

ß -.15* -.13' -.43" .23 91.5 1,453

ß -.20* -.20* -.28* .27 189.6 913

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basis of a three-way analysis of variants, we found a significant interaction effect in 1987 between religiosity and education. Accordingly, the degree of militant nationalism of religious people was practically the same, irrespective of education, whereas among the secular group, the degree of national militancy varied negatively with education. However, by 1989, this interaction effect disappeared so that higher level of education contributed to lesser militancy among both religious and secular respondents. This change may be related to the decrease in the influence of the religious factor between 1987 and 1989.

Concluding Remarks The most important conclusion that emerges from the various findings presented here is that public opinion in Israeli society did not really change much in the period from 1987 to 1989. There was no dramatic shift in sentiment toward either the left or right, intransigence or compromise. While aggregate opinion on these dimensions remained largely unchanged, there was a noticeable tendency to move away from indeterminate and intermediate positions toward either the moderate or the militant poles of the nation's potyty. To the extent that this trend can be attributed to the direct and indirect influences of the intifada, it can be said that the latter has induced more Israelis to choose between the two major approaches to the Palestinian dilemma of Israel. And yet, when one considers the upheavals created by the intifada and the developments that occurred during this period, the intifada could rightfully have been expected to produce a more dramatic and different change. Why was this upheaval unable to move Israeli public opinion to a greater extent than it did? Why were the changes that it did seem to inspire not uniform in direction, but instead a complex set of movements that contributed to the tendency for opposing segments in Israeli society to continue drifting apart? Under what circumstances might the theoretical considerations invoked at the opening of this chapter have led us to predict for these events a different result? The theories discussed previously suggest that political leaders play a critical role as "filtering" agents who mediate between environmental changes and their potential attitudinal effect. Had significant spokesmen for various segments within Israeli society responded to these events by redefining their positions and offering new proposals, the contrasts between these new positions and their previous ones might have inspired large numbers of their supporters to begin to reexamine and subsequently to modify their own positions as well. Menachem Begin provides the most important recent historical instance of a political leader who catalyzed

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changes of this sort, as his consent to the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai evidently won acceptance from a large majority of his militant nationalist following. But clearly, this historical circumstance did not prevail by the late 1980s. On the contrary, the political leaders of both the right and the left reinforced rather than challenged the prevailing attitudes of their followers.

Notes The preparation of this chapter benefited from the invaluable help of Professor Raymond Russell and Yasmin Alkalai. The author also appreciates the help of Vered Livneh and Esti Landau for technical assistance. 1. Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifadah: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel's Third Front (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). 2. Icek Ajzen, Attitudes, Personality, and Behavior (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988). 3. Allen L. Edwards, Techniques of Attitude Scale Construction (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957); Daryl J. Bern, Beliefs, Attitudes and Human Affairs (Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1970); Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975); R. J. Hill, "Attitudes and Behavior," in Morris Rosenberg and Ralph H. Turner, eds., Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives (New York: Basic Books, 1981); James Tedeschi et al., Introduction to Social Psychology (Racine, Wis.: West Publishing Co., 1985); J. Richard Eiser and J. van der Pligt, Attitudes and Decisions (New York: Routledge, 1988). 4. Ajzen, Attitudes, Personality, and Behavior. 5. Fritz Heider, "Social Perception and Phenomenal Causality," Psychological Review 51 (1944), pp. 358-374; Fritz Heider, The Psychology of International Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958); Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966); Daniel Katz and Ezra Stotland, "A Preliminary Statement of a Theory of Attitude Structure and Change," in Sigmund Koch, ed., Psychology: A Study of a Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963); Donald T. Campbell, "Social Attitudes and Other Acquired Behavioral Dispositions," in Sigmund Koch, e d P s y c h o l o g y : A Study of a Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963); William J. McGuire, "The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change," in Gardner Lindzey and Ellior Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 2d ed. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969); Theodore M. Newcomb, "Interpersonal Balance," in Robert P. Abelson et al., eds., Cognitive Consistency: Motivational Antecedents and Behavioral Consequence, A Source Book (New York: Academic Press, 1966); Stuart Oskamp, Attitudes and Opinions (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977); Theodore M. Newcomb, "Heiderian Balance as a Group Phenomenon," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40 (1981), pp. 862-867. 6. Seymour Epstein, "The Stability of Behavior: II. Implications for Psychological Research," American Psychologist 35 (1980), pp. 790-806. 7. Seymour Epstein, "Aggregation and Beyond: Some Basic Issues on the Prediction of Behavior," Journal of Personality 51 (1983), pp. 360-392. 8. Craig A. Anderson, Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross, "Perseverance of

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Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980), pp. 1037-1049. 9. Robert P. Abelson, "Psychological Status of the Script Concept," American Psychologist 36 (1981), pp. 715-729. 10. John Sivacek and William D. Crano, "Vested Interest as a Moderator of Attitude-Behavior Consistency," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 43 (1982), pp. 210-221. 11. Don W. Brown, "Adolescent Attitudes and Lawful Behavior," Public Opinion Quarterly 38 (1974), pp. 98-106; R. H. Fazio, "How Do Attitudes Guide Behavior?" in Richard M. Sorrentino and E. Tory Higgins, eds., The Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1986). 12. Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1955). 13. Asher Arian and Raphel Ventura, "Public Opinion in Israel and the Intifada: Changes in Security Attitudes 1987-88." Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, Memorandum no. 28, August 1989. 14. Yochanan Peres and Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, Trends in Israeli Democracy: The Public's View (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992).

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13 Democratic Politics and Culture in Modern Israel: Recent Trends Yaron Ezrahi

While the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948 was the crowning achievement of political Zionism, it was only the beginning of a new revolution in the very nature of the interaction between culture and politics in modern Jewish society. For the first time in the modern era, Jewish cultural and intellectual communities were placed within a polity, a sovereign state, which was effectively controlled by a Jewish majority. For the first time, Jewish writers, scholars, and publicists had to face the usual issues of alienation, criticism, and solidarity not as members of an ethnic or religious minority in a non-Jewish state but in relation to a "Jewish" state, and to form their attitudes toward the exercise of power by a public authority that derives its legitimation, at least in part, from Jewish cultural resources, values, and memories. For the first time, in turn, could such a public authority be exercised in a modern state in passing laws or making decisions that would have direct effects on the autonomy and character of the cultural activities and institutions in a Jewish society. While issues concerning the relations between culture and the body politic have traditionally presented themselves to Jews mostly in relation to their status as a religious, cultural, or ethnic minority, in the context of the state of Israel those issues emerged for the first time largely (if not exclusively) as internal Jewish problems, bearing on the links between the identities of the polity, the community, and the individual. After almost half a century of statehood, it is appropriate to raise several fundamental questions about the record. Does it show the new state as sustaining earlier Zionist commitments and fostering Enlightenment-secular cultural norms in the educational system and the larger society, as somehow compatible with the cultivation of Jewish culture and identities? Or has Israel given its support to a new cultural mix that privileges the perpetuation of traditional Jewish cultural values and ethnic identities? From which sources has the new state gleaned the cultural forms and norms it has employed in shaping its spectacles, rituals, holidays, symbols, and ideas? Underlying these questions are concerns with the larger issue of whether recent trends in Israeli culture threaten the 255

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foundations of liberal-democratic civil society in Israel. The assumption underlying this discussion is that liberal-democratic politics depends for its existence and vitality not only upon special legal and institutional arrangements but also upon a host of cultural traditions and strategies that empower the individual in defining and defending a domain of the private self vis-à-vis the domain of the collective and the invasive powers of the state. In a society in which ethnocentric national and religious cultural forms are not checked by alternative ones, the resources for the legitimation of democratic political structures and practices may tend to erode over time. While one can discern in contemporary Israel cultural forms and orientations congenial to upholding liberal democratic politics, they are relatively weak. And, while the results of the 1992 elections seem to illustrate the resiliency of the political forces that support liberal democratic values, I shall argue that those values have proven—particularly during the fifteen years of the Likud administration—to be quite vulnerable to cultural and political pressures of powerful nationalist-religious groups. Obviously, even after more than four decades, Israel is still in its formative years, and it is probably unwarranted at this point to try to provide more than interim responses to some of the above questions. Bearing these limitations in mind, I shall offer a tentative assessment of the principal recent trends in the relations between culture and politics in Israel, while examining their nature and possible implications.

The Decline of Cosmopolitan Elements in Zionist Culture After 1948 Classical Zionism was both a political revolt against the traditional order of the Jewish society and a cultural revolt against traditional religious Jewish culture. As such, cultural and political Zionism shared modernist orientations. 1 The revival of Hebrew culture with its stress on the Hebrew language, the development of Jewish studies in Israeli universities, and the "return to nature" as a principal cultural reference, as well as the rejection of Yiddish as the "language of exile," was meant to represent a kind of synthesis between modern and traditional elements. By drawing upon Enlightenment ideological traditions that had inspired Western liberalism and socialism, as well as upon selective indigenous Jewish cultural traditions, the Zionist revolution achieved, during the prestate period, a precarious but politically effective balance between universalism and particularism. In both the socialist and liberal segments of the Zionist movement, the commitment to Jewish national liberation was tempered

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by extranationalist commitments to Enlightenment visions of progress, individual freedom, and social justice. For many Jewish liberals and socialists, who were disenchanted with the nationalization of European liberalism or socialism, a Jewish national home was not the sole ultimate end but also a necessary condition for realizing "universalistic" visions of liberal or socialist society and polity among Jews. 2 Such universalistic orientations were further reinforced in the Zionist movement during its formative years by the necessity of appealing to a heterogeneous Jewish constituency, which was dispersed across diverse social and political boundaries. Moreover, "Jewish cosmopolitanism," which was in some respects a trait of Jewish national particularism, was often manifest as Jewish pride in the unique contributions of Jews like Einstein, Freud, and Chagall to world culture. The envisioned state was regarded as an opportunity for concentrating, cultivating, and enlisting Jewish talents to augment such contributions, which transcend national boundaries. 3 Together with strong cosmopolitan visions of the role of the Jewish State in the community of nations, expressed by such central Zionist figures as Herzl and Weizmann, the stress on Jewish cultural creativity appeared compatible with a commitment to widely shared Western ideas of freedom and equality. With the establishment of Israel, it was expected that these universalistic elements of the Zionist revolution would be preserved and even cultivated in the new state. During the early years of Israeli statehood, these hopes appeared confirmed by the language of Israel's Declaration of Independence and by the rise of major internationally oriented cultural and social institutions such as Israeli (largely Western-oriented) universities, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra (with its strong commitment to the Western musical repertoire), and the kibbutz cooperative communities (viewed as a universally significant attempt to realize a socialist Utopia). Israel projected the image of a Western cultural and social enterprise, inspired by a sense of mission that encompassed not merely particularistic Jewish national projects like the establishment of a Jewish army, but also universal advances in scholarship and art, as well as in experimentation with new forms of social life. The fact that prior to the establishment of the state, practically the entire sociocultural, economic, and political life of the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine was upheld by voluntary associations further encouraged the expectations that individual and group creativity would continue after the establishment of the state, providing a significant check on the natural imperialistic tendencies of state authority. Furthermore, the clear dominance of socialist-Zionist parties during the first thirty years of statehood would seem to have restricted the impact of narrow cultural and political

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nationalism on the character and policies of the new state. In the years preceding the establishment of Israel, Zionist intellectuals like Einstein expected that with the establishment of such institutions as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "teachers and students will always preserve the consciousness that they serve their people best when they maintain its union with humanity and with the highest human values." Einstein hoped that such a university "will evoke the respect of cultural mankind the world over." 4 A synoptic perspective on half a century of Israeli statehood suggests that the precarious early balance between the universalistic and particularistic elements in the "public culture" of the Zionist enterprise was disrupted, especially after the Six Day War. The cosmopolitan culture— which Zionist personalities such as Herzl, Weizmann, and Einstein hoped would acquire a significant authority in the newly established polity—have become largely marginalized, especially over the last two decades, as more particularistic ethnic and religious Jewish orientations have gained force in the public realm, the political sphere, and the educational system. 5 Reactionary antiliberal and antidemocratic currents of religious culture have expanded into the civic and educational spheres of the new state. During the series of Likud governments in the 1980s and the early 1990s, a coalition of religious and radical right-wing parties emerged as a political force capable of openly defeating or significantly restricting most initiatives in the Israeli Knesset to pass a bill of human rights and other constitutional provisions that normally protect individual freedoms and uphold the structure of democratic states. In retrospect, one may now discern, even in the early years of the new state, the conditions and forces that contributed to a process of "nationalization" of the more cosmopolitan elements in the culture of the new s t a t e and t h a t a n t i c i p a t e l a t e r t r e n d s . H a n d e l m a n and Shamgar-Handelman show that such forces antagonistic to the universalistic, secular elements of Zionism were already active in the struggle over Israel's national emblem (in 1948). The secular Enlightenment values symbolized in the motif of the seven stars (associated with Herzl's progressive vision of the new state in his The Jewish State6) were rejected as a result of the criticism by a religious minority. Following the failure to achieve a compromise that would have balanced universalistic-secular and religious-national symbols, the motif that decisively won at the end was the menorah, with its strong religious and nationalistic connotations. 7

The Nationalist Ethos in Modern Israel Probably the most significant constraint on, and ultimate test of, the p r e s e r v a t i o n and cultivation of p o s t - E n l i g h t e n m e n t , secular, uni-

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versalistic elements in the civic culture of Israel has been the presence of the Arab minority within the state and the regional Arab-Israeli conflict. While this discussion focuses on conditions and forces that might seem to have inhibited the universalistic elements within Jewish society and culture, one should not lose sight of the fact that the social, political, and legal status of the non-Jewish minorities in Israel continually constitutes perhaps the principal indicator of the extent of the nationalization and exclusiveness of Israel's civic culture and state apparatus. 8 The most significant influence on the decline of the universalistic element in the Zionist synthesis following the establishment of Israel in 1948 is no doubt the most obvious one: the very birth of a "Jewish Leviathan"—a state that must constantly legitimate its actions and justify its authority before a Jewish majority within the society and Jewish international opinion beyond that society. In response to a chronic security crisis and frequent social and economic crises as well, Israeli governments make extreme demands on their citizens. Israeli political leaders have discovered that their appeals to the common tribal identity—narrow Jewish national feelings and shared religious sensibilities—are much more potent for mobilizing the sacrifices and solidarity of the majority of the citizens than appeals to more general values, such as liberal or socialist ideas of the good society. Even in the early rhetoric of Ben-Gurion one could discern the suspicion of the Israeli leadership toward cultural expressions that do not celebrate and glorify the rise of Israel as a heroic epic, justifying risks and sacrifices in blood, sweat, and material resources. Ben-Gurion explicitly endorsed science and scientific advice only so long as it reinforced hope and optimism. He rejected as false and unacceptable various expressions of scientific skepticism or criticism that would remind the political leadership of the limits of action. 9 Similarly, Ben-Gurion wanted modern Hebrew literature to mirror the epic story of "great deeds," not to reflect human doubts and alienation. He explicitly rejected literature that is "devoid of faith, truth, purpose, desires, mission, values and vision." 10 Such a climate was not congenial to cultural forms that would facilitate the development of a reflective distance from the state. The inhibitions were further reinforced in the Israeli case by the historical affinities between Hebrew literature, Hebrew scholarship, and Hebrew journalism on the one hand and the ideological and political enterprise of Zionism on the other. Insofar as Zionism was from the very beginning not only a sociopolitical but also a cultural revolution against traditional Jewish society and culture, the modernity of Hebrew literature, art, and scholarship appeared to reinforce rather than undermine the authority of Zionist ideological, educational, and political programs. 11 Moreover, prior to the establishment of Israel, in the absence of powerful institutional and organ-

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izational structures, Hebrew cultural activities served as a principal means for converting and mobilizing Jews to the Zionist movement, and for shaping a shared universe of Zionist orientations and sensibilities across national and social boundaries. 12 Once the revolution succeeded and a Jewish State was created, the earlier historical affinities between the cultural and the political "missions" of Zionism imposed special inhibitions on the freedom of cultural creators to extricate themselves from celebratory orientations toward the state as the realization of the deepest Zionist aspirations and to explore the worlds of personal doubt and alienation, as well as alternative notions and interpretations of collective experience. "The dilemma of the Israeli writer," notes Itamar Even-Zohar, "is that, unlike the author who writes from within a stable, well-established society, he cannot escape from the revolutionary reality which he confronts." 13 Despite the rise of an Israeli cultural elite, such factors have restrained the evolution and diffusion of cultural forms that can uphold critical discourse on Israeli society while encouraging the mobilization of many Israeli artists and writers for the nationalist program. Israeli literary critic Dan Miron notes the exceptionally large representation of leading Israeli writers and poets among the signatories of the manifesto of the "Greater Eretz Israel" movement on September 1967, an extreme nationalist document that insisted that no Israeli government has the right to compromise any part of Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) occupied during the Six Day War. 14 The long-standing affinities between the cultural and the political programs of Zionism also inhibited the capacity of Israeli scientific and academic institutions to distance themselves sufficiently from the state to evolve an independent cultural and institutional basis for criticizing public authority and actions. From the very beginning, Israel's principal university, The Hebrew University, was conceived as a vehicle to realize such Zionist-national goals as offering shelter to Jewish scientists who had lost their positions due to anti-Semitism, establishing secular Jewish studies as a part of the cultural revolution of Zionism, and generating knowledge useful for medicine, agriculture, and security in the new land. 15 Shmuel Sambursky, professor of physics at The Hebrew University, recalls BenGurion's aversion to the idea of Israeli scientists publishing scientific papers in foreign languages. 16 While Israeli academic institutions were able in due course to consolidate their position as powerful and internationally reputable scientific institutions, their earlier affinities with the Jewish political establishment inhibited, although by no means completely undermined, their capacity to contribute to the evolution of a local Israeli culture of public intellectual criticism of the state, criticism whose force would extend to social circles beyond the relatively narrow confines of the Israeli intelligentsia.

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Like other liberation and revolutionary movements, ideological and political Zionism integrated Jewish and Hebrew scholars, writers, and intellectuals into the collective missions of the revolutionary movement, and so it did not leave much space for the creative critical role of culture and its inherently transformative energies vis-à-vis the political establishment and the official ethos of the state that were brought about by the success of the Zionist revolution. During forty years of statehood, the growing dependence of Israeli academic and scientific institutions upon public financial support has only reinforced the constraints on the propensity of university professors to criticize the actions of the state, while limiting the public weight of such criticisms when they were made. This fact has been demonstrated particularly during the intifada years, when the Israeli academic communities produced only hesitant public criticism of the government's policy of closing the universities in the occupied territories. 17 Another distinct yet related constraint on the emergence of nonethnocentric cultural orientations within the Israeli polity is the weak cultural and historical support for the classical liberal-democratic separation between state and society, between the realms of coercive state power and the domain of voluntary actions and associations. On the face of it, the memory of alienated Jewish minorities in non-Jewish nation-states should have generated a powerful cultural basis for protecting the voluntary communal and social domain from the invasiveness of the state. Paradoxically, however, since the establishment of the state symbolized for the Jews the revolutionary transformation of their condition from a state of utter powerlessness and vulnerability to an empowered position culturally and politically, the state has come to represent to Israeli Jews not so much an instrument of self-government that can deteriorate and become a potential threat to their freedom as individuals and communities but the very idea of individual as well as collective Jewish freedom. This stands in marked contrast to the Western liberal-democratic tradition, in which the historical conflicts between the ruling monarch (or aristocracy) and the people induced powerful public ambivalence toward the state as a potential enemy of the individual and the voluntary social realm. Lacking the historical experience of antagonism between a people and its own state authority so dramatically manifest in, and induced by, the English, American, and French revolutions; having no powerful internal traditions of ambivalence toward Jewish state and military power; and having no traditions of individualism and constitutionalism that could uphold the separation between state and society, Israeli society faces inherent difficulties in evolving autonomous cultural spheres. Insofar as the separation between the voluntary domain of society and the regulated domain of the state has been structurally necessary to any liberal-democratic

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order, with science, literature, art, and journalism located mostly in the domain of society, the interpénétration of the two realms in Israel—associated with the rise of a powerful nationalist collective ethos—has posed a serious obstacle to the evolution of an Israeli liberal-democratic civic culture. Throughout the years of the last Shamir government, the liberalindividualistic strands in Israeli politics have remained weak in the face of the legacy of the collectivist orientations of socialist Zionism and intensification of the ethnocentric group orientations of religious and nationalist Zionism, which have been fueled by the conflict with the Arabs. The very insistence on the notion that Israel is a "Jewish state," despite its inherent ambiguities, rationalizes the role of the state as promoter of a national Jewish culture. This role is clearly incompatible with notions of the relative neutrality of the state and the basic norms of democratic civic culture and their expressions in the educational system. In such a context, cultural forms not sanctioned within the established Jewish religious-national traditions in Israel are bound to appear "foreign" and to be at least partly rejected as inimical both to the values promoted by the Israeli educational system and to the policies of statesponsored cultural institutions. The proliferation of voluntary organizations in the diverse domains of political, social, economic, and cultural life in Israel appears, at first sight, to contradict the view that there is a high degree of convergence between state and society, or rather between the state and the Jewish majority, which constitutes a serious constraint on the emergence of a viable democratic civic culture. 18 This, however, is only an apparent contradiction. Many of these voluntary associations, while being relatively independent of the state and while channeling free citizens' participation in various domains of action, are in fact dedicated to the promotion of narrowly Jewish religious, educational, cultural, and ethnic values. As such, these voluntary associations are often profoundly antagonistic to the inclusive principles and practices of democratic civic culture. Ehud Sprinzak has explored the deep roots of elite illegalism in Israeli politics and culture. 19 During the fourth decade of Israel's independence, the voluntary associations of religious nationalist settlers in the occupied territories and their self-appointed vigilante groups seem to be the principal social source of illegalism in the Israeli system and the base of relentless attacks on the norms of democratic civic culture. Ministers in Likud governments have often tacitly endorsed and even financed such voluntary illegalism since they were reluctant to take official responsibility for actions directed against the Arab population that, as right-wing party leaders, they nevertheless considered consistent with their ideological and policy positions. Similarly, Israeli ultra-Orthodox (haredi) communities, which consider religious law superior to and more

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binding than the law of the Knesset, often engage in voluntary actions that are antagonistic to democratic citizenship and defiant of state law and authority. The representatives of these communities in Israeli government cabinets often defend and protect such voluntary actions as expressions of the authentic religious values of their constituents. There are, of course, a multitude of voluntary associations in Israel dedicated to the promotion of civil and minority rights, the promotion of the peace process, or to other social and cultural activities. The freedom, vitality, and civility typical of these organizations provide a major source of support for democratic civic culture in Israel. But the number and power of the other types of voluntary organizations and their functions in the polity suggest the complex and ambiguous links between voluntarism and democratic political styles of action in Israel. The historical and institutional constraints on the development and manifestation of autonomous, nonparticularistic cultural orientations in the Israeli polity do not foreclose the possibility that a more typical liberal-democratic configuration of culture and politics, of culture and state will develop in the future. Clearly, the development of more open, pluralistic cultural forms is essential for upholding liberal-democratic civic culture and its politics. An examination of the record of interaction between culture and politics in modern Israel may indicate, in fact, some of the principal directions in which non-ethnocentric cultural forms, as well as alternative local and particularistic ones, could develop in Israel and gain sufficient force and autonomy to check or counter the role of narrow religious-nationalist culture in the radical nationalization of political authority. I shall turn now to a brief discussion of these possibilities.

The Resources of Autonomous and Counterestablishment Cultures in Israel In any society, the most significant force resisting the ideological and political strictures imposed on culture stems from the inherently unruly character of the imaginative and critical intellectual faculties, the inherent unpredictability of the creative process in art, literature, and science.20 It is the partial repression of this force by voluntary or involuntary means that accounts for the mediocre quality of cultural enterprises designated or directed to serve particular goals or programs in the context of public affairs. This does not mean, of course, that cultural works of the highest quality cannot have direct, and often unanticipated, political effects or uses, but only that the pursuit of excellence in art, science, and literature, and a position that gives priority in the "production" of culture to serving external political or social goals, are usually incompatible.

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The inherent tensions between the character of Israel as a nation-state and the commitment of the Israeli society to a democratic system of government expose even the nationalist establishment and its cultural support system to processes that encourage pluralism and decentralization. I shall examine three such processes in the Israel case: the "subversion" of the symbolic sanctuaries of established culture, the cultivation of the culture of individualism, or the private self, and the development of a culture of intellectual-social and political criticism. Challenges to the Symbolic Sanctuaries of Established

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Irony, parody, satire, caricature, and the grotesque are only a few of the artistic strategies that disempower and subvert the materials of official culture. All these forms have emerged in Israeli literature, art, and theater, although the political establishment has attempted, with a considerable degree of success, to limit the access of such art forms to the electronic mass media.21 A particularly powerful mode of disempowering official culture in Israel can be measured in the treatment of the Holocaust in modern Hebrew literature. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi has shown how literary works that focus on the Holocaust often tend to undermine the official myths that insist on the place of Israel at the pinnacle of a continuum stretching from "Shoah" to "Tekuma," from catastrophe to redemption. 22 She points out that "the emergence of the survivor's voice" in Hebrew poetry, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, and the often uncompromising nature of the victim's view of the relations between his or her experience in the "concentrationary universe" and the rehabilitative enterprise in modern Israel, subverts the authority of the official Israeli view of the relations between these two historical processes. 23 Another aspect of this phenomenon is what Sidra Ezrahi calls the "inversion of the meaning" of the Holocaust in contemporary Israeli culture exemplified in the projection of the emblems of persecution onto Arabs in their conflict with the Israelis in ways that defy the official mythology of the Jew as the eternal victim and the idea of the Arab as the eternal victimizer.24 A related challenge to established political symbolism can and has come from "revisionist" historians who question official memory and official uses of the past. Benny Morris's historical account of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem (1947-1949) is a case in point. 25 The debate on the issue of how the Palestinian refugee problem was created has been closely connected with attempts to defend or attack the very legitimation of the state of Israel. It touches also the most sensitive nerves concerning the relations between Jews and Arabs within the borders of the state. The established Israeli version that emerges from official documents, history books, and many memories claims that the

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Arabs fled voluntarily and not as a result of deliberate, Jewish schemes. Regardless of the merit of criticisms of research by Morris and others, the sharp reactions provoked in Israel by his alternative versions of the events illuminate the conflict between Israeli historians as social critics and as guardians of the inevitably selective collective memory, and indicate the capacity of historiography to challenge ideologically controlled uses of the past in Israel. Another powerful form of relativizing the cultural system of an existing order is the imaginative construction of alternative collective and individual identities and the implicit or explicit attack on the genealogies that uphold established ones. A case in point is the "Canaanite" movement and its literary and ideological import, especially during the early years of independence. At the center of this movement lies the idea that Jewish and Hebrew identities are inherently antagonistic and that Middle Eastern peoples share with the Jews common roots in a primordial Hebrew culture that can be excavated from beneath the layers of later religious and ethnic cultural deposits and historical memories. 26 The Canaanites rejected the religious sources of Jewish and other group identities in the region and sought alternative definitions that would draw upon such resources as ancient regional history, earlier Semitic languages, and regional landscapes. Following a few years of activism after the establishment of the state, the group disintegrated, disappointed at failing to achieve the levels of support to which it aspired. 27 Although they did not pose a major challenge to existing Jewish-Israeli identities, the Canaanites had a significant cultural impact on the rising Hebrew culture. Yonathan Ratosh, the principal figure in the movement, remained a major Israeli poet. 28 Regardless of their political failure, the Canaanites constitute an illustration of cultural strategies that resist tendencies of Jewish cultural homogenization with their illiberal political imports. Cultivating the Culture of the Private Self T h e cultivation of the universe of the self—the art, literature, or philosophy that place the inner worlds of the individual at the center—generates cultural resources that can be used to check and even undermine the power of the epic narratives and symbolic universes of the group to "swallow u p " the individual or weaken his or her autonomous status vis-à-vis the collective. It is not surprising, therefore, that liberal-democratic political orders characteristically rest, among other things, on the force of advanced cultures of the self to secure the "reality" and the autonomy of the individual as a limit on the "reality" and action of the group. In the liberal-democratic polity, the individual has an irreducible

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place as the ultimate constituent of the polity, and the cultivation of the culture and power of the individual has a public justification as a valuable constitutive element of civic culture. In a nationalist, as distinct from a liberal, democracy (if the concept of "nationalist democracy" is at all defensible), the culture of individualism is likely to be regarded as antagonistic to the values of citizenship. In such a polity, the negation of the public value of individual autonomy and of the cultivation of the subjective world of the self encourages the tendency to equate individualism with self-love, egotism, and the absence of group solidarity. Such disapproval of individualism and the cultivation of the self has been salient in Israeli society and culture. Ironically, although there are some very outspoken Israeli intellectuals, many have shared the criticism of individualism in Israeli society by stressing those aspects of the culture of the self that suggest alienation and withdrawal from group experience and group narratives rather than those aspects that connect the contributions of individualism to the public, to democratic civic culture, and to the quality of social and cultural life. There is perhaps no single factor more inimical to the centrality of the individual in the civic culture of the democratic polity than the common confusion (made sometimes even by distinguished Israeli political scientists) 29 between democracy and "majority rule." Such a view not only distorts the meaning of democracy—and especially the dual, though not unproblematic, commitment to the values of freedom and equality as it has developed in Western political theory and ideology—but often in the context of Israel, it may, however unintentionally, privilege the status of the Jewish majority over non-Jewish minorities. Such a position obscures the profound tensions between the nationalization of civic culture and the democratic character of political authority in the Israeli polity. Historically, of course, the evolution of modern liberal and democratic politics in the West was inconceivable without contributions such as those of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual movements of skepticism and rationalism, and aristocratic and romantic individualism. In the modern liberal democratic state, art, literature, and science are among the most significant domains for the cultivation of the culture of the solitary self, of forms of consciousness, sensation, and experience that validate the relatively distinct autonomous position of the individual in relation to experience as well as toward society and the state. It is largely because of the relations between modern forms of high individualism and modern art, literature, and science, as well as modern philosophical skepticism, that those cultural forms have so often been challenged by popular culture, kitsch, mass entertainment, and religious and moralistic fundamentalism. In modern Israel, in which the cultural representation of politics took at first the form of a heroic-monumental epic, the cultivation of the culture

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of the self and of its representation in politics was bound to appear, in wide if not in all circles, as subversive. 30 The culture of the self stands in opposition to the dominant tribal, historicist, and messianic paradigms of political discourse and action. Again, a literature that cultivates and authenticates the culture of the self is therefore inevitably a literature that, at least in some respects, claims autonomy vis-à-vis the jurisdiction of collectivist group ideology and politics. As such, it constitutes also a form of implicit challenge to the latter. Exposing the ambivalence, antinomies, ironies, and contradictions inherent in the claims of the public order is, in fact, among the primary artistic and literary strategies that the culture of the self employs to validate its claims and extend its domain in relation to the culture of the public (or the group). Dan Miron notes that, following its temporary decline relative to its position of dominance in the early years of the state, the literature that serves public national purposes has again gained strength in Israel after 1967.31 Influential writers have gravitated toward assuming the role of spokesperson for the nation, while those who dwelled on the alienation, distance, and anonymity of private lives since the 1960s came to appear to many as irrelevant, unrooted, or positively subversive. It is obvious, therefore, that a Hebrew literature that cultivates the universe of the private self would be an implicit challenge to literature that is a part of the currently nationalized public culture. A literature alienated from the issues and concerns of national existence becomes, according to Miron, a "homeless" literature, a cultural enterprise isolated from the contexts of mass communications, mass entertainment, and the other means and forms of group culture. In such a situation, without the encouragement and support of the public and its institutions, without an ideologically and politically sanctioned place for the private voice, as is the case in the American democracy, for instance, the capacity of such a cultural enterprise to survive depends on the inner vitality of "homeless individualism" as a modern—and even more radically, postmodern—generalized cultural sensibility. This state of affairs is distinct from the situation in other democracies. As Sacvan Bercovitch observes, American culture is founded "on the principles of contract, voluntarism and self-interest. . . . [It is] a culture whose primary unit is the self, and whose primary rites, accordingly, encourage the implicitly radical, potentially subversive doctrine of individualism." 32 In such a culture, literature can be legitimated as part of a radical discourse about society.33 In the absence of such ideological support for the critical functions of literature, it remains for the creative imaginative power of the writer (or the artist) to generate, and live within, universes alienated from the objectives and experiences of the group. Few such artists actually furnish escape routes from the pervasive collectivist national culture for individuals who want and know how to discern and

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use these routes. It is in such cases that the very autonomy of cultural creativity vis-à-vis the state may nourish individual perspectives and a radical discourse about society, and it is precisely this condition that the spokespersons of nationalized public culture and politics usually wish to deny or attack. Still, such autonomy can hardly exist without a minimal degree of ideological and institutional support within the established order. Considering the primacy of the narrative of collective political liberation in Zionist ideology and Israeli political practice, such radical expressions of the separate and distinct claims of the self vis-à-vis the group tend—as I have suggested above—to provoke strong reactions and to be discarded as expressions of narcissistic, alienated, and materialistic individualism. Literary critic Orzion Bartana is a typical spokesman of establishment culture against radical nonconformist literature in Israel. He attacks what Miron calls "homeless" Hebrew literature and insists that there is no historical precedent for a Hebrew literature that lacks a sense of national Jewish mission.34 Hebrew literature must, in his opinion, serve the national Jewish purpose. Bartana regards Miron's support for the legitimacy and quality of a "homeless" Hebrew literature as an aspect of a struggle between elite university intellectuals like Miron and mass media personalities like himself over the authority to define literary taste. This view does not contradict Miron's own observation that the right-wing parties in Israel have neglected to invest in elite culture and directed most of their energies to influence politics through the electronic mass media. Against the background of such ideological attitudes about the national mission of culture in Israel, it is easier to understand the repeated failures of attempts made by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra to legitimate the inclusion of Wagner's music in its concerts. The idea that music can be a private aesthetic individual experience even in public concerts, the notion that aesthetic considerations may be separable from the moral purpose or the thematic meanings of music, is hard to defend to present-day Israel, where playing and hearing music assumes such strong public significance. This brings us to the third and final counterestablishment cultural strategy that has developed in Israel, a strategy that is particularly fundamental to any liberal-democratic order: that of intellectual and professional criticism. The Culture of Criticism

A culture of criticism usually develops in a polity that has fostered the subcultures of science and professional journalism. The deployment of rational standards in the context of political discourse and action requires, in addition, a set of ideological, legal, and institutional conditions. 35 Israel

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has advanced subcultures of science and professional journalism, but the ideological and political ascent of the Israeli right has increased the external pressures to limit the deployment of scientific, technical, and professional journalistic standards in the context of public affairs. These pressures notwithstanding, scientific-academic institutions, as well as newspapers and electronic mass media, have powerful resources with which to protect their autonomy vis-à-vis the state. As part of the international system of science, local scientific institutions cannot be fully controlled by the state without losing their value as sources of vital skills, knowledge, and international prestige. In this respect, newspapers and the partially publicly controlled electronic media are more vulnerable. On the positive side, privately owned dailies may have been driven by economic conditions to protect their independence in relation to political authorities. The need to sell as many newspapers as possible, or, in the case of privately owned television and radio stations, the motive to attract as many viewers and listeners as possible, encourages such mass media institutions to appeal to the widest possible public. In Israel these economic considerations have led to the emergence of powerful politically independent dailies that have competed very successfully with narrow ideological papers or party journals. 36 More recently, however, some of these papers were sold to private individuals who may have political, rather than economic, interests. Moreover, some economic interests have sought to obtain cross ownership of printed and electronic media. It is too early to assess the implications of these developments for the place of the Israeli mass communications system in upholding a culture of political and social criticism in Israel. The importance of the economic independence of cultural enterprises and mass media that are autonomous from the state and the pressures to subordinate the economic bases of such cultural institutions to political interests in Israel constitute an issue that deserves special discussion. In the long run, however, the spread of cable television networks in Israel during the early 1990s and the increasing availability of many channels broadcasting diverse foreign programs may actually diminish the impact of mass electronic communications as a means for the diffusion of unified national culture. While the programs aired on commercial cable television are often of low quality, they may have the salutary effects of checking the nationalization of the culture of Israeli viewers.

Conclusion Together, the challenges to the symbolic sanctuaries of established culture; the cultivation of the culture of the solitary self; the existence of a

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developed culture of intellectual, social, and political criticism; and the spreading of popular multinational cultural forms through the mass media can constitute significant constraints on the imperialistic tendencies inherent in the coalition between religious ethnocentrism and secular nationalism, especially when this coalition enables the corresponding political parties to control the state apparatus and endanger the conditions of liberal-democratic civic culture in Israel. During the fifteen years of Likud governments between 1977 and 1992, however, the capacity of such cultural forms to check the combined—and growing—power of ethnic, religious, and political nationalism remained limited. The traditional historical alliance between culture and Zionist politics in the prestate period, the political payoffs (especially in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict) of the appeal to narrow nationalistic identities following the establishment of the state, and, finally, the predisposition in modern Israel to blur the demarcation line between the respective private and public domains of society and state combine to render the foundations of autonomous, open, pluralistic culture in Israel particularly precarious. Whether the return of a Labor-led coalition to power in June 1992 reflects a significant change in the conditions is still an open question. It is precisely because the ideological and institutional foundations of nonestablishment, nonnationalistic culture are so weak that any development of the internal resources of such cultures in modern Israel is so important. Against great odds, the intrinsic generative powers of art, literature, and science, and the force of journalism and unruly, diverse internal popular cultures, may play a crucial role in gradually nourishing Israeli individualism and criticism and legitimating the pluralism that—while largely on the defensive during much of Israeli political history—is so critical for the future of Israel as a liberal democracy.

Notes 1. B. Harshav, "The Renaissance of Israel and the Modern Jewish Revolution," in N. Gretz, ed., Perspectives on Culture and Society in Israel (Tel Aviv: Open University Publications, 1988), pp. 7-31. 2. See, on this issue, Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Note that I am placing the term "universalistic" in quotation marks in order to acknowledge the problem raised by more recent discussions of "universalism" as a particular Western category that has been used not only to indicate norms on criteria whose validity extends beyond particular local cultures or society but also as a rationale for Western imperialism. 3. Albert Einstein is, of course, the most prominent example. On his orientation toward Zionism and his Jewish scientific associations, see G. Holton and Y. E l k a n a , eds., Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1982).

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4. Albert Einstein, "The Mission of our University," The New Palestine, March 27, 1925, p. 294. Ironically the same insistence on the "universalistic" cultural value of the revival of Israel was of course what many Arab spokesmen construed as confirming their view of Israel as a Western colonial outpost. 5. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, "The Dilemma of Reconciling Traditional Culture and Political Needs: Civil Religion in Israel," in Ernest Krausz, ed., Politics and Society in Israel, Studies of Israeli Society, vol. Ill (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985), pp. 196-209; and Charles S. Liebman, Chapter 14, in this volume. See also Dan Miron, Nogea Badavar, Essays on Literature and Society (Tel Aviv: Zmora Bitan Publishers, 1991), esp. pp. 9-23, in Hebrew. For the force of Jewish national symbols and their power to check the presence of universalistic elements of state allegiance, see Don Handelman and Elihu Katz, "State Ceremonies of Israel Remembrance Day and Independence Day," in D. Handelman, ed., Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 186-197. 6. T. Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Herzl Press, 1970). 7. D. Handelman and L. Shamgar-Handelman, "Shaping Time: The Choice of the National Emblem of Israel," in Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, ed., Culture Through Time, Anthropological Approaches (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990); D. Handelman and L. Shamgar-Handelman, "Visual Enigma in the Creation of the National Emblem of Israel," in Ernest Gellner, ed., Faith and Polity: Interaction of Religions and Political Institutions (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming). 8. See, for instance, Sammy Smooha, Chapter 16, in this volume, and David Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990). 9. Michael Keren, Ben Gurion and the Intellectuals: Power, Knowledge and Charisma (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982). 10. Ibid., pp. 134-135. 11. See Harshav, "The Renaissance of Israel." 12. Ibid., and Dan Miron, "From Creators and Builders to Homeless," IGRA (1985), pp. 71-135. 13. Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine: 1882-1948," Studies in Zionism (August 4,1981), pp. 167-184. 14. Miron, Nogea Badavar, pp. 339-382. 15. Yaron Ezrahi, "The Hebrew University and the Social Context of Science in Israel," unpublished paper, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, p. 18; see also, The Hebrew University: Its History and Development, a Hebrew University publication, 1948, pp. 1-20. 16. Private communication to the author, July 1965. 17. Attempts to pass resolutions condemning government measures to close Palestinian universities in the territories during the intifada failed in both Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, a large group of professors from all Israeli universities organized a series of protests against these and other military measures. 18. The classic study of the relations between voluntary associations and democratic civic culture is G. A. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1965). See also Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988 and 1989), all volumes. 19. See Ehud Sprinzak, Chapter 9, in this volume.

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20. See, in this connection, Pierre Macherey,/! Theory of Literary Production, trans. G. Wall (London: Routledge Press, 1978). 21. Particularly noteworthy is the decision, taken soon after the electoral victory of the Likud in 1977, to stop production of the popular program, "Nikui Rosh" (Cleaning the Head), which was a sharp political satire on leading personalities. 22. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, "Revisioning the Past: The Changing Legacy of the Holocaust in Hebrew Literature," Salmagundi (Fall 1985-Winter 1986), pp. 68-69. See also Handelman and Katz, "State Ceremonies of Israel." 23. S. Ezrahi, "Revisioning the Past," p. 255. 24. Ibid., pp. 269-270. 25. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 26. N. Gretz, ed., The Canaanites: Literature and Ideology, an Anthology (Tel Aviv: An Open University Publication, 1985). 27. Ibid., pp. 230-231. 28. Dan Miron, "Yonathan Ratosh as a Cultural Hero," Ha'aretz Literary Supplement, April 9 and 15,1990. 29. See Charles Liebman, Chapter 14, in this volume. 30. Miron, "From Creators and Builders to Homeless." pp. 127-135. 31. Ibid., pp. 123-124. 32. Sacvan Bercovitch, "Afterward," in S. Bercovitch and M. Jehlen, eds., Ideology and Classic American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 434. 33. Ibid., p. 439. 34. Orzion Bartana, Caution, Israeli Literature, Tendencies in Israeli Fiction (Tel Aviv: Papyrus, Tel Aviv University, 1989). 35. See Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). 36. This observation about the Israeli newspapers was made to the author by Professor Elihu Katz.

14 Religion and Democracy in Israel Charles S. Liebman

Judaism and Democracy This chapter is concerned with exploring the influence of the Jewish religion (hereafter religion or Judaism) on democracy in Israeli society. The aphorism that is so often heard in U.S. constitutional law courses— "the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is"—is not quite true. By the same token, the aphorism that "Judaism is what 'the rabbis' say it is" is also not quite true. But there is enough truth in both these statements to caution us against seeking to understand the imperatives of either system without recognizing that each is subject to new interpretation by its authoritative interpreters. Statements by religious spokesmen about democracy generally refer to the formal properties of the system: majority rule and some guarantee of individual rights. Although some religious leaders have interpreted Judaism as incompatible with democracy, others view the two systems as completely harmonious.1 Obviously, if the Knesset were to pass a law contrary to halakah (Jewish law), a religious Jew, by definition, would feel obliged to follow the dictates of halakah rather than the law of the Knesset. But, as Haim David Levy, the present chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, has suggested, such a circumstance is a purely hypothetical one, and he finds difficulty in conceiving that such a situation could arise. 2 1 agree, although not for the same reasons Levy suggests. In order for such a situation to arise, two conditions would have to be met. First, the Knesset would have to pass such a law, with all the consequences involved in deliberately defying the religious tradition and the religious elite. In other words, not only would the present political constellation have to change, but the whole climate of attitudes toward Judaism (to be discussed below) would have to change. Second, all rabbis of scholarly stature would have to declare the law to be contrary to halakah, with all the consequences that such a defiance of the authority of the state would entail. For the sake of argument, let us assume that these two conditions were met. All such an event would do is establish a situation that is no different, 273

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in theory, from a situation that arises when an individual is faced with a contradiction between positive law and his own moral convictions. T h e democratic system is in no danger as long as this sort of thing doesn't happen too often or too many people do not find the law incompatible with their moral conscience. There is no major or peculiar incompatibility between halakah and democracy in practice because Jewish law is subject to interpretation. Conflict does occur, however, when we come to assess the role of religion in forming public attitudes and values that serve as preconditions to the functioning of a democratic system. T h e following is a list of such attitudes or values, which, one might anticipate, are also influenced by one's religious commitment. • Basic respect for law and authority. Democracy places more limited means of coercive control in the hands of its political elite than does an authoritative system of government. Respect for law or the willingness of the citizenry to voluntarily acquiesce to laws they do not personally favor is probably more important to the survival of a democracy than it is to other systems of government. • A large measure of tolerance for the opinions of others, regardless of how sharply one disagrees with these opinions and without regard to the type of person expressing the opinion. • Relatively great concern about the process of the political system and relatively less concern about the outcome or output of the system. • As an extension of the previous point, high commitment to what Robert Bellah calls a liberal constitutional regime rather than to a republic, 3 in which there is low commitment to the notion that the state has a role to play in shaping the moral character of its citizens or in achieving some other preordained goal. A belief, instead, that the function of government is to serve the needs of its citizens as the citizens define their needs. • Given the presence in Israel of national and religious minorities who are self-conscious concerning their collective identity, a special tolerance toward non-Jews and some recognition of their group as well as their individual rights. Other things being equal, high religious commitment is probably correlated with a respect for law and authority. That, at least, is my impression. Whether this is empirically so; under what circumstances it is more or less so; and if this relationship exists to what is it attributable are all considerations awaiting further study. If this correlation holds true, it

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may be accounted for by a generalized respect for law and authority that is a byproduct of religious socialization, but it may also stem from the relatively greater success of religious institutions in socializing their youth to the value of respect for law and authority (in other words, secular institutions seek the same goal, but religious institutions socialize their youth more effectively). It may also stem from one or more other factors. Whatever the reasons, respect for authority and the rule of law, in my opinion, are strengthened by religious commitment. 4 Such a relationship does not hold for the remaining values important to stable democracy. Commitment to Judaism does not encourage a respect for the opinions of others or the rights of others to express themselves freely when such expression is contrary to basic beliefs of Judaism, especially when those who express this opinion are nonreligious Jews. This is not only because expressions of such beliefs (for example, denial of the existence of God) are contrary to Jewish law, though sentiments not in sync with such law have led to demands for the censoring of plays.5 The religious believer, other things being equal, is accustomed to the notion that there is an absolute truth; that right and wrong, morality and immorality, good and evil, are absolutes that are readily distinguishable. Such a believer therefore considers it folly to permit the expression of ideas and values that one knows to be wrong, immoral, or harmful, especially when such notions are expressed by secularists, whose indifference, if not antagonism, to basic religious values suggests that they or their intent may be evil. According to a leader of the National Religious Party, art has a purpose, but, instead of fulfilling that purpose, the theater, television, and press disseminate material offensive to religion and harmful to Israel's security. Everything published or presented to the public "must be in accordance with moral and educational standards," he argued on the floor of the Knesset.6 This argument is related to a conviction that is central to the thinking of religious Jews: the notion that a proper state is one that shapes the moral outlook of its citizens. It is therefore incumbent upon the state to adopt measures that will further this goal. A religious world view socializes the Jew to the notion that the ideal state, the proper Jewish state, is not simply an instrument to serve a variety of interests or needs of the population, but a framework that assists the Jew in his moral and spiritual elevation. This attitude is shared by all religious Jews, non-Zionists as well as Zionists. The state therefore has a purpose. To return to Bellah's distinction noted above, the religious Jew favors a republic, not a constitutional democracy. It is insufficient, as far as religious Jews are concerned, to be told that the government has adopted some law in accordance with "due

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process" (i.e., proper procedures) or that the majority of the population in addition to a majority of the Knesset favor a particular law. From a religious point of view, Israel has a special purpose, and no government and no majority has the authority to override that purpose. Thus, according to a resolution adopted by the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, if Israel should surrender sovereignty over Judea or Samaria, it would "represent a prima facie annulment of the State of Israel as a Zionist Jewish state whose purpose is to bring Jews to the sovereign Land of Israel and not, perish the thought, to remove them from the land of Israel and replace them with a foreign sovereignty." 7 The idea of a republican rather than a constitutional democracy, the vision of a moral state rather than one that simply services the needs of its citizens, is a Zionist, no less than a Jewish, ideal. Both Israel as a Zionist state and Israel as a Jewish state imply limitations on democracy. The notion that Israel has a moral purpose that Knesset law cannot overrule is not confined to the religious population.® Thus, for example, the decision of the Knesset to prohibit parties that advocate abolishing the Jewish nature of the state was passed with virtually no public protest. However, it remains true that religious Jews interpret the consequences of Israel's condition as an ideological state more broadly than do nonreligious Jews. To put it another way, the policy consequences of Israel being a Jewish state are much broader from the point of view of the religious Jew, than are the consequences of Israel's being a Zionist state to the secular Jew. The most serious conflict between attitudes necessary for the maintenance of a stable democratic society in Israel and attitudes fostered by high religious commitment has to do with the rights of Arabs. Judaism in Israel has become increasingly particularistic and ethnocentric. It promotes little tolerance for the individual rights of non-Jewish citizens, and even less for group rights of minorities. In the minds of most religiously committed Jews, the Arabs represent a danger and a security threat, and strong measures, including denial of their civil rights, is justified. 9 1 would summarize the dominant tendency as one that grudgingly acknowledges the right of non-Jews to live in Israel, to live their private lives in accordance with their religious or cultural norms, but only insofar as doing so has no influence on other Jews or on the public life of the state. Even this tendency stretches the limits of halakic tolerance as the halakah is understood by many rabbinic sages. Tkhumin (the most distinguished annual dealing with matters of Jewish law and public issues from an Orthodox perspective) published a learned essay on the status of Moslems in Israel according to Jewish law.10 The author seems to phrase his words carefully, and there is no trace of polemic in the tone of the article, a fact that makes the conclusions all the

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more striking. According to the writer, under the ideal conditions envisioned by Jewish law, non-Jews in the land of Israel ought to live in servitude to Jews. In fact, their very right to live in the land of Israel is problematic. A Jew is permitted, though not required, to save non-Jews if their lives are in danger, and non-Jews should not benefit from free public services. These, the author stresses, are basic principles according to which Jews want to build their society. The halakic imperative to subjugate non-Jews living under Jewish rule may be relaxed because of political constraints, but Jews ought never lose sight of the ideal society to which Israel should aspire. However, the editor of the volume challenged the author's understanding of halakah in a note to the article. 11 The deemphasis on universal standards of morality on the part of many rabbinical leaders extends beyond the Jewish-Arab dispute. For example, the then chief rabbi of Ramat-Gan, in a letter to the National Religious Party daily Hatzofeh, decried the practice of childless Israeli couples adopting Brazilian children who then undergo conversion. Such children, he wrote, will be raised as Israelis, but not all of them will identify with the Jews. "After all, it is clear that children inherit characteristics from their parents." He then cited texts to prove that non-Jews are not blessed with the quality of mercy with which Jews are blessed, but, on the contrary, are cruel by their very nature. 12 The attitudes and values described above are derived from a religious perspective. Behind them lies a worldview that is formed, in part, by basic halakic notions that divide the world into right and wrong, good and evil, pure and impure. It is true that these attitudes and values do not carry the force of halakic norms. They do not obligate anyone to observe or follow them; indeed, they are rarely articulated. They are conveyed by indirection and in a matter-of-fact manner, as basic assumptions, not only of Judaism, but of human nature and the cosmos. For that very reason, they are more difficult to challenge and are more readily dispersed among population groups, especially poorly educated Jews of Sephardic background who are not punctilious in observing halakic norms but who do internalize many presuppositions of the religious tradition as they are conveyed by the present religious elite. On the other hand, attitudes and values are amenable to development and change without having to overcome legalistic hurdles. Indeed, attitudes and values concerning the Jewish tradition have undergone dramatic change, as I have tried to show elsewhere. 13 The question is why has Israeli Judaism undergone a transformation in the direction of particularism and ethnocentrism rather than moralism, universalism, and political liberalism? In other words, why has Israeli Judaism undergone a transformation that makes it appear less, rather than more, compatible with the preconditions for a stable democratic society?

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Religious Changes in Israeli Life The transformation of Judaism in Israel can only be understood as the result of two processes that are probably interrelated. T h e first is the growing deference of the nonreligious population to the religious elite's definition of Judaism, the Jewish tradition, and the Jewish religion. The second is the changes that have taken place in the religious elite's own definition of Judaism. Both processes are easy enough to demonstrate, but it is rather difficult to account for them. The Rise of the Religious

Elite

In the past, secular Zionists asserted their own definitions of Judaism in contrast to the definitions of both religious Zionists and religious anti-Zionists. 14 Indeed, it was clear to Ahad Ha'Am and his leading disciples that the appropriate custodians of the Jewish tradition were Jewish scholars and Hebrew writers rather than rabbis. 15 This point of view was inevitable since, in their eyes, the Jewish tradition was a national and not a religious one. But the efforts to transfer custody of the tradition from the rabbis failed. That failure has been especially noticeable since 1967. T h e influence of the rabbis has come at the expense of custom (community practice) and the role of Judaic scholars. 16 This is true among both the religious and the nonreligious population, being especially prevalent among those aligned with the political right. They perceive religious Jews as political allies and religion as a powerful instrument to legitimate their national-political demands. Disproportionate numbers of Sephardic Jews, the bulk of those who define themselves as masorati'im (traditional in their religious orientation), share this mood. Others who share this mood include some who define themselves as hiloni (secular) as well. Ariel Sharon, the favorite political leader of the radical right, is quoted as saying, " I am proud to be a Jew but sorry that I am not religious." 17 In the last few years, as divisions between doves and hawks have sharpened, one hears both nonreligious and religious leaders affirm that fidelity to religion and loyalty to the state are associated. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, for example, was quoted as saying: The left today is not what it once was. In the past, social and economic issues were its major concern. Today, its concern is zealousness for political surrender and, on the other hand, war against religion. It is only natural that someone whose stance is opposed to the Land of Israel will also oppose the Torah of Israel.18 T h e deference accorded to religion by secular elements of the population has strengthened the religious elite (i.e., rabbinical leaders) at the

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expense of o t h e r religious spokesmen, intellectuals, and even politicians who w e r e m o r e sensitive to currents within the nonreligious world in general as well as in Israeli society. Religious spokesmen need n o longer concern themselves with secular alternatives to the religious tradition or respond to alternate conceptions of Judaism that stress universalist or ethical c o m p o n e n t s within that tradition. Secular Judaism n o longer poses an ideology that competes with religious Judaism. T h e r e f o r e , those most capable of leading the battle against the competition, politicians but especially religious intellectuals, find their influence has declined and the balance of authority within the religious world has shifted in favor of the rabbinical elite, who, by virtue of their narrow training, career opportunities, and significant referents, tend to b e m o r e particularistic and xenophobic. The Transformation

of Israeli Judaism

T h e Jewish tradition over which the rabbis reign is not, as we noted, the same tradition over which they held sway in the past. T h e tradition has b e e n nationalized, among both nonreligious and religious Zionists, through a selective interpretation of sacred texts and of Jewish history, and has t a k e n place independently of the rabbinical elite's influence. Emphasis is given to the sanctity and centrality of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. In the past, Zionists celebrated their radical departure f r o m the the Jewish tradition in their efforts to reclaim and settle the land. Today, Israelis celebrate their continuity with the tradition in this regard. W h a t is all the m o r e remarkable is that Eretz Yisrael has come to symbolize both loyalty to the state of Israel and to Judaism. Baruch Kimmerling points out that the term E r e t z Yisrael has increasingly replaced the term state of Israel in the p r o n o u n c e m e n t s of national leaders, especially those on the political right. 19 T o b e a good Jew means to live in the land of Israel u n d e r conditions of Jewish autonomy. T h e nationalization of the Jewish tradition means its particularization as well. I d o not wish to argue that this is a distortion of the Jewish past. I suspect that the effort to interpret Judaism as moralistic and universalistic, an effort that is basic to the U.S. Jews' understanding of Judaism, is less faithful than is the Israeli version to what Jews throughout the ages u n d e r s t o o d as their tradition. 2 0 T h e present interpretation also contrasts with the Zionist e f f o r t to "normalize" Jewish existence. Classical Zionists suggested that anti-Semitism was a consequence of the peculiar condition of the Jews as perennial "guests" or "strangers" in countries not their own. It was not, they claimed, the result of any special animus toward Jews as such. Zionists believed that once the Jews had a country of their own, their condition would b e normalized and anti-Semitism would disappear. T h e

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Zionists were aware of the fact that this cornerstone of their credo contradicted traditional Jewish conceptions of anti-Semitism. For the most part, Israeli Jews no longer believe this to be true. Anti-Semitism, they are likely to believe, is endemic. "The world is all against us," as the refrain of a popular song went, suggests that there is nothing that Jews in general or Israelis in particular can do to resolve the problem. The Jew is special because he is hated, and he is hated because he is special. This is the lesson of Jewish history, and it serves to anchor the state of Israel within the currents of Jewish life. In summary, Zionism, the ideology of Jewish nationalism, has been transformed and integrated into the Jewish tradition. The tradition, in turn, has been nationalized. Erik Cohen describes this trend as a reorientation of the basic principles of legitimation of Israel: a trend away from secular Zionism, especially its pioneering-socialist variety, towards a neo-traditionalist Jewish nationalism which, while it reinforces the primordial links among Jews both within Israel and the diaspora, de-emphasizes the modern, civil character of the state. 21

The rise of particularism has implications for the interpretation of ethics and morality as well. Emphasis on law (and ritual) means a deemphasis on the centrality of ethics. But, in addition, religious Jews in Israel have redefined "morality" in particularistic rather than universalistic terms. According to the rabbi who pioneered the establishment of extremist education within the religious Zionist school system, Jews are enjoined to maintain themselves in isolation from other peoples. Foreign culture is a particular anathema when its standards are used to criticize Jews. 22 According to another rabbi, "between the Torah of Israel and atheist humanism there is no connection"; there is no place in Judaism for "a humanistic attitude in determining responses to hostile behavior of the Arab population." According to a leader of Jewish settlers on the West Bank, "Jewish national morality is distinct from universal morality. Notions of universal or absolute justice may be good for Finland or Australia but not here, not with us."23

Ideological Convergence Among Religious Parties It is customary to distinguish between two segments of the religious population in Israel. One is the haredi, often referred to as the ultra-Orthodox, who look to the past as a source of legitimacy and are hostile to Zionism, the ideology of Jewish nationalism (i.e., an ideology that conceives of the Jews as a people defined by a national rather than a religious

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essence and that aspires to the normalization of Jewish life). The other strand is associated in the public mind with Gush Emunim, ultranationalistic and preoccupied with the political and religious consequences of their belief that Jews are living in a messianic age (i.e., a period of imminent redemption). If we identify the two strands as distinct movements and then look at the more extreme elements in each strand, we will find that the two share little in common. The most extreme haredim are hostile to the state of Israel. Even among less extreme haredim, those who define themselves as loyal citizens of Israel, there is a tradition of political passivity with respect to non-Jews, an anxiety about antagonizing the nations of the world, and a desire to find a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs, even if it requires surrendering territory that Israel has held since 1967. Within the other strand, among many of the most extreme ultranationalist messianists, opposition to any surrender of territory, retaining the Greater Land of Israel under Jewish sovereignty, and settling the length and breadth of the land with Jewish settlers supersedes every other religious obligation. Belief in the imminent coming of the messiah encourages activity of the most extreme form. "I am not afraid of any death penalty, because the messiah will arrive shortly," proclaims Rafi Solomon, charged with an attempt at the indiscriminate murder of two Arabs. 24 Nationalism within this ideological camp "is the highest form of religion." 25 This allows compromise on virtually every other religiopolitical demand. In order to further their cause, religious ultranationalists have not only formed alliances with secular Jewish nationalists, but they have justified this alliance as the fulfillment of a positive religious commandment. Religious Jews who are active in ultranationalist nonreligious parties, and they include a number of prominent rabbis, tend to be most moderate in the "religious" (as opposed to the "nationalist") demands they make of the Israeli polity. Indeed, these demands never exceed that which the secular members of these parties have been willing to concede. One could, therefore, make a good case for distinguishing between two religious groupings and argue that they have virtually nothing in common at the political level. The alternate argument, and one offered here, is that the two religious strands are converging. This convergence is not evident in the assertions of the extremists and ideological purists in each camp, but rather in its effect on the larger population of religious Jews who were heretofore readily identifiable as either haredi or religious Zionist. Today, one can point to the emergence of new groups and/or changes in the ideology of established religious parties that integrate both strands. Support for this approach is found in the growing usage of a label that

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was coined as a derogatory term about ten years ago: haredi-leumi (a nationalist haredi). To the best of my knowledge, the term was first used by a moderate, anti-haredi leader of the religious Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva. He was very concerned with the growth of haredi tendencies within his movement and unhappy, though perhaps less distressed, by the emergence of ultranationalist tendencies as well. The term "haredi-leumi" was certainly intended as a term of opprobrium. The term is now borne with pride by a growing number of religious schools; by a rapidly growing religious youth movement, Ezra, which recently adopted this label; and by an increasing number of religious Jews who, according to a poll conducted by the religious weekly Erev Shabbat, decline to identify themselves as either haredi or religious Zionist but prefer to be called haredi-leumi. No less persuasive are developments among religious parties in Israel. Of the four religious parties that won seats in the Twelfth Knesset elections (November 1988), three were identified in the media as haredi. Nominally, all of them might be properly called anti-Zionist. Together, these parties won thirteen seats. Eleven of the thirteen seats, however, went to two parties whose platform and/or constituents and/or leadership was especially close to the leading secular nationalist party of the right (the Likud). The largest of these parties is Shas. It increased its number of seats from four to six in the elections. While its platform did not call for the annexation of the occupied territories, its television campaign was critical of the Israeli government for not adopting harsher measures in the suppression of the intifada. Despite the predictions of the pundits, generous promises by Labor with regard to religious legislation, but especially its promises of public funds and political appointments, led Shas leaders to seriously consider joining a Labor-led coalition following the election. However, demonstrations by Shas's own supporters and a reminder that the party leadership had explicitly promised during the campaign that it would not join with Labor rather than the Likud, restrained the party leaders from taking this step. The next largest haredi party, Agudat Israel, increased the number of its seats from two to five. While Agudat Israel is reputed to be virulently anti-Zionist, it happily accepted the support of two important groups whose religiously based opposition to any Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories equals that of Gush Emunim. These two groups do not view the state of Israel or the present era in the same messianic and apocalyptic terms as Gush Emunim's spiritual leaders, nor do they attribute the same metaphysical significance to events that began a century ago when nonreligious settlers initiated the present Zionist settlement of the land. They are no less adamant, however, about the religious imperative of maintaining Jewish sovereignty over the territories. When the

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Likud-Labor alliance broke up and Agudat Israel agreed to form a coalition with Labor, two of its parliamentary representatives bolted, thereby sabotaging Labor's hope to form a government under its leadership. The growth of haredi parties and their ability to attract voters from nonharedi segments of the population has been accompanied, at the ideological no less than the pragmatic level, by their de facto adoption of a nationalistic orientation and the muting of their ideological objections to Zionism,26 although this tendency does not encompass all haredim. At the religious-Zionist end of the continuum, the National Religious Party and its constituents, heretofore characterized by religious moderation and an accommodationist, rather than a rejectionist, orientation toward modernity and secular culture, show increasing signs of rejecting modernity and asserting a rather reactionary interpretation of the religious tradition. This is evident in the increased allocation of school time to the study of sacred text in religious-Zionist schools, in increasing insistence upon separating the sexes in institutions identified with religious Zionism, and in the increased emphasis on religious observance by many religious-Zionists. Whereas the National Religious Party's platform on the future of the territories has been increasingly radicalized and now virtually mirrors that of Gush Emunim, it, and other institutions of the religious-Zionist camp, adopt "religious" stances in other matters that increasingly resemble those of the haredim. Thus the counterpart to the nationalization of the haredim is the "haredization" of the religious Zionists. In summary, the argument presented here is that there is less and less point in distinguishing among the segments of religious Jewry, at least for purposes of assessing its impact on democratic ideas and structures within Israeli society. This does not mean that all religious Jewry or all the religious parties are cut of one cloth. There are different orientations that one can distinguish among parties, groups within the different parties, and among individual political and religious leaders. The argument, here, however, is that these differences are not reflected in the traditional distinction between religious Zionist and haredi, and that one can identify a mainstream within religious Jewry in Israel, whose core assumptions, attitudes, and values are in many cases in conflict with the system of assumptions, attitudes, and values that undergird a stable democratic polity. However, it is also worth noting that the religious parties have been affected by the democratic structure of Israeli political life. Slightly less than 20 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as dati, (religious), roughly one-third of whom are haredi. The majority of Israeli Jews, unlike, for example, the masses of Moslems, are not "religious" in belief or

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behavior, although many, probably most, harbor a feeling of sympathy for the religious tradition. When asked about their religious identification, 35 to 40 percent prefer to define themselves as "traditional" rather than "secular." Many are distressed, though not to the point of doing much about it, by the ignorance of religious rite and custom they find among their own children. But even this general mood is often accompanied by anticlerical feeling. Under the circumstances, religious leaders are reluctant to demand the total imposition of Jewish law, even if they might harbor the hope for such an eventuality. What they have called for, in more outspoken terms, is the maintenance of what is called a "Jewish street," i.e., the conduct of public life in accordance with Jewish law. In fact, they have been more anxious to maintain victories they have already secured rather than expand the scope of religious law. The key demands of the religious parties in the 1988 Knesset elections, were, in fact, defensive demands. In many instances, the religious parties simply sought to retain the fruits of legislative and administrative victories they had secured in the past. The most important of these included Sabbath closing laws passed by municipal councils, which a 1988 court decision held invalid because the Knesset had never explicitly empowered local councils to pass such laws. Closely related was the demand for the expansion of the authority of rabbinical courts in matters of personal status (especially marriage and divorce), an authority that has undergone some erosion by virtue of decisions by secular courts. (The legal status of the latter is superior to the former.) However, for the haredi parties, two of the three in particular, the most important defensive demand was the continuing assurance that yeshiva (plural: yeshivot) students (students at schools for advanced religious study, which means virtually all haredi youth) would continue to benefit from draft exemptions as long as they are enrolled in yeshivot. A second type of demand included increased benefits, or what the religious parties called "equalizing" public funding for their educational and philanthropic institutions. The haredi parties also called for greater housing benefits for young couples; Shas was especially interested in government recognition of its schools as an independent system eligible for public funding while maintaining administrative autonomy. These demands, while marginally burdensome to the Israeli taxpayer, hardly presaged an onslaught on the democratic structure of the Israeli polity or, for that matter, on individual religious freedoms. An effort to expand religious influence in Israeli society was reflected in two types of demands. One was of a generally symbolic nature: amending the "Who Is a Jew?" law. Amending the "Law of Return" to preclude recognition by Israel of non-Orthodox conversions performed abroad (popularly known as the "Who Is a Jew?" law) would have affected no

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more than a handful of Israelis, but it was of great symbolic importance because it would have established the authority of Orthodox rabbis in determining whom the state of Israel recognizes as a Jew. The second type of demand was in the area of culture and education. Proposals in this regard were rather vague. They included the demand that the government ought to do something about introducing more Jewish (read religious) education. The National Religious Party also talked about the need for more national (read ultranationalist) education. There were also hints at the need to preserve Israeli culture against negative influences (an allusion to pornography and probably to antireligious and/or antinationalist expressions as well). Opposition to the construction of the "Mormon University" (in fact, a branch of Brigham Young University) on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem also falls into this category. These demands, it should be noted, were phrased very carefully, generally in a positive, rather than a negative vein, under category headings that talked about the need for the unity of the Jewish people. Except for the proposal to amend the "Who Is a Jew?" law, these demands were quickly surrendered in the negotiations over the establishment of a coalition government following the election. Furthermore, although Agudat Israel, and to some extent the National Religious Party, did feel strongly about the need to amend the Who Is a Jew? law, neither conditioned their joining the government on a change in that law. It might be argued that such surrender was necessary because once the two major parties (Likud and Labor) had agreed to form a unity government, the bargaining position of the religious parties was severely reduced. However, following the dissolution of the unity government, the religious parties again held the balance of power. Most of them refused an alliance with the left despite evidence that the Labor Party would concede to virtually any demand they made. Their demands from the Likud were fairly modest in the realm of legislation. No amendment to the "Who Is a Jew?" law, no banning of the Mormon University, no censorship of pornography, no changes in the secular school system occurred. What did materialize was a law banning the sale of pork, a law placing some minor limitations on how a woman can request a legal abortion (it is not clear that the law will have any effect on the number of legal abortions performed in Israel), a law permitting local municipal councils to determine whether places of entertainment may or may not open on the Sabbath (a law whose impact may be to extend the number of such places now open), and a law banning lascivious advertisements. How are we to account for the generally moderate nature of the demands raised by the religious parties? Part of the explanation rests on the importance that some religious parties now place on their "nationalist" agenda, an agenda that, by their definition is, of course, "religious."

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Nevertheless, the religious parties are sufficiently sensitive to the distinction between "national" and "religious" in the eyes of the secular public in order to avoid jeopardizing their "nationalist" agenda by emphasizing their "religious" agenda. Even if one accepts that settling, and/or annexing, or at least refusing to surrender parts of the Greater Land of Israel is a "religious" issue, the emphasis on this issue rather than others suggests an order of priorities. Second, at least two of the religious parties, Shas and Agudat Israel, increasingly attract nonreligious voters. Shas's attraction to ethnic nonreligious voters is well known, but the fact that Agudat Israel has become an increasingly attractive option to voters of low socioeconomic status has received less attention. 27 T h e success both these parties had in attracting such voters and the fact that they became outlets for social protest among some nonreligious Jews may have led the parties themselves to temper the narrowly religious focus of their demands. Third, more active participation in the democratic process may have sensitized party leaders to the fact that excessive demands in the area of religious legislation threaten them with public backlash whose shadow, even now, looms on the horizon. T h e religious parties are aware of their minority position in Israeli society and are anxious to avoid confrontations with the nonreligious majority at both the political and the social level—a confrontation they can only lose. Finally, benefits from public funds that the leaders of the secular parties have showered on the haredi parties may be the most important factor in moderating demands for religious legislation. Large segments of haredi society benefit from these funds and are unwilling to jeapordize them by raising demands that the majority will refuse to meet. It is especially dangerous for a religious party to raise demands of a religious nature that go unmet. They then stand charged with a willingness to compromise religious principle for the material benefits to be derived from participation in a governing coalition. They may prefer, therefore, to moderate their demands to begin with.

Can Democracy Survive in a Jewish State? Assuming we are flexible about what we mean by democracy and a Jewish state, democracy can, of course, survive in a Jewish state. If democracy means a state without moral purpose, one that functions simply to attend to the interests of its citizens as they define them, to provide services its citizens demand without an effort to further some ultimate vision of the good society and the good citizen—then democracy is incompatible with a Jewish state, a Zionist state, or any other kind of ideological state. I don't

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think such a state can survive, but that is another question entirely. If by a Jewish state we mean a theocratic state, one ruled by a religious elite or in which the laws are subject to the approval of a religious elite, or a state in which the Torah is the ultimate constitutional authority, then democracy and a Jewish state are also incompatible. But if by democracy we mean majority rule, individual liberties, and minority rights guaranteed by law, within a set of parameters that are derived from a reasonable understanding of Judaism and the Jewish tradition, then democracy and a Jewish state are not incompatible, although accommodating these two values may require painful compromises for those committed in good faith to only one or the other value. Separation of religion and state is no solution because a Jewish state is, by definition, one in which religion plays a public role and is accorded public status. The resolution lies in an accommodation that by definition is less than perfect. The route to that accommodation rests in part on the good faith of all the parties to find such an accommodation, and no less important in the definition that is accorded to democracy, but especially to Judaism. It should be clear from this that everyone has a stake in how everyone else defines these conceptions. Policy Recommendations This chapter has argued that Judaism, as it is presently perceived, in Israel does not reinforce attitudes and values that undergird a democratic system. This stems in part from tendencies inherent within Judaism and democracy and from particular perceptions of Judaism and democracy. There are, therefore, three areas in which recommendations are appropriate. First, recommendations that would encourage the political elite to make accommodations necessary to maintain a society that is both as Jewish as is possible within the parameters of a democratic society and that is as democratic as possible within the parameters of a Jewish state are needed. I emphasize the political elite because their role is critical in the process. Religious leaders must understand that whatever "ultimate" hopes or "messianic" visions they may harbor about the ultimate constitution of Israeli society, reference to a Torah state or a state ruled by halakah suggests a very limited commitment to a democratic society. Even if they do not mean what they say, and I strongly suggest that they do not, they are socializing their youth to antidemocratic values, raising false expectations about the nature of the political system, and casting doubts upon the Jewish commitments of those who eschew this value. Religious leaders

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should be encouraged to consider how meaningless the slogan "a state in accordance with halakah" has been to them in the past, and whether they would not do better to either abandon the notion or rephrase it so that their public understands that it is not a program for implementation in the here and now. Studies of what "a state in accordance with halakah" has meant in the past to religious leaders in Israel, and how distinguished rabbis and politicians have reinterpreted this "principle," may be of some help in this regard. But it is equally important for nonreligious leaders to indicate that while no one would deny the right of religious Jews to express their hope for a halakic state, the expression of such a hope is offensive to the nonreligious and casts grave doubts about the willigness of religious Jews to arrive at a basic accommodation with the nonreligious. Political elites who define themselves as secular must appreciate that privatization of religion is a peculiarly Protestant notion that is simply not applicable in the case of Judaism—unless, of course, they are prepared to surrender the notion of a Jewish state. The framework of accommodation, therefore, includes the surrender by the religious of the ambition to realize a state in accordance with halakah and the recognition by the nonreligious that a Jewish state means that the Jewish religion will be reflected in the public life of the society, the recognition that Jewish law will in one form or another find expression in public law. Within this framework, political negotiations based upon everyone's sense of what is fair and just and on the relative balance of political power each side possesses can take place. It would be inappropriate to try and to elaborate what such a settlement would ultimately look like. The second set of recommendations deals with perceptions of democracy and of Judaism. The effort to define democracy in the most libertarian of terms presents the democratic system in sharp conflict with Judaism or any religious system of life. The definition that Ze'ev Sternhall, for example, offers of democracy as a system of government that places the individual and not collective goals at the center of its concern or the essence of democracy as "the rights of humans to be masters of themselves . . . the expression of man's recognition that all sources of political, social and moral authority inhere in man himself" and that "society and state exist in order to serve the individual... and are never ends in themselves"2* is an example of such a conflict. Therefore, it is important to reinforce perceptions of democracy that emphasize group, as well as individual, interests, that comprehend minorities in cultural, ethnic, religious, and perhaps even national terms, rather than as a set of individuals organized on an ad hoc basis in order to secure a particular right. And, as we have pointed out, it is important to stress that the stability of a democracy depends, among other factors, on a sense of moral order and moral vision

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that the members of that society share. The third set of recommendations deals with perceptions of Judaism. In this chapter, I have argued that Israelis define Judaism in narrow, particularistic, and nationalistic terms, but that this is only one alternative conception of Judaism. How can perceptions of Judaism, on the part of Israelis in general and the religious public in particular, be transformed so that they are more compatible with a democratic society? The presence of Conservative and Reform Judaism in Israel would probably contribute to that end. Forced to articulate their perception of Judaism in ideological terms and compete with alternative conceptions of Judaism, we may find that Orthodoxy in Israel comes to resemble more closely Orthodox Judaism in the United States and Western Europe. (This is not the place to describe the salutary effect that such a development would have on Conservative and Reform Judaism in the United States if they were forced to formulate their Jewish conceptions, as they would in Israel, with greater fidelity to sacred text.) There is also little doubt that the particularization of Judaism in the hands of the religious elite, and the acquiescence of the religious public in this narrowing of Jewish vision, finds support in the failure of other alternatives, the bankruptcy of secular Zionism as a system of ideas and behavior being the most important. The emergence of any alternative definition of Judaism that demonstrates both intellectual vigor and the capacity to inspire a way of life would generate a new breed of religious thinkers who would be forced to confront these new developments.

Notes Parts of this chapter have appeared in revised form in an essay, "Religious Fundamentalism and the Israeli Polity," in Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 68-87.1 have also drawn upon material from my book, co-authored with Steven M . C o h e n , Two Worlds of Judaism:

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(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990). 1. The late Rabbi Meir Kahane was not a great rabbinical scholar, but he anchored himself in rabbinic text and certainly represented one stream within the Jewish tradition. According to Kahane: The liberal west speaks about the rule of democracy, of the authority of the majority, while Judaism speaks of the Divine truth that is immutable and not subject to the ballot box or to majority error. The liberal west speaks about the absolute equality of all people while Judaism speaks of spiritual status, of the chosenness of the Jew from above all other people, of the special and exclusive relationship between God and Israel. (Meir Kahane, Uncomfortable Questions For

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Comfortable Jews [Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1987], p. 159.) Other rabbis, less politically extreme than Kahane, express opinions that cover a wide spectrum. I am indebted to my colleague, Asher Cohen, who located many such sources, only a few of which are cited here. Zvi Weinman writes that even if all the Knesset members were religiously observant Jews, the democratic system is tainted because it can, in theory, decide matters contrary to the Torah. See Zvi Weinman, "Religious Legislation—A Negative View," T'khumin 1 (1986), in Hebrew. T'khumin is the most highly regarded periodical dealing with problems of society and state from the perspective of Jewish law. According to another distinguished rabbi, "The democratic approach, whose substance is consideration for the will of the people, their demands and their needs, is among the foundation stones of Israeli halakha" (Nathan Zvi Friedman, "Notes on Democracy and Halakha," T'khumin 4 (1984), p. 255, in Hebrew). Eliezer Schweid concludes his discussion of Rabbi Chaim Hirshenson's ideas about a democratic state according to halakah with the observation that "the political system that the Torah intended is democratic in its basis" (Eliezer Schweid, Democracy and Halakha: Reflections on the Teachings of Rabbi Chaim Hirshenson [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1978], p. 75, in Hebrew). Finally, to Rabbi Sol Roth, "it is clear that the fundamental principles of democracy, namely, representative government and rule by majority, inhere in a Jewish tradition" (Halakhah and Politics: The Jewish Idea of a Stale [New York: Ktav, 1988], p. 141). 2. Haim David Halevy, Dat V'Medina [Religion and State] (Tel Aviv: Arzi Printers, 1969), pp. 49-60, in Hebrew. 3. Bellah distinguishes between liberal constitutionalism built on the notion that "a good society can result from the actions of citizens motivated by self interest alone when those actions are organized through proper mechanisms" and a republic that "has an ethical, educational, even spiritual role" (Robert Bellah, "Religion and the Legitimation of the American Republic," in Robert Bellah and Phillip Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion [New York: Harper and Row, 1980], p. 9). The point and its application to Israeli society is discussed more fully in Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, "The Dilemma of Reconciling Traditional Culture and Political Needs: Civil Religion in Israel," Comparative Politics (October 1983), pp. 53-66. 4. On the lack of respect for the authority of law in Israel, see Ehud Sprinzak, Every Man Whatsoever Is Right In His Own Eyes: Illegalism in Israeli Society (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1986), in Hebrew. 5. The effort, for example, to remove or at least censor the play, The Messiah, because of exclamations of heresy is described in Uri Huppert, Back to the Ghetto: Zionism in Retreat (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988). Although the book is a polemic, extremely one sided, and misleading in many respects, the treatment of this incident is, to the best of my knowledge, an accurate one. On the other hand, Minister of Interior Aryei Deri, a leader of Shas, a Sephardic, haredi party, the most ostensibly "primitive" of all religious parties, abolished the censorship of plays in an order issued in August 1989. 6. The speech by Rabbi Haim Druckman was reprinted in Nekudah, March 2, 1983, and is described in Charles S. Liebman, "Jewish Ultra-Nationalism in Israel: Converging Strands," in William Frankel, ed., Survey of Jewish Affairs, 1985 (London: Associated University Presses, 1985), pp. 28-50. 7. The statement was issued November 4,1985, reprinted in Davar, November 22,1985, and translated into English in International Center for Peace in the

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Middle East, Israel Press Briefs, 40 (December 1985), p. 17. There are many similar statements. 8. In addition to Sprinzak, Every Man, see Boaz Evron, A National Reckoning (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1988), pp. 392-395, in Hebrew. 9. Religion acts independently of education and ethnicity in the formation of Jewish attitudes toward Arabs. The religious Jew is more likely to h a r b o r prejudice and less likely to respect the political rights of Arabs. E p h r a i m Yuchtman-Yaar's chapter, "The Israeli Public and the Intifada: Attitude Change or Entrenchment?" in this volume (Chapter 12) provides additional documentation of this phenomenon, which is supported by every survey of Israeli public opinion with which I am familiar. 10. Elisha Aviner, "The Status of Ishmaelites in the State of Israel According to Halakha," Tkhumin 8 (1987), pp. 337-359, in Hebrew. 11. Overtones of this attitude in the political realm are evident in an incident that occurred during the tense days preceding the January 15,1991, deadline for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The general secretary of the National Religious Party demanded that in the event that Israel calls up reserves as a consequence of a U.S.-Iraqi conflict, activists from the Peace Now movement not be drafted. He indicated that the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza might respond to the war by heightening the intifada. In such a case, the Israeli army would have to resort to harsh measures and Peace Now activists, according to the general secretary, would be unwilling to participate in such measures and might create a false impression in the world media (Ha'aretz, January 11, 1991, p. 3). Underlying this demand, in my opinion, was the belief (hope, fear) among some Israelis and Palestinians that a U.S.-Iraqi war would serve as the pretext for the Israeli army to undertake a massive expulsion of Palestinians. 12. Hatzofeh, June 20,1988, p. 4.1 have deliberately eschewed citing individuals known for their political extremism or forums that encourage the expression of extremist positions. Among the most horrendous in this regard are the anthologies Tzfiya, three of which have appeared to date. In the last issue, a rabbi from Merkaz Harav writes on the differences between Jews and non-Jews (David Bar Haim, "Israel is Called—'Man,'" Tzfiya 3, (n.d.), pp. 45-73, in Hebrew). After bringing proof texts, he concludes that "non-Jews are considered as animals . . . the status of non-Jews in Jewish law resembles the status of animals and there is generally no distinction between them" (p. 61). A number of articles in the anthology are overtly racist, some written by rabbis of some distinction. The most depressing aspect is not that there are learned rabbis who hold such views but that the religious establishment finds no cause to condemn them. 13. See Charles S. Liebman, Attitudes Toward Jewish-Gentile Relations in the Jewish Tradition (Cape Town: Kaplan Centre, University of Cape Town, 1984), and Charles S. Liebman and Steven M. Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism: The Jewish Experience in Israel and the United States (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990). 14. Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement, 1882-1904 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). 15. See, for example, Haim Nahman Bialik, "HaSefer Halvri," in The Collected Work of H.N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 9th ed„ 1947), pp. 194-201, in Hebrew. The Jews were not unique in this regard. Anthony Smith describes "the new priesthood" as the "secular intellectuals committed to critical discourse" and the blueprint of a new society formed by "the romantic vision of the scholar-intellectual, redefining the community as a 'nation' whose keys are unlocked by the 'scientific' disciplines of

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archeology, history, philology, anthropology and sociology" (Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986], p. 161). 16. See, for example, Yosef Dan, "The Hegemony of the Black H a t s P o l i t i k a 29 (November 1989), pp. 12-15, in Hebrew. 17. Maariv, "Weekend Supplement," March 10,1986, p. 12. 18. Maariv, December 20,1987, p. 6. 19. Baruch Kimmerling, "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definition of the Collective Identity: Eretz Israel or the State of Israel?" in Erik Cohen, Moshe Lissak, and Uri Almagor, eds., Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S. N. Eisenstadt (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 262-283. 20. I explore this notion in greater detail in "Ritual and Ceremonial in the Reconstruction of American Judaism," in Ezra Mendelson, ed., Studies in Contemporary Jewry VI (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 272-283. 21. Erik Cohen, "Citizenship, Nationality and Religion in Israel and Thailand," in Kimmerling, ed., The Israeli State and Society (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), p. 70. 22. Liebman, "Jewish Ultra-Nationalism in Israel." 23. Ibid., p. 46. 24. Yediot Aharonot, July 6,1989, p. 17. 25. Gideon Aran, "From Religious Zionist to a Zionist Religion: The Origin and Culture of Gush Emunim A Messianic Movement in Modern Israel." Hebrew University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1987, p. 524, in Hebrew. 26. Yosef Fund, "Agudat Israel Confronting Zionism and the State of Israel— Ideology and Policy." Bar-Ilan University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1989, in Hebrew. 27. Eliezer Don-Yehiya, "Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli Politics: The Religious Parties and the Elections to the 12th Knesset," Medina Mimshal Veyahasim Benleumiyim 32 (Spring 1990), pp. 11-54, in Hebrew, develops this point in some detail. See also U. O. Schmelz, Sergio DellaPergola, and Uri Avner, "Ethnic Differences Among Israeli Jews: A New Look," in David Singer, ed., American Jewish Year Book 90 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), pp. 3-206. The point is made in a passing reference on p. 101. 28. Ze'ev Sternhall, "The Battle for Intellectual Control," Politika 18 (December 1987), pp. 2-5, in Hebrew.

15 Political Education in the Midst of a National Identity Crisis: The Compatibility of Judaism and Democracy as a Pedagogical Theme Arye

Carmon

In August 1984, several weeks after the election of a Jewish racist to the Eleventh Knesset,1 the director general of the Ministry of Education delivered a scathing address concerning the emergence of "Kach," the political movement under Meir Kahane's leadership, and the threats it posed to Israel's educational system.2 It was a kind of "opening salvo" in a campaign announced by the Ministry of Education and Culture to educate the nation's young people about democracy. Within weeks of Kahane's election, the Ministry of Education officially declared that during the following school year (1985-1986), "Education Toward Democracy" would be the principal topic of the entire educational system. Ultimately the ministry established a special "task force" assigned to publish extracurricular materials, noncompulsory in nature, on democracy. This by no means provided a comprehensive response to what was agreed to be the pressing need for education toward democracy in Israel. Indeed, a systematic effort to inculcate democratic values and norms has never been integrated into the formal curriculum of the Israeli educational system. The initial response of the Israeli Ministry of Education to Kahanism was, seemingly, promising. It was, however, symptomatic of the system's inability to cope, comprehensively, with the issue of political education. Decisionmakers in the educational system prefer to avoid any permanent and systematic attempts to address the need for a democratic education based on a pedagogical ethos or a world view of any kind. Hence they have been unable to meet the educational challenges posed by a democratic society in the throes of maturation, and, at the same time, have failed to counter the ideology of Jewish racism that posits the mutual preclusion of Judaism and democracy. In fact, the general repugnance for Kahane's racism, and its shortrange programmatic expression initiated by the Ministry of Education, provided an excuse for once again evading the nurturing of a pedagogical ethos—one that would balance the universalist premises of democracy and the particularist traits of the Jewish experience; one that would 293

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counter Kahane's vicious attack on the Zionist endeavor to link Judaism with democracy. Zionist social theory has not developed a basis for examining the tension between democracy and Judaism. As a result, the Israeli educational system, a product of Zionist praxis, lacks a normative structure in which a pedagogy capable of cultivating democratic values could emerge. This chapter analyzes the issue of political education in an evolving democratic polity. It addresses the following question: What are the forces that affect political socialization in Israel? Educational theory suggests that processes of socialization that shape an individual's political behavior are derived from and influenced by two clusters of factors: first, the parameters of the political culture in which the individual lives and that reinforce affinity or identity with his or her collective; and second, the relationship between school and society. In Israel both the individual's national identity and the structure of the school-society relationship are in crisis. The first factor constitutes the conceptual dimension of the crisis. It stems from the superficiality of current notions of national identity. That superficiality, in turn, is a consequence of the failure to establish the compatibility between Jewishness and democracy. Kahane had uncovered the most glaring of all the gaps in the Israeli value system: the failure to legitimize a plurality of definitions and characterizations of national identity (of "Jewishness").3 This gap has left the educational system with neither a cultural-secular nor a religious alternative to the dominant religious orthodox version of Jewishness. The second fact of the crisis, the relations between school and society, is born of an inherent deficiency of the Israeli educational system: In the 1950s the schools were forced to disconnect themselves from their sociopolitical surroundings. This isolation from its immediate political context was manifested in the emergent orthodoxy of "statism" as embodied in the Education Bill of 1953. Below, the interaction between political socialization and the Israeli's identity crisis will be examined, followed by the relationship between political socialization and the structural deficiency of the Israeli educational system. A framework that sets off the conceptual and structural components of the current crisis will make it easier to understand the existing political culture in Israel. This understanding, in turn, will facilitate the presentation of conclusions and recommendations.

The Crisis of Identity in Israel The crisis of identity experienced by Israelis exists on several levels: It is about defining their national affinity and membership (their Jewishness); it is the need to clarify the avenues of participation in the Israeli democracy

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(the political culture); and it is a crisis of self-esteem (visions of the Israeli future). As such, this identity crisis is a principal factor in political socialization because it denies the citizen of a divided and heterogeneous society any pluralistic definition of his or her national identity. This crisis is the consequence of three developments: a breach in the collective biography; the novelty of having to exercise responsibility for political sovereignty in a heterogeneous society rife with tensions; and the as yet unresolved struggle for the country's actual physical survival. Sociologists describe the Israeli as a member of an immigrant society. In 1966, eighteen years after the establishment of the state, only 15 percent of all Israeli parents were native born. Twenty-one years later, in 1987, that figure reached approximately 25 percent. Even among 34- to 45-yearold parents—the primary group with school-age children—the percentage of native-born Israelis was 26 percent. In the 1990s, the gradual emergence of a native-born society will be reversed by the mass influx of Soviet Jews. For instance, in 1990, the generation of "founding sons" (which succeeded that of the "founding fathers") comprised less than 2 percent of the Israeli population. The Israeli's collective biography, therefore, contains a deep rift separating those whose personal history is rooted in the Jewish diasporic experience from those who not only lack such roots but have no consciousness of them. The collective biography of native-born Israelis is characterized by a break in continuity, a schism that separates them from the ethnic, cultural, and historical inheritance of the Jews. This situation is responsible for a biographical "seam" in the Israeli's identity. The very fact that the Israeli is born into an ethnic/national collective that resides across a historical chasm from the diaspora and that lacks any tradition of its own of political sovereignty is the cause of the second seam: the "seam of sovereignty." Israeli society has not completed the process by which symbols, myths, 4 and a code of values are consolidated into a coherent ethos consistent with political, social, and economic patterns of behavior. Nor can we expect this to be accomplished during our lifetime. What is more, that society that Israelis are struggling to become a part of is in the midst of an existential struggle with its Arab neighbors. In the permanent military conflict, survival has become an existential value and a dominant political goal; survival has acquired the features of a behavioral ethos that infuses political socialization in contemporary Israel. The breach in the Israeli collective biography is, then, the first of three factors in forming the identity crisis. In a normal, stable society, ethnocultural traditions are the continuum along which a code of values guiding behavior and ratifying collective identity is passed along. But in the Israeli immigrant culture, the biographical breach, life on the seam of Jewish history, separates individuals from the ethnic/cultural/historical tradition of the collective to which they belong.

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The second factor in the Israeli crisis of identity is the seam of sovereignty. That same tradition from which the Israeli is separated never included political sovereignty. Any Jew who left his or her tradition and immigrated to Israel had, at most, experienced the political sovereignty of a national ethos that had nothing to do with Jewishness. Therefore, the political socialization of Israelis—and not just their collective identity— has and continues to reside in a no-man's land; in a seam of sovereignty that separates the Jews' tradition of life without political sovereignty from the contemporary appearance of Jewish sovereign responsibility. One of the key questions designers of the educational system should have asked is: To what extent does the socialization of individual Israelis supply them with an elementary consciousness, a cognitive map or compass to guide them through the reality of Israeli citizenship? For the individual, this seam, the transition to sovereignty, is rife with conflict, as several other chapters in this volume demonstrate. Politically, this is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Socially, it is the ethnic tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Culturally (and perhaps most severely), it exists in the religious-secular dichotomy within Jewish society. In their theory of political culture, Almond and Verba claimed that a democratic system must maintain a balance between consensus and cleavage. Without differences of opinion over vital issues, it is difficult to imagine a democratic political system actually functioning. However, if these differences become polarizing cleavages, "democratic society faces mortal danger." In their opinion, society must be the scene of a "limited polarity" (as defined by Parsons). In the absence of some measure of consensus, there is little hope of peacefully settling those political debates that are part and parcel of the democratic process. 5 Such containment of society's divisions is effected by directing political conflicts onto a broader plane of solidarity. 6 In Israel, societal solidarity reached its apotheosis during periods of real external threat. The only internal source of solidarity, of Jewish commonality, is vague and vulnerable at best. Since 1967, and especially during the 1980s, the growing domestic polarization over how to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict has exacerbated this vulnerable solidarity. Indeed, in the past two-and-a-half decades, political differences have overshadowed the common sentiment of being Jewish. That solidarity suggested by Almond and Verba as a means for containing polarization has paradoxically been the victim of the same force that normally nourishes it: "survivalism." The struggle to survive is the third factor of the Israeli's identity crisis. In a society still in formation, an essential condition for fostering self-esteem is an outlook oriented toward the future. But the conditions of survival in Israel have meant that socialization has been dominated by the "here and now." One aspect of this struggle for survival that has affected socialization and in particular

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the Israeli's self-esteem is the lack of established national borders since June 1967—especially the lack of societal consensus over the geographic definition of Israeli sovereignty. In most, if not all, democratic cultures, individuals are socialized with the knowledge of where their polity ends and another begins. There is a clear demarcation between language, habits, manners, and codes of behavior. Young Israelis are deprived of this. Instead, their national horizons are obscured by fierce disagreements. Thus the problem of borders is linked to the debate over national identity and democracy. If the state's identity is Jewish and its government democratic, what does this make the "territories" and their Palestinian inhabitants? In its political-security dimension (i.e., that of survival), the issue of borders then becomes connected to the question of Israeli identity (i.e., sovereignty). The victim in this situation is the individual who needs a clearly defined territorial boundary as a component of his or her identity. The three factors of the Israeli identity crisis, and the crisis itself, underscore the failure to create a pedagogical ethos that can facilitate development of the educational means for inculcating democratic political behavior. The elements of the identity crisis only underscore the need the designers of the educational system in Israel had to face when confronted by the contentions of Jewish racists that Judaism and democracy are incompatible. They had to provide an intellectual underpinning capable of resolving the tension between the universalism of democracy and the particularism of Jewish national identity. As a rule, the dichotomy between the universal and the particular (in the context of a modern democratic society and in relation to educational policy) is expressed as a tension between the individual and the group, between the rights of the individual as an autonomous and unique person (the universal dimension) and the demands made on that individual by his or her collective (the particular dimension). In Israel, where democracy was introduced by external arrangements and did not develop organically, it is difficult to find a set of social ground rules capable of passing any stability test. The political actions of the Israeli are presumed to express spontaneously an ancient Jewish code of values whose dominant orientation is collectivist ("all of Israel is accountable to each other") rather than individualist. Accordingly, the individual is supposed to ask "What am I expected to do for the collective?" and not "What are my rights as a free individual and how is the collective expected to defend those rights?" It is here that the clash between democratic universalism and national particularism becomes a question over the compatibility of democracy and Jewishness. And this compatibility should have been the central issue addressed when developing a policy of political education in Israel. The tenuousness of both the universal and the particular aspects makes one of the fundamental questions facing modern Israeli society

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unanswerable: What is the connection between citizenship in the state and participation in the nation, between Israelis who are not Jews and Jews who are not Israelis? Although the former are citizens, they are not members of the collective for which the state of Israel serves as a national framework according to Zionism. The latter do belong to this collective, but they are not citizens of the state, which claims centrality in the life of that collective. Thus such concepts as membership, participation, and affinity—basic influences on the development of the collective dimension of an individual's identity—remain vague and ill defined. When an Israeli says "we," does this include Arab Israelis? Does it refer to the Jews, including diaspora Jews? When an Israeli says "they," does this mean the Arabs, or does it refer to Jews who are not citizens of Israel? The confusion is not just semantic; it signals an inherent dilemma in the collective nature of Israeli identity.

The Israeli School and the Sociopolitical Process Of the three seams that define the Israeli's identity crisis (collective biography, sovereignty, and survival), it is survival that has become predominant. Historical circumstances are responsible for the centrality of survivalism. Theoretically, this should have narrowed the distance between Israeli education and the dominant sociopolitical dynamic, making the schools more open to the processes that breed political culture. Indeed, in the prestate era, the relationship between the educational system and society was characterized by a distinct mutuality: schooling was part and parcel of political socialization. But at that time, the main feature of political education (or, as it is called in Hebrew, "values-education") was legitimation of a pluralism of educational philosophies. After the founding of the state, such pluralism was curtailed, and that has hindered the ability of Israeli schools to respond to the crisis of identity in general and the centrality of survivalism, in particular. With the birth of Israel, its founder, Ben-Gurion, vigorously imposed his notion of statism. This meant the abolition of different educational philosophies in the secular sector of education. It also meant isolating the schools from the sociopolitical process. Statism, never specifically defined, was designed to facilitate the revolution from pre-independence to postindependence; from the Yishuv to statehood. It was an aggressively homogenizing measure in a heterogeneous society seeking to define its ethos. A couple of decades later, a thinker on education claimed: "A unified statist educational system cannot answer the needs of a heterogeneous population A democratic society should by no means enact laws which determine the goals of education, as it is forbidden to legislate laws

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pertaining to the beliefs of its citizens."7 The institutionalization of statism proscribed any attempt by the schools to address the outstanding character of Israeli political culture: controversy. As a consequence, the Israeli educational system became divorced from the Israeli sociopolitical reality. The schools were expected to keep out of social and political conflicts. But as the anointed catalyst of solidarity in a less than harmonious society, the educational system created a negative consensus: not to confront the social, political, and cultural ramifications of Israeli heterogeneity as they found expression in the sphere of school. Those who directed the transformation of the state system in the 1950s interpreted their mission as to "increase state authority over education" or "remove the schools from the sphere of social and party polemic" and deliver "the responsibility for the next generation, its personal skills and social happiness, its moral, intellectual, and technical level" into the hands of the state.8 The ultimate goal was to create a unified nation-state by means of a unified curriculum. Today it is clear that political tensions have not been mitigated and that the divergence of values within society was not erased by the statism of the State Education Act. Moreover, demographic changes in the 1950s added an unprecedented sociopolitical heterogeneity to the long-established ideological heterogeneity. The educational system developed no "shock absorber" to legitimize this new diversity of creeds. The opposite actually occurred: Statism became a straitjacket for the educational system. In general, statism has separated political socialization from schooling, preventing the development of policies for addressing the needs of political education in Israel. However, statism did not only abolish any legitimacy for a plurality of educational worldviews, it also obviated pedagogic debate over the critical issue of neutrality and political education. This last point underscores the inherent structural flaw in the educational system in Israel: Secular schools—-approximately 80 percent of the school system—are unable to guide their students toward making normative decisions on any issues, much less on controversial ones.

Survival and "Present-Centeredness" The separation of the schools from the general sociopolitical dynamic (a result of statism), reinforced, albeit unintentionally, a change in the country's social values. Emphasis shifted from abstract values and idealism to the material and concrete. For example, in the 1990s, as a result of the centrality of survivalism, the most pointed debate in Israeli society has come to revolve around geographic borders rather than the "conquest" of values.

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From its outset, Zionism, both in its ideological and practical senses, emphasized territory as a means to an end; a condition for the realization of Zionism. The homeland—that expanse of land embodying the nation's collective memories—is an essential element of nationalism. Only by controlling its territory can a people become a nation; only in their homeland can members of a nation experience political fraternity and social accord; only in a homeland can a state, or the elites of a state, successfully mobilize its citizens. Historically, territory—the land of Israel—played a central role in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people. It was an abstract, yet substantial and permanent component in the Jewish eschatology of redemption. This conception of redemption, and the perception of the land of Israel as a golden vision, made the Jew a member of a nation—a diasporic nation. Nevertheless, the Zionist revolution posed a challenge to the religious foundations of this diasporic Jewish nationalism and sought to transform an exile community into a modern sovereignty. In pursuit of its secular vision, Zionism devoted both its ideological and pragmatic efforts to transforming the territorial foundation in Judaism from an abstract into a concrete value, thereby removing it from the realm of eschatology into the contemporary world of praxis. Zionism's success in the territorial sphere was a necessary albeit insufficient condition for nationalism and sovereignty. Like all national movements, Zionism saw the essence of its nationalism in its own ethnic, cultural, and historical inheritance. These traditions usually determine the forms the national collective's social institutions assume, as well as the content of its political life. Territorial boundaries are a framework or a restraint. Since the attainment of sovereignty in 1948, permanent war has made survival the focus of the national collective. Security questions came to dominate the national agenda, replacing the intellectual efforts to substantiate the ethno-cultural-historical foundations of sovereignty. The territorial question became the centerpiece of national security, usurping the intellectual and cultural campaign to develop a national ethos appropriate to the new conditions of sovereignty. One consequence, not found in prestate Zionism, is that concern for the territorial aspect of security feeds notions of territorial expansion. In other words, the "territorialization" of Zionist values has meant the replacement of the more abstract concerns of cultural and moral frontiers by the tangible question of borders. This is how survival rapidly achieved dominance over the national ethos. It is a means that has become an end. If the centrality of survival as a value led to the transformation of territory from a means to an end, this is even more true vis-à-vis security. A contemporary historian has argued that "the defense of the state has become an end in itself. . . militarization has become synonymous with

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Zionism."9 "Military strength" and "the ability to endure" are but two manifestations of what is now the most serious drain on the intellectual and emotional energies of Israelis. The two most prominent expressions of this phenomenon are the "religion of power" and the present-centeredness of the society. "Of all the forces that helped shape the relations and ethnic (national) structure, w a r . . . was the dominant and most common one."10 The constant threat of war and the unending struggle for existence are the principal influences on the political socialization of native-born Israelis. They are the dominant theme of Zionist national consolidation, having replaced the humanistic universal foundations that guided the Zionist movement in its earlier history. Since the founding of the state, each of the four functions of state "militarization" has developed in full force:11 1. The access of the army and the security elite to civilian resources— the near-universal conscription of manpower ("the nation is the army") and the enormous growth of defense and defense-related industries 2. The increased use of stereotypes for negatively typecasting the enemy and positively portraying the security forces of the state 3. The appearance of territorial considerations at the head of guidelines for policymaking and, even more importantly, the prominence of these considerations in the nation's self-perception of its own foundations 4. The increased domestic power of the security forces, particularly in times of emergency, and their intrusion into entirely domestic foci of civilian power In a situation where the state is forced to make war, in fact, war makes the state. Paradoxically, the prominence of the security issue has reinforced what Zionism sought to free itself from, the "ghetto." The ghetto sensibility is manifested in a variety of contemporary myths and symbols. These symbols do not have one interpretation, although the "interpretation of power" is invariably preferred ("from Holocaust to resurrection"). The most outstanding is the myth of the few against the many. But this myth contains an inner contradiction between the concept of "a Jewish majority in the Jewish homeland" that the Zionist consciousness sought to imbibe and the concept of "the few (the Jews) against the many (the Arabs)" that is the political reality. The consequent ambivalence is also evident in the connotations of power in the concepts of heroism and patriotism as well as in the relationship of Israelis to diaspora Jewry. The Holocaust plays an important, if not always conscious, role in

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cultivating the ethos of survival. The place of the Holocaust in the collective consciousness is related to the centrality of survival in the society. This is evidenced, for instance, in the contradiction of the Jewish Israeli as both victim and hero. On the one hand, since the Holocaust, the Israeli is the principal object of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Israel has the might to resist and repel those who seek to destroy it. This tension is resolved with the help of the myth of powerlessness. According to it, powerlessness in the diaspora, which reached its apotheosis (or nadir) in the Holocaust, is a justification for force. However, its continued use perverts the Zionist value of "normality." This is because the unconscious but intense exploitation of the Holocaust ultimately negates the Zionist claim of being a new paradigm for Jewish history. Instead, Zionism becomes part of a Jewish history composed of that against which it arrayed itself: the persecuted Jew. The distinction between a "Zionist life" and "diaspora life" is left as one between contrasting political conditions and that is all. If Zionism had envisioned political sovereignty "normalizing" the conditions of Jewish life, actual political conditions and the survival ethos they created only underscore the differences between "us" and "the rest of the world." The Holocaust's prominence in the Israeli collective consciousness is derived from the lessons we draw from it about might and power. The centrality of power in the Israeli ethos is a result of the relationship between the continuing physical struggle for national resurrection and the place of the Holocaust in the Israeli collective memory. These lessons about might and power, as understood by high school students, are lessons of "never again." When queried as to the conclusions they draw from the Holocaust, high school students respond that the primary role of the Israeli is to prevent its recurrence.12 Moreover, the historical mission of the state of Israel is to attain the means to ward off forcefully "those who rise to destroy us." This is the context for the Israeli insistence on commemorating not only the Holocaust but the physical heroism of a handful of individuals who resisted the Nazis (Israelis usually equate them with members of the Zionist movements) and, of course, for the perplexity in the face of all the others who could go "like sheep to the slaughter." This context also clarifies the distinction between Israel and that reality that bred the Holocaust, a difference well reflected in the slogan "from the Holocaust to resurrection"—a myth that uses the Holocaust to justify might. In the almost five decades since the destruction of European Jewry, the Holocaust has been integrated into the resurrection as antithesis. The resurrection is overshadowed by Israel's ongoing struggle for physical existence. At the same time, it had to become a symbol of the wars, the continuing struggle, and the shedding of so much Israeli blood. This is the background for the dialectical tension between resurrection and Holocaust, a largely illusory tension. The very nexus between these two events is an expression of the attempt to fathom the physical dimension of today's

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existence; i.e., to understand survival. "Present-centeredness," the principal trait of survivalism, sharpens a deficiency in the perception of nonreligious Israelis of their Jewishness: the absence of a full-fledged secular definition of Jewishness. For a while, "Hebrewness" and "Israeliness" provided an ostensibly sound substitute. However, both have been emptied of significance. Scholars describe this situation as the climax of two principal stages of development. 13 In the first stage (from the prestate era through the end of the first decade of independence), Israeliness was equated with Hebrewness and was, for all intents and purposes, the antithesis to Judaism. Hebrew, as a conscious historical-cultural concept, was an inclusive historical model with not a few internal contradictions. It was creative, vital, and spontaneous, characterized by a natural affinity for the land and for work (particularly work on the land), the state, political sovereignty, militarism, a code of social morality and ethics. In short, it was everything that was not Jewish. Hebrewness was a selection of materials from the past, a reinterpretation of the historical inheritance and creation of a new cultural synthesis of those materials.14 In the second stage (from the end of the 1950s and, more intensely, after 1967), this attempt to shape a secular Jewish content for Hebrewness or Israeliness ended. The intellectual void in secularism began to be filled with orthodox symbols that have become the distinguishing factor of the efforts to give meaning to Hebrewness or Israeliness. Hebrewness or Israeliness could have served as temporary edifices for the creation of an alternative to religious definitions of Jewishness. This was their role during the revolutionary stage of Zionism, when the movement's leaders were connected to the continuum of Jewish history, both through their biographies and their values. Such bonds were the foundation of what was known as the "Zionist cultural renaissance." When the breach in this continuum occurred—when the threefold historical seam emerged—a void was left in which Hebrewness and Israeliness were required to search out a "Jewish" identity. Eventually, these concepts acquired negative connotations. Hebrew as an adjective lost all with which it had been endowed in the prestate/postindependence years, while Israeliness underwent a religious "rebirth" without assuming any of the divine precepts or, for that matter, precepts of any kind.

Political Socialization (Conclusions and Recommendations for Education in Israel) Earlier in this chapter it was suggested that processes of socialization, which shape the political behavior of the individual, are derived from and influenced by two clusters of factors: first, the political culture within

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which the individual functions and, second, the relationship between school and society. As we have seen, the political culture of Israeli society is under both internal and external pressures. Internally, it is subject to the struggle between competing social forces over the shape (the ethos) of political sovereignty. This is characterized by cleavages and rifts, the most dangerous of which is the conflict over the definition of Jewishness and its relationship to democracy. Externally, the Arab-Israeli conflict has given a dominant role to survivalism, whose primary trait, present-centeredness, has left its imprint on those values and norms that prescribe the political behavior of the individual. Political culture in Israel, then, is the product of a pressure-laden agenda. Under such circumstances one would expect the dynamic between school and society to have been socially responsive to those pressures. However, the outstanding characteristic of that dynamic is the detachment of the school from society. Formal schooling in Israel has been isolated from the sociopolitical processes. Since the early 1950s, when statism was imposed on the then-open and plural relationship between school and society, the main (if not entire) thrust of political socialization has occurred outside the school. Students of political socialization note how democratic societies have an interest in influencing the development of their citizens, their chief concern being to nurture a so-called democratic personality. 15 In the development of such a personality, the school, as a social agent, is expected to mediate between student, future citizen, and the political culture. The political culture in Israel imposes tremendous pressure on the schools. Compared with political cultures based on established traditions of responsibility to political sovereignty, the planners of educational policy in Israel have to take into account the variables that stem from the lack of such a tradition. In a society with a tradition of responsibility to political sovereignty, political education reproduces the norms and values of that tradition. In contrast to a long history of political behavior produced by the foundations of fully realized sovereignty, the need to produce norms and values for a collective still forging its sovereignty poses a dilemma: What are the guidelines for that production? Consequently, the responsibility of the schools in Israel is much greater. In the former case, the tradition contains symbols, myths, heroes, and monuments of culture that are rich with the traits of reproduced political behavior. Thus the subject of reproduction in the former case is, in the Israeli case, an object of creation. Following are a few guidelines for preliminary discussions on the introduction of curricular units designed for political education within a polity-in-the-making. The process of designing and selecting curricular units in the realm of political education in Israel should be guided by the

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traits of the particular and their relationship to the universal; that is to say, the traits of ethnic-cultural based Jewishness and their relationship to the universal core of democratic values. As far as the particular dimension is concerned, the designing of a democratically oriented curriculum is, in essence, an answer to the following questions: • What normative framework and ideational-cultural code guides the individual's social and political behavior? • Through which recognized symbols and images are the normative framework and ideational-cultural code being expressed? • Which events and human figures exemplify them? More complex than the dimension of the particular in a democratically oriented curriculum is the relationship between it (the particular) and the universal. A curricular response to this latter issue, within the context of a polity in the making, should be based on three components that are linked to the concept of "state," as follows: 1. The relationship between the individual and his or her nation-state 1.1 What is the nature of membership in the nation-state (i.e., the definition and characteristics of citizenship)? 1.2 What are the duties and rights of the individual? 1.3 What commitment does the individual have to the nation-state (i.e., autonomous, based on free individual decision)? 1.4 Social concepts, such as justice and equity, connected with the interactions between the individual and the nation-state 2. Territory 2.1 Myths and images connected with the state's territory 2.2 The fostering of a commitment to the territory: 2.2.1 Concrete and abstract traits of that commitment 2.2.2 Tolerance toward others (states, nations) in the process of fostering that commitment 2.3 The relationship between commitment to territory and four types of attachments: primordial, sacred, personal, and civil 3. Past continuity 3.1 Identity: the articulation of the nation-state's collective identity as an educational goal. (To what extent should this goal be expressed in the curricular materials, explicitly and implicitly?) Four types of identity would be ethical, cultural, national, and religious. Based on the above guidelines, the preparation of an ideationally

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based curriculum in Israel may engender at least three consequences. First, it will most probably generate a pedagogic debate on introducing controversial social and political issues into the schools. Second, based upon worldviews, such a curriculum may reintroduce a future-oriented outlook. As previously mentioned, this is a necessary condition for dealing with the identity crisis in general, and the trait of present-centeredness in particular. Third (as part and parcel of the previous two), it may effect the removal of the existing neutral approach to controversial issues. Altogether, if and when introduced into the core curriculum, political education (or values education) should examine the inherent structural flaw in the system of education—guiding the (secular school) student in Israel toward making normative decisions pertaining to fundamental national issues, even if they are controversial. In the final analysis, it is this that may again turn the school into an open partner in its relationship with society. Indeed, any sound educational policy should make the schools legitimate "territorial zones" of the sociopolitical process in which the civil culture of Israel is being formulated.

Notes 1. Until 1991, in order to be elected to the Knesset, a party needed at least 1 percent of the popular vote; in 1984 Kahane's list "Kach" won 1.5 percent. 2. One of Kahane's leaflets, distributed during his campaign for the Eleventh Knesset in 1984, contained principlesof his suggested policy, and included among other things: "the transfer of all Arabs from the entire territory of the State of Israel. Arab presence in the country guarantees hatred, upheavals, and bloodspilling. It is a time bomb which threatens the existence of the Zionist entity. Therefore, we must transfer the Arabs living within the State of Israel to Arab states." Another election notice declared: "the Arabs roam the streets of Jewish towns, trailing after Jewish girls. Their pockets are bulging with money they have earned because they do not serve in the army—while we are busy protecting our homeland, they are 'busy' reaping large profits." The legal adviser to the Israeli government opened his remarks before a Knesset committee meeting devoted to the issue of Kahanism, on November 19, 1984, with the following words: Kahanism has become synonymous with racism; it is a shameful phenomenon—disgraceful and dangerous. It directly contradicts all those values precious to us! Kahanism scoffs at international law which has attempted to eliminate all forms of racism and to which all civilized nations, including Israel, have pledged themselves; it is a distortion of Judaism's embodiment of the aspiration towards justice; it diverges from the basic Zionist concept of building a state in which Arabs live side by side with Jews, equal before the law; it ignores the

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Israeli Declaration of Independence which promises that the State will establish total social and political equality for all citizens, regardless of race, religion, or sex; it mocks the governing authority which makes us a single society despite our internal disagreements. Kahane himself exploits that authority derived from the basis of law, the Knesset and democracy. In addition to all the above, Kahane has no humanistic sensibilities—he feels free to humiliate and publicly support the murder of the innocent j ust because they belong to a different people. Any one of these negative characteristics, when incorporated into a social policy, is intolerable and dangerous, not only to the Arabs who live with us but to all those who live in Israel. 3. Judaism here is called "Jewishness" (to be equated with Englishness, Frenchness, Americanness) as is consistent with the national/ethnic/historical approach of this analysis. Judaism is a concept with an exclusively religious definition. 4. For a clarification of "myth" see Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 7. Myths "objectified and organized human hopes and fears and metamorphosizes them into persistent and durable works." A myth is a story that evokes strong sentiments. It transmits and reinforces basic social values. Political myths are more clearly rooted in human history, and their function and relation to a narrower set of concerns is more obvious than religious myths. This historical specificity of political myths is likely to limit the period during which they continue to evoke strong emotional resonance. See Emmanuel Sivan's Arab Political Myths (a Hebrew Publication by Sidrat Sifrut Ofakim, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988), p. 9. In its narrow meaning, "myth" is a type of political allegory that is transmitted from generation to generation in written or verbal form. Myths have a dramatic narrative structure. The story has a beginning, middle, and end. It is exciting and oftentimes, obviously, tragic. It contains heroes and usually has a unity of time, place, and action. Myths mostly address events from the past such as an important battle or the chronicle of the origins of a certain people. The latter is called a "fundamental myth." Myths can also be directed to the future, to an event yet to occur: the threat of a certain peoples' destruction, visions of change and revolution (e. g., the Communist Manifesto), or the coming of the messiah. If the myth is directed to the future that is, to the end of "normal" history, it is known to us as "eschatological myth." 5. Gabriel A. Almond and Sydney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited, (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), p. 490. 6. Ibid., p. 491. 7. Zvi Lamm, "Ideological Tensions and Struggles over Educational Goals," in H. Uriman, ed., Education in Israel (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture, 1973), in Hebrew. 8. Amy Guttman, Democratic Education (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 15. 9. David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Shocken Books, 1987), p. 152. 10. Ibid. 11. Liebman and Don Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, p. 21. 12. Responses of Israeli youth were collected between 1977-1979 by this

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author as a means to evaluate the testing of an educational program entitled "The Teaching of the Holocaust as Education Towards Values." The evaluation program was internal and its results were not published. 13. Liebman and Don Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, p. 176. 14. Yaakov Shavit, From Hebrew to Caananite: Chapters in the Ideological and Utopian History of the "Hebrew Renaissance" from Radical Zionism to anti-Zionism (Jerusalem: Domino, 1983), in Hebrew. 15. Alex Inkeles, Exploring Individual Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

16 Class, Ethnic, and National Cleavages and Democracy in Israel Sammy

Smooha

The population of Israel is divided along five major lines of cleavage: political stream, religious observance, class, ethnicity, and nationality. All these divisions, and especially those separating religious from nonreligious Jews and Israeli Arabs from Jews, generate conflicts that may cause tensions or even social and political instability. Israel is often rightly portrayed as a deeply divided society whose democracy is overburdened with problems and demands. This chapter focuses on the issues relating to three of these cleavages—class, ethnic, and national divisions—and their implications for political democracy.

Class Does the Israeli economy and the polity generate enough resources, when compared to Western societies, to retain the allegiance of the population to the state? Are inequality and inequity in the distribution of these resources a political issue that may adversely affect Israeli democracy? Resources and Class

Inequality

The second most fundamental Israeli concern, after national security, is the opportunity structure in Israel as compared to that found in the West. Various objective measures place Israel in the semi-Western or semiperiphery category. According to data from the World Bank, Israel ranked 22 out of 121 countries in 1988 in terms of per capita GNP, behind Hong Kong and Singapore. 1 The placement of Israel at the bottom of the high-income category was made possible by the artificial inflation of its GNP by a huge inflow of foreign assistance. Israel is the single largest recipient of official development assistance, on per capita basis, of any country in the world, receiving in 1988 more than twice as much as any other country per capita. 309

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Despite the enormous aid, Israel's GNP per capita ($8,650) was only half of the average of the high-income economies ($17,080). Wages in Israel are also one-third to one-half of the Western average, and there is little heavy industry. The economy is far less capitalistic, with about one-fifth of the labor force being small, noncorporate businesses or self-employed workers (compared to only one-tenth in the West), and has a disproportionate number of inefficient plants with fewer than one hundred employees. Israel's attempts to join the Western camp have failed. During its first twenty-five years, it jumped into the industrial age and world market, with a phenomenal rate of economic growth that averaged 9 percent a year. But since 1974 the economy has stagnated, investments have been meager (except those in the military and territories), and inflation has been rampant. The fact that Israel has not made it to the economic level of the Western world is confirmed by a study that classifies eighty countries, representing various stages of development, by ten variables in 1965 and 1985. Israel ranked twenty-two in both years, though its level of development on a global scale decreased sharply (from a score of 0.63 in 1965 to 0.34 in 1985). The study concludes that "the relative position of Israel among the nations of the world has declined in the last 20 years, mainly because of the rapid rise and tremendous changes in the developed countries in North America, Western Europe and Japan, which left Israel behind at the lower edge of the developed world or, in many indicators, at the edge of the developing world."2 It is thanks to the ample U.S. aid since 1974 that Israel has managed to maintain its position as a semiperipheral or semi-Western country, despite its stagnant economy, noncompetitiveness in the world market, and enormous noneconomic investments.3 The main factors accounting for Israel's failure to reach Western economic and other developmental standards are lack of natural resources, inefficiency, enormous expenditures for national security, regional isolation, a small-scale economy, and the central protective role played by the government and Histadrut. 4 As shown by the deterioration caused by the Likud's new pro-market economic policy during 1977-1984, it is hard to break this inhibitive configuration. As a result, the opportunity structure in Israel is quite limited and not expanding. Jews pay a high cost in regard to standard of living and the security burden by staying in Israel (and not moving to Western countries, especially to North America). This is probably the most crucial reason why emigration from Israel is continuing at a steady pace and why Jews who have a choice do not immigrate to Israel. The mass immigration of the Soviet Jewry to Israel since 1990 does not indicate a boost in Israel's attractiveness. Soviet Jews are forcibly displaced by rising anti-Semitism; denied entry to the United States, which no longer recognizes them as political refugees; and pushed to Israel as de facto refugees.

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Yet Israeli standards far exceed the limited resources domestically generated, thanks to the continuous importing and borrowing of capital. It is estimated that as much as one-third of the standard of living is paid for by external funding. Real incomes tripled since the early 1950s, continuing to rise significantly even after 1973 during the period of nearly zero economic growth (beyond population increase) and considerable investments in the military and territories. Even without economic growth, unemployment has been kept low (and even lower than in the West) and social services have been maintained. Particularly striking is the distribution of the labor force: in 1988,6.6 percent were employed in agriculture, 28.4 percent in production, and 65.0 percent in services.5 This is a superadvanced, service-inflated, "post-industrial" structure, the same as that of the United States, but in a weak industrialized economy.6 The implications of Israel's economy for class divisions are quite mixed. Opportunities are much more restricted than in the West, but they are artificially inflated through grants and loans from abroad. The large capital imports dull the sting of competition for resources and to some extent turn it into a non-zero sum game. At the same time, the imports give too much power to the central government, which functions as a central distribution agency. It must be emphasized, however, that Israel has the real problem of failing to live up to the high expectations of its population. Its persistent economic stagnation and dependence are a serious weakness. Despite the flow of monies from the outside, Israelis are disadvantaged compared to Westerners, have to work harder for the same goods and services, and feel deprived as a result. They are also apprehensive of the possible disruptions that may follow a substantial reduction in foreign aid. While Israel generates less resources than Western societies, it distributes them more or less the same way. In 1988 the lowest quartile received 7.0 percent of all disposable income as against 38.8 percent gained by the top quartile. This inter-quartile ratio of 1:5.5 and Gini coefficients of around 0.33 are typical to the West, where inequalities are smaller than in developing societies. In 1986-1987, 72.8 percent of all households in Israel owned their dwellings, ranging from 52.2 percent in the lowest tenth (of the disposable income) to 84.8 percent in the highest tenth. 7 Housing density among Jews in 1988 averaged one person per room, with 61.9 percent living comfortably in one person or less per room as compared to only 7.7 percent living in two or more persons per room.8 With the spread of consumerism, most of the household durable goods have become standard, making ownership of cars the most important differentiator: in 1986-1987,42.9 percent of all families owned at least one car, with a gap of 7.5 to 78.0 percent between the bottom and top tenths.9 These figures suggest that Israel is a middle-class society. It is indeed

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remarkable that in a society where nearly all of its population originated from non-Western areas (i.e., from Eastern Europe and the Middle East), two-thirds are nonetheless employed in the services and three-quarters have nine or more years of education. Yet despite all of this leveling, social stratification is increasingly crystallizing. If the middle class is the hub of society, the upper-middle class and elite are on top of it, while the working class and poor are underneath. A brief sketch of these five social strata will throw some light on structured inequality in Israel. Poverty is more widespread in Israel than in most Western countries. According to the 1988 income survey of urban heads of households who were wage earners or did not work, 14.3 percent were poor, raising 21.3 percent of all children.10 The majority of the poor do not work, have a low level of education, live in the urban slums and development towns, have families larger than the average, and perpetrate a disproportionate share of the blue-collar crimes and drug addiction. Poverty also tends to be inherited by the next generation. Although this characterization of the poor may imply the existence of an underclass, Israel, like Western Europe, is not afflicted by one. Underclass means a bottom stratum consisting mainly of broken families, confined to the ghettos, whose heads are underemployed, unemployed, or unemployable and whose children have little chance of escaping their predicament. Such an underclass is unique to the United States. 11 Neither are the Israeli poor destitute or denied such basic services as housing, health, and education, as is the case in developing countries. Israel prides itself in having a welfare policy that provides universal services, prevents destitution, curtails poverty, and decreases inequality. Were it not for the transfer payments (especially support to families with children), progressive taxation, and a reasonable minimum wage (reaching 41.9 percent of the average wage in 1988), 32.6 percent, rather than 14.3 percent, of the Israeli households would have been poor. The welfare policy in 1988 reduced poverty by 56.1 percent and income inequality by 29.7 percent. 12 The working class is composed of workers engaged in production and low-status services, whose incomes per capita exceed the poverty line. Like the poor, they tend to have low education, larger families, and reside in urban slums and development towns. Unlike the working class in Western societies that emerged from the peasantry during the centuries of industrial revolution and fighting for rights, the present Israeli working class is a new stratum composed mostly of declassed Jewish nonmanual immigrants and Arab ex-farmers, and their descendants. These workers neither possess the long-term traditions and coping behavior of the Western working classes nor the prestige, pride, and sense of mission of the Jewish working class in Mandatory Palestine. They are still maladjusted,

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disoriented, and discontented. The middle class is the largest stratum, consisting of most of those employed in clerical, sales, personal and community scrvice, and technical and semiprofessional jobs. By definition, these people of the middle constitute the average Israeli, who labors daily to maintain Western living standards, owns an apartment in a decent neighborhood, raises a family of two to three children, and is very much concerned with the education and support of his children, material well-being, and national politics. These middle-class Israelis have to cope with lower wages, heavier taxes, and higher prices than their Western counterparts. The upper-middle class includes professionals, managers, and the petit bourgeois, whereas the elite are comprised of the top persons in the economy, bureaucracy, professions, culture and arts, politics, and the military. These higher strata enjoy status and privilege but their resources, landed wealth, and life-styles do not measure up to their counterparts in the West. Although there is no research mapping Israel's class structure, it can roughly be estimated that the poor constitute 15 percent of the population; the workers, 25 percent; the middle category, 45 percent; the upper-middle level, 15 percent; and the elite, a fraction of 1 percent. This distribution implies that Israel is indeed a middle-class society, similar to Western societies, with a smaller working class. It is, however, particularly vulnerable in having its comfortable class structure rest on external funding. Social stratification has increased and crystallized over the years. The various strata have developed different life-styles, mobility between strata has become less common, and inequality between the strata has risen. Since there is still appreciable fluidity and movement, however, it is more correct to depict the system as differentiated by strata than by classes with distinct interests, consciousness, organization, or struggle. This ambiguity is reflected, for instance, in the nature of labor disputes. Despite the frequency and severity of strikes in Israel, they are not more than fights by specific wage or occupational groups for higher pay and better working conditions. There is little solidarity or coordination between the groups on strike to convey class consciousness or organization. Class Inequality as a Non-Issue Although there is certainly in Israel some sensitivity to social injustice in general and to poverty and the exploitation of cheap Arab labor from the territories in particular, one is rather struck by the fact that class consciousness has not risen as a result of the increase in inequality since the early 1950s and that inequality is still a nonissue. 13 It is worthwhile examining the various factors that account for this phenomenon.

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First and foremost, there is a firm belief in individual achievement and equal opportunity. It is bolstered by the flexibility of the system: inequality is modest, mobility is significant, and class formation is still not advanced. Some of the common beliefs are illustrated by a 1988 opinion survey of the Jewish population. 14 Sixty-four percent agreed that social stratification in Israel is properly described as "a majority of people are in the middle class, with a small minority who are rich or poor," and 70 percent assigned themselves into the middle class when offered five categories from which to choose (only 11 percent opted for the lower-middle and lower classes). Sixty-four percent indicated factors directly related to personal performance as determinants of success in life—i.e., hard work, education, experience, and trustfulness. Only a minority had a sense of blocked mobility for themselves or their children. The statements that "whatever my personal efforts are in Israel, I will not get the education and job I am entitled to" and that "I am afraid that our children might never enjoy as high a standard of living as we used to have" were each rejected by three-quarters of the respondents. Majorities in all strata hold these beliefs, although doubt increases to some extent down the social scale.15 Second, the huge and constant import of capital from abroad expands the opportunity structure for all and lessens competition. It characterizes both the old and new Yishuv, and it was further enlarged and perfected during the state period. Apart from the military, money is spent on subsidies to industrialists to build plants and create jobs and on funding social welfare services. Although the flow of funds discourages efficiency and economic independence, it eases living in Israel. It stifles class consciousness because the accumulation of private wealth is not directly and necessarily the outcome of exploitation of labor, but rather the privatization of public funds dispensed by the state to induce economic growth. It is worth noting in this connection that the distribution and administration of the foreign aid has not engendered a serious problem of political corruption and nepotism as found in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, China, and other countries. Third, the cheap labor from the West Bank and Gaza Strip should also be considered, along with capital imports, as another means of expansion of the opportunity structure. The 110,000 noncitizen Arab workers constitute 6 percent of the Israeli labor force, but a significantly higher proportion of the unskilled workers in construction, agriculture, industry, and services. They release Israeli employees from the most menial and undesirable jobs, slash the cost of labor for the employers, and relieve the employers of the need to become cost effective and to invest in automation. 16 Fourth, Israel's welfare policy is relatively successful. As indicated above, it has managed to prevent destitution and the emergence of an

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underclass. Israel has escaped these adversities that are likely in a society that absorbs a large proportion of poor, uneducated immigrants. Poverty of 15 percent is another achievement of the welfare policy. However, this policy has only slowed down the growth of inequality. A fifth reason why inequality is not a political issue is because the contradictions inherent in the social and ideological bases of the major parties preclude them from formulating an alternative social policy beyond their consensus on welfare measures. The socialist tradition of the Labor Party was short lived. Having reached its dominance in the early 1930s, Mapai concentrated its efforts in nation building rather than in class struggle, and especially capitalized on constructing a strong Histadrut. During the state period, Labor turned into a social democratic party, and under Ben-Gurion it pursued a nonclass, nationalist ideology of statism. In the 1970s, Labor was abandoned by the lower classes; it currently receives its main political support from the middle and higher strata and is internally torn between factions for and against redistribution. Such ambiguity equally marks the Likud Party. It is composed of the Herut Party, which stands for a free market economy but pursues populism, and the Liberal Party, which believes in a market economy and speaks for, and is supported by, the better-offs. Yet since the major backing of the Likud today comes from the lower echelons of the society and the party is internally split between factions standing for different economic views, the Likud practices vague populism. The Zionist left does not fare any better. The Citizens' Rights Movement is primarily concerned with civil rights and peace than with social issues, whereas Mapam is dedicated to combat inequality while representing the better-off kibbutz movement and defending the vested interests of the Histadrut. Even the advocacy of socialist policies by the Communist Party is irrelevant because of the party's preoccupation with peace and predominantly Arab backing. Sixth, the Histadrut has played a crucial role in diffusing the social issues. Since 1920 when it was founded, the Histadrut has been engaged in nation building and not in class politics. Its industrial-service complex commands one-quarter of the economy and puts it in the untenable, unique position of both a corporate employer and a representative of employees. Furthermore, the Histadrut claims to represent all wage-earning and salaried employees, and not just the workers, and hence has to reconcile, in its overall policy, the conflicting interests of the working and middle classes as well as its own interest as a capitalist body. By monopolistically co-opting the representation of the workers without actually being able to represent them properly, the Histadrut undermines the conditions for the emergence of a workers' movement or a genuine social left. It also contributes disproportionately to the inefficiency of the economy by mismanaging its own corporations and overburdening them with

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concealed underemployment and unemployment. Seventh, the salience of other internal divisions also overshadows class inequality. The conflict between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews and between Israeli Arabs and Jews are sufficiently intense to blur the class cleavage. In fact, it is common among the public at large to conceive of class in terms of ethnicity. The concern over inequality is almost exclusively confined to socioeconomic disparities between Oriental and Ashkenazic Jews. For many, inequality means an ethnic gap in opportunities and resources, and the ethnic problem means class inequality between the two Jewish communities. Both are sidetracked as a cultural disadvantage. Finally, there is no doubt that the Israeli-Arab conflict also dilutes the class distinctions and tensions among Jews. It is definitely the overriding issue, at the base of partisan politics. Yet at the same time, it strengthens bonds, cultivates local patriotism, and distracts attention from sectional interests.

Ethnicity Are ethnic differences in the distribution of resources, culture, and politics significant enough to serve as issues with repercussions for Israeli democracy? 17 Inequality

There is ample evidence to document inequalities between Oriental Jews—Jews who originated from Islamic countries (officially defined as individuals or their fathers born in Asia or Africa)—and Ashkenazic Jews—Jews from Christian lands (individuals or their fathers born in Europe or America). T o begin with, Ashkenazim have a decided advantage in education. In 1988 they had 1.5 more years of schooling than Oriental Jews. More telling are the disparities at the extreme points of the educational scale: Among the foreign born, the ethnic gap in the proportion of persons without schooling was 1.6 to 16.3 percent, and the gap in the proportion of persons with postsecondary or college education (thirteen or more years) was 33.0 to 13.3 percent. College education rose among the Israeli born, but the discrepancy has remained staggering: 49.2 to 17.8 percent. When these figures are standardized by age, the gaps have not only persisted but have even grown slightly larger. It is evident that while Ashkenazic sabras overtake their parents, Oriental sabras do as badly as their parents. Despite the doubling of the student population at the universities after 1967 and all the programs to boost Oriental atten-

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dance, Ashkenazim have maintained a lead of four to one. The ethnic educational gap is no doubt greater than shown in these figures because of the lower quality of Oriental education. There is a substantial difference, ranging from a half to one standard deviation, in the performance of Oriental and Ashkenazic school children on various achievement tests, including IQ. High school education for two-thirds of the Ashkenazic graduates means an academic track leading to college, whereas for two-thirds of their Oriental counterparts it is a terminal vocational schooling. Of particular significance is the disparity in higher education that determines the future position of the two ethnic groups in the economy. 18 These divergences in education are reflected in the occupational structure. Among the foreign born, Ashkenazim were twice as likely as Orientals (39.9 to 20.3 percent) to be among the three top occupational categories (i.e., professionals, managers, and technicians) in 1988; among the Israeli born, the disparity was even wider (49.6 to 20.6 percent). Since high school education expanded dramatically in the 1960s to include the majority of youth from both communities, it was greatly devalued as a means for white-collar jobs and hence its spread failed to close the ethnic gap.19 The upgrading of educational qualifications for high-status jobs pushes some Orientals into alternative, more lucrative mobility channels like sports, entertainment, and small businesses (subcontractors, taxicabs, small garages, popular restaurants, and certain marginal pursuits). The ethnic discrepancy in the standard of living is considerable although it is less than in education and employment. In 1988 an average Asian-African household head earned 80.7 percent the income of a European-American one, but only 64.3 percent per capita. The gap at both ends of the income scale was much higher, as Orientals earned less than one-quarter of that of the Ashkenazim. Housing is another differentiator: In 1988 the Ashkenazic edge in living in households with density of less than one person per room was 60.4 to 31.8 percent among those born abroad and 39.7 to 22.6 percent among those born in Israel. On the other hand, household durable goods have become standard, and the ethnic differences are evidenced only in brands and models. The most crucial material gulf between the two ethnic groups is in the quantity and accumulation of wealth. Although research is lacking on this key point, it is reasonable to assume that Ashkenazim enjoy a decided advantage because of the head start gained by living in Israel longer as beneficiaries of German compensations; residence in the better neighborhoods, where the value of real estate has gone up sharply; and smaller families, which enable them to have greater capital-accumulation per capita. These diverse ethnic gaps converge to create a system of ethnic

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stratification. In the Jewish population, the poor and working class are predominantly Oriental, the middle stratum is ethnically mixed with some Ashkenazic overrepresentation, and the upper-middle class and elite are predominantly Ashkenazic. This system is stable and self-perpetuating as implied by the passing on of ethnic inequality from the foreign- to the Israeli-born generation. What are the factors accounting for the persistence of ethnic stratification in Israel? Looming largest among them are normal class mechanisms of perpetuation found in any industrial society. Although social mobility is common in industrial societies, it is mostly short range, and most families manage, through upbringing and inheritance, to bequeath their status to their offspring. Despite the openness of the society, the selection of friends, neighbors, classmates, and marital partners is largely determined by social class—namely, by the availability of resources and the mutual attraction of people who are similar to each other. Given this strong tendency for reproduction of social classes and the historical overlap between class and ethnicity, persistence of the ethnoclass structure in Israel should be considered a normal phenomenon. Second, ethnic differences in family background reinforce the ethnically structured inequality. The present young generation of Orientals was raised in large and not well-to-do families where parents have not had much to offer their children. The opposite is true for the Ashkenazic sabras who enjoy, throughout their lives, the better resources of their small families of origin. Since the norm in Israel is a life-long support of parents to their children, Orientals are at a constant disadvantage. This factor is expected to diminish in the future because family size among the Israeli born varies only slightly across ethnicity, but for the time being it has a strong effect. Third, ethnic inequality persists simply by default—i.e., in the absence of effective intervention despite the numerous programs to close the ethnic gap. The more universalistic among them are welfare policies to help large families, the poor, and distressed neighborhoods. The more particularistic programs are in the area of compensatory education for Orientals (who are referred to as "culturally disadvantaged"). These measures are effective in preventing ethnic inequality from growing but not in reducing it over time. They are not a substitute for a comprehensive social policy and affirmative action. 20 How did the present ethnic stratification come about? By the time of the proclamation of the state, Ashkenazim were firmly established as a dominant group. They constituted 77 percent of the Jewish population, the founders of the new Yishuv, and the mainstay of society from the working class to the elite. On the other hand, the Orientals were a small, weak, and poor community, with a tiny Sephardic elite. During Israel's

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first decade, a mass immigration arrived, almost equally divided between Jews from Europe and Jews from the Middle East. The government faced the urgent problems of increasing the army, industrializing the economy and tying it to the world market, settling the areas seized during the 1948 war in order to curb international pressure to withdraw from those areas, and expanding the services (education, health, and welfare) to cater to the needs of the swelling population. Old-timers, Ashkenazic immigrants, and Oriental immigrants were differentially affected by state efforts to deal with the exigencies Israel faced in the 1950s. The old-timers experienced a sudden, mass mobility. A large proportion of them moved from the working to the middle class. Others became professionals, managers, and small business owners, while still others took advantage of the state subsidies to become entrepreneurs and industrialists or to expand their existing enterprises. The old-timers seized upon the new openings due to their special strengths: knowledge of Hebrew, better education, accumulated assets, and affinity to the elite and decisionmakers. The Ashkenazic new arrivals did not fare especially well, but after a transition period, they managed to escape the initial dire conditions. They finally succeeded in entering the middle and higher classes, thanks to their advantageous social networks (namely, connections with relatives and acquaintances in the dominant veteran group), small families, personal compensations from Germany (that Ashkenazic old-timers received as well), and public and self-image as Europeans. The substantial mobility of Ashkenazim was predicated on the channeling of Oriental newcomers to the lower rungs of society. They became the poor and the workers, personally witnessing and suffering from the rapid upward mobility and, particularly, the deproletarization of Ashkenazim. Most were housed in temporary accommodations in localities where services were bad. A good many were sent to new development towns with dead-end jobs and where unemployment ran high. Those who were assigned to build new moshavim received insufficient means and quotas of production and could not compete with the prosperous veteran moshavim. Oriental new immigrants were too weak to resist their streamlining into the lower strata and the vast discrimination in the allocation of resources. Among their weaknesses were low formal education, large families, lack of assets, no other country to go to, the absence of any network of kin or friends among the old-timers or powerholders, and limited experience in modern organizations and politics. It was the Labor establishment, dominating all centers of power at the time, that engineered the policies that resulted in ethnic stratification. It also propagated the ideology that the Oriental immigrants were a lost

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generation of the desert and posed a threat to democracy and Israeli culture. Their needs were said to be less, and they should be grateful for whatever they were accorded. While it was not clear whether they could be decultured and recultured, their children were expected to completely assimilate into Israeli life. To the great injury inflicted by the discriminatory policies, a grave insult was added by this paternalistic ideology and humiliating stereotyping. This special configuration of the state's urgent needs, its discriminatory policies, and Oriental vulnerability generated crystallized ethnic stratification. It also engendered the immense resentment Orientals feel to this day toward the Labor Party and the shifting, in the 1970s, of their political support to the right-wing camp. Seen from Labor's perspective, the state policies of the 1950s were inevitable, and their implementation managed to execute Israel's national goals and avert the threat to its culture and democracy. Clearly, the origins, magnitude, and persistence of ethnic stratification among Jews present a serious problem for Israel. They also stand as a mark of failure of Zionism and the Jewish State, which are officially committed to full ethnic integration. Culture Today Orientals and Ashkenazim share a core culture composed of Jewish faith, Jewish nationality, Hebrew language and writings, Israeli local patterns, a version of the Protestant Ethic (merit, achievement, hard work, investment, profit, and competition), and some other Western influences (such as the democratic ethos, the legal system, materialism, middle-class life-style, and mass culture). This Israeli culture is semi-Western. It is less Western in its strong familism, stress on collectivistic and nationalistic considerations in individual affairs, the importance of human and neighborly relations, the attitude toward the law as a not-too-binding restriction, and the permeation of personal and public life by religion. Although the two communities share the Israeli culture, they still differ in their subcultures. The most crucial difference lies in the practice of religion. Orientals are found less among the ultra-Orthodox and secular, have a religious style of their own, and are pragmatic and conciliatory in their interpretation and observance of strict prohibitions. Their families are larger, stronger, and less egalitarian in gender relations. Oriental use of Hebrew is more authentic, close to Arabic, and less formal. Since a larger proportion of Orientals are in the poor and working classes, they have developed proletarian and poverty patterns of adaptation that separate them from Ashkenazim, who belong to the middle and higher classes.21

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These differences in ethnic subcultures are common and noncontroversial in other societies, but they tend to cause tensions in Israel. At least until the mid-1960s, Oriental Jews were viewed as culturally inferior and threatening, and were strongly pressured to assimilate. Later, in reaction to the cultural change Orientals have undergone, their protest, and the revival of ethnic pluralism in the United States, Ashkenazic attitudes have partially been mitigated. The Ministry of Education and Culture introduced the program of Oriental and Sephardic Heritage aimed to enrich the curriculum with Oriental history, literature, and folklore. The national television and radio channels were also opened to Oriental folk culture, which used to be considered low and kept underground. This shift from cultural exclusivity and superiority to partial openness on the part of Ashkenazim has created constructive ambiguity over the cultural issue. Rather than basically changing, the Ashkenazic position has rather become more subtle, sophisticated, disguised, and flexible. Oriental Jews are still perceived as not having ridden themselves of "backward" Arab thinking and behaving, their ability is seen as limited, and they are supposed to be in need of cultural refinement. For instance, the army chief of staff said in a public interview: "It will take years and years till Oriental Jews, even those acquiring full education, will manage to cope with the mentality of the West." 22 Ashkenazim still continue to stereotype themselves as superior Westerners, and project Orientals as inferior, Arabized Middle Easterners. 23 They allow the expressions of Judeo-Oriental heritage because these are harmless elements of a dead, historical culture. Today, the cultural issue is dormant. Oriental Jews do not demand a right to be different: separate identity, culture, and education. Rather, they want to be recognized and have an impact on the national culture. They also do not claim to have an Arab culture and do not advocate it for Israel.24 Culture may, however, become a bone of contention once the Palestinian question is settled. Peace may open Israel to Arab culture and may make relevant the Oriental Jews' cultural affinity with the Arabs. Israel's cultural orientation may become a real issue that would divide Oriental and Ashkenazic Jews. Politics

Orientals have made more headway in politics than in the areas of class and culture. They rule in localities where they constitute a majority and where the early days of Ashkenazic appointed bosses are gone. Their penetration of national centers of power is impressive. One-third of the 120 Knesset members and 9 of the 26 cabinet ministers in 1990 were of Oriental or Sephardic origin. Also Oriental are the secretary-general of

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the Histadrut, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency, and the army general in charge of the Central Command (which includes the West Bank). In the 1980s, an Iraqi Jew served as the army chief of staff, with a veteran Sephardic Jew serving as president of the state. One-third of the members of the Central Committee of the Labor Party and half the members of the Central Committee of the Likud Party are of Oriental origin. The noticeable participation of Orientals in various spheres of power in the 1980s contrasts sharply with their conspicuous absence during the 1950s. Another source of Orientals' strength is the concentration of their vote in the Likud camp. It is estimated that about 80 percent of Orientals voted in the 1988 elections for the Likud, Shas, the National Religious Party, Moledet, and other small parties on the right, whereas a similar proportion of Ashkenazim voted for parties on the left. This block voting makes the Likud dependent on Orientals and forces Labor to court them. Shas, the third-largest party in the Twelfth Knesset, is also the only party that publicly claims to represent Orientals, and as such it carries a special weight. The rise in Oriental representation and the linkage between voting and ethnicity have made some scholars advance a certain view that deserves brief mention here. It is argued that Ashkenazic dominance in politics has come to an end, 25 and Orientals are Israel's new majority, a majority that put Likud in power and helped to institute a new political culture. The new political culture draws on a diluted version of Revisionist Zionism, which stresses power, military force, land, nation, Jewish blood, and fundamental mistrust of Gentiles. 26 It is said that this new ideological Zionism converges with the Oriental folk political culture, which is allegedly authoritarian, ethnocentric, fanatical, premodern, religious, and irrational. According to this view, two processes coincided: Veteran Ashkenazim lost their universalistic values of labor and egalitarianism, and immigrant Orientals asserted their particularistic Judaism. Hence the scale tipped in favor of nationalism and religion. 27 The rise of a new nationalistic political culture accounts for the Likud success in capturing the Oriental vote and marks the failure of Labor to instill its humanistic, pragmatic, and conciliatory political culture into the Oriental immigrants of the 1950s and their children. 28 The validity of this view, which is popular among Ashkenazim and leftists, is doubtful. Oriental rise in politics has not terminated Ashkenazic political dominance. Most national policymakers are still Ashkenazic, and they determine the national issues with little regard to Oriental needs. The Likud has not pursued a policy that favors Orientals and does not have a social policy that differs from that of Labor. Orientals have only a limited imprint on the national agenda and the considerations that go into decisionmaking. It is also wrong to portray the Oriental political culture

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as nationalistic, extremist, and anti-Arab. It is rather nonideological and pragmatic. Orientals prefer the Likud camp because they see in it, rightly or wrongly, a means for social mobility and status attainment. For them Labor is responsible for their predicament and represents Ashkenazim who enjoy status and privilege while harboring feelings of paternalism and rejection of Orientals. Contrary to the Ashkenazic left, Orientals believe that the Likud is more able to negotiate peace with the Arabs, and they would endorse any compromise settlement that it concludes, as their unrelenting backing of the peace treaty with Egypt has already shown. Orientals' pragmatism is rather remarkable in view of the hardline messages conveyed to them by the Likud. 29 The overlap between the political and ethnic divisions augments ethnic intolerance. The stereotyping of Orientals as backward and irrational is reinforced by Ashkenazim's confrontation of most Orientals in the opposite political camp to which they attribute intransigence and intolerance. Similarly, the resentment felt by the Orientals and their stereotyping of Ashkenazim as pseudoliberals feed on being their partisan adversary. The Resilience of Ethnicity as a Submerged Issue Many feel that ethnicity is slowly, but steadily, phasing out as a cleavage in Israeli society and hence should not be counted as an issue for those concerned with the ills of Israeli democracy. There is much evidence to substantiate this common feeling. T o mention a few indications, cultural and social assimilation is progressing rapidly: the common mass culture makes all sabras alike, cross-ethnic friendships and neighborhoods multiply, mixed marriages comprise nearly one-quarter of all marriages, fertility rates have evened out, and more generally Israelis in the same socioeconomic level think and behave in the same way, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Orientals differ considerably among themselves in their rates of mobility and class interests. The success of certain segments among Orientals is disguised by the lowering of the Oriental average by a large poor stratum. There is no significant ethnic discrimination or prejudice to hinder Orientals who have high motivation, work harder, and invest in long-term careers. Ethnic integration is quite advanced in the middle, upper-middle, and elite levels. Furthermore, Orientals themselves do not feel ethnic deprivation, do not have ethnic identity, and do not support ethnic movements and election lists. Findings from the 1988 survey show how weak ethnic identity is in Israel. Jews were asked to indicate whether or not each of the following eight identities were important to them: residence in the homeland, nationality, socioeconomic status, minority-majority (Israeli Arab-Jewish) status, citizenship, religion, religious observance, and

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ethnicity (Oriental/Ashkenazic). With the exception of ethnicity, large majorities considered all identities as important, ranging from 94.0 percent for residence in the homeland to 68.6 percent for religious observance. Only a minority of 28.8 percent (32.6 percent of Orientals and 26.4 percent of Ashkenazim) regarded ethnicity as important. When they had to choose three of the eight identities, less than 3 percent of either Orientals or Ashkenazim selected ethnicity. The view that stresses the decline of ethnicity also points out the relative absence of ethnic unrest as a test of its ultimate validity. Israel has not had ethnic riots with losses of property and lives. Ethnic protest movements were short lived and not separatist in goals. No Israeli government has ever collapsed over an ethnic issue. By international standards, the ethnic cleavage in Israel is mild and inconsequential. Yet one is struck by the resilience of ethnicity and its resurgence from time to time. The shock and fear aroused by the Wadi Salib riots of 1959, the Black Panther Movement of 1971, the campaign in the 1981 Knesset elections, and the disturbances occasioned by the Abu-Hatzira Affair in 1984-1985, to mention only some of the ethnic disruptions, were quite disproportional to the scale of these events. It seems that the intensity of the submerged ethnic tension runs much higher than one finds in ordinary public opinion polls or the daily routine. Contrary to popular misconceptions and despite improvements in ethnic relations over the years, the potential for ethnic conflict has remained appreciable because Ashkenazim have continued to maintain dominance. They formed Zionism to resolve the Jewish question in Europe, founded the Yishuv, cast its institutions and norms, and headed it. The mass immigration of Orientals in the 1950s changed the demographic balance and partly eroded Ashkenazic dominance. However, Oriental numerical preponderance cannot undermine the foundations of Israeli society that were laid down by Ashkenazim and are still maintained by their class, political, and cultural superiority. Their dominance in Israel is further solidified by their clear-cut prominence in the diaspora, which, through Zionism, serves as Israel's hinterland and reservoir of manpower. Holding in abeyance this potential for ethnic conflict is itself a measure of Ashkenazic dominance. Ashkenazic control of the sources of legitimacy and the continuing delegitimation of the issue of ethnicity inhibit Oriental mobilization. Although they make ethnic appeals to harness partisan loyalties, the largest two parties, which are controlled by Ashkenazim, suppress ethnicity as a political or ideological issue. Yet ethnic inequality is an unrelenting source of deprivation for Oriental Jews in Israel. Its political potency stems precisely from the national consensus against ethnic inequality and yet the failure to elimi-

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nate it. Persistent ethnic stratification runs counter to the official ideology of ethnic integration and to various state measures to narrow the ethnic gap. Orientals feel relative deprivation and witness the inability of the system to satisfy their needs and to bring them up to par with their Ashkenazic brothers. Continued ethnic inequality is a potentially solid and legitimate ground for Oriental disaffection, mobilization, and struggle, which do not take separatist or exclusively ethnic forms. In fact, it figured prominently in all past manifestations of ethnic unrest, as well as in voting for the Likud camp parties. The unfulfilled promises of ethnic equality and integration legitimize and reinforce Oriental grievances. Orientals also face the unpleasant contradiction between their numerical strength and nondominant status. The knowledge that their children are not faring better than they are is another slowly growing and unsettling realization. The fact that of all Oriental and Sephardic Jewish communities in the world today, Israeli Oriental Jews enjoy the worst socioeconomic achievements, may also add to their discontent.

Nationality30 Does Israel's Jewish-Zionist character contradict its political democracy? Do Arabs enjoy full individual civil rights, including the right to dissent on Zionism and Palestinian nationalism? Are they given a status of a national minority with collective rights? Can they enter coalition politics and share power?31 Israel's Jewish-Zionist

Character

Israel is unique in the Western world today for remaining an ethnic state (i.e., a state identified with and designed to serve one of its constituent population groups).32 Such a structure is bound to clash with political democracy, which is based on the principle of equal rights and equal treatment of all citizens. Israel deviates from the Western standards of a nonethnic democracy in legislating both the ethnic (Jewish-Zionist) character of the state and ethnic endogamy. Israel's ethnic nature is well evident today. The state claims to be the homeland of Jews only. The dominant language is Hebrew, while Arabic is degraded to an inferior status. The institutions, official holidays, symbols, and heroes are exclusively Jewish. The major law of immigration admits Jews freely but excludes Palestinian Arabs. Israel confers a special standing on the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, which, by

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their own constitutions, cater to Jews only. Land and settlement policies are geared to further the interests of Jews only. Foreign policy takes the welfare of world Jewry as a prime consideration. In many other ways, the state extends preferential treatment to Jews who wish to preserve these embedded aspects of Jewishness and Zionism of the state. While Israeli Arabs accept Israel as a state and respect its territorial integrity, they reject its ethnic features. This is true of all the predominantly Arab parties, namely, the Arab Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and the Progressive Arab Movement (which together with the Jewish-based Alternative Movement form the Progressive List for Peace). According to the 1988 survey, only 13.5 percent of the Arabs denied Israel's right to exist, whereas a majority (63 percent) rejected its right of existence as a Jewish-Zionist state. In addition, 92 percent of those surveyed disagreed that Israel is the homeland of Jews only rather than the common homeland of both Jews and Arabs; 83 percent objected to the idea that Israel should maintain a Jewish majority; 72 percent favored the repeal of the Law of Return; and 67 percent believed that Arabs cannot be equal citizens in Israel as a Jewish-Zionist state and cannot identify themselves with it. When asked directly about Zionism, 70 percent regarded it as racist; in response to another question, 1 percent defined themselves as Zionist, 52 percent non-Zionist, and 47 percent anti-Zionist. All these rejection figures are significantly higher among non-Bedouin Moslems, who constitute the large majority of Israeli Arabs. 33 From a Jewish viewpoint, rejection of Zionism as an ideology and a force shaping the state is like rejecting the state itself. The refined distinction between the state and its character is neither understood nor condoned by the Jews. They are not interested in having Israel be just a state, but rather be a Jewish-Zionist state. For this reason, Arabs who doubt Israel's right to be Jewish-Zionist are regarded as potentially hostile and subversive. Arabs are rather silent on the other component of Israel's ethnic character. According to Israeli law, every person belongs to a religious community that has full jurisdiction over his personal status, including marriage, divorce, wills, custody of children, and burial. While interfaith marriages are not illegal, they are not provided by law. With the exception of Ireland, Israel is unique in regulating ethnic endogamy that informally spills over to other areas (e.g., the Ministry of Housing does not construct mixed neighborhoods). Since the Arabs are a nonassimilating minority, interested in keeping a separate identity and institutions, they do not mind the legal separation of religious communities (which follows the Moslem millet system). They do not associate it with discrimination in access to public resources (e.g., denial of residence in Jewish neighborhoods), which they see as national discrimination against them as Arabs.

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Individual Civil Rights

Arabs enjoy fewer individual civil rights than Jews do in two respects: Their right to political dissent is less respected and their access to opportunities and resources is more limited. Arab dissent on Zionism and Palestinian nationalism is considered illegitimate and in certain respects even illegal. While it is legal to publicly reject or act against Zionism, one may not run in Knesset elections on an election slate that rejects Israel as the state of the Jewish people. 34 From an Israeli Arab's viewpoint, the provision that Israel is the land of Jews all over the world, but not necessarily of its citizens, degrades them to a status of invisible outsiders, as if Israel were not their own state. Furthermore, it turns the Jewish-Zionist nature of the state into what Kretzmer rightly calls "an incontrovertible fact." 35 In this way, illegitimate dissent is unduly expanded from negation of the physical integrity of the state to a denial of its special character. In fact, not only is a party that proposes to de-Zionize the state by peaceful, legal means banned from parliamentary elections, but also the speaker of the Knesset may block the presentation before the Knesset of a bill with such intention. In its ruling over the right of the Progressive List for Peace to run for the 1988 election, the Supreme Court adopted a wider interpretation of the requirement that one cannot deny Israel as the state of the Jewish people, although the majority opinion found insufficient evidence for disqualifying the PLP for participating in the election. The illegitimacy of dissent over Palestinian nationalism is equally grave because of the Israeli Arabs' deep solidarity with the Palestinians. They believe that the appropriate solution to the conflict is Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, redivision of Jerusalem, negotiation with the PLO, formation of a Palestinian slate on the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel, and the recognition of the right of the Arab refugees to return or to receive compensation. They express their support of the Palestinian cause by demonstrations and general strikes, but stop short of joining the intifada. Palestinian nationalism runs strong also in the Israeli Arabs' affirmation of their identity as Palestinians, Palestinian Arabs, or Israeli Palestinians (67 percent of all Arabs in the 1988 survey). They have also become more aware of their Palestinian history, heritage, literature, and Islam, and wish their Palestinian culture to be recognized by the state as part of the national culture and as an input into Arab and Jewish education. The dominant view of the authorities and the Jewish public regards Palestinian nationalism as antithetical to whatever they stand for and a threat to their survival. More specifically, for most Jews, an Arab claim to Western Palestine is a challenge to their exclusive right to the entire area;

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support of the PLO is equivalent to an endorsement of terrorism and a struggle to liquidate Israel as stipulated in the PLO National Charter; and the sanction of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is tantamount to approving a step in a long-term, multistage strategy to do away with the Jewish Slate. The dissent of Israeli Arabs from the Jewish consensus against a two-state solution is considered an act of disloyalty, not as a disagreement between fellow citizens entitled to hold opposing, but equally legitimate, views on a certain matter. Jewish apprehensions are reinforced by state policies and laws. Arab civil liberties are not adequately protected in Israel for four reasons. First and foremost is the absence of a constitution or bill of rights having a superior standing over other laws. Therefore, Arabs lack an independent legal base to fight unfair treatment. Second, as long as Israel is legally in a permanent state of emergency, excessive emergency regulations are in effect. Since the Arabs are officially considered a security risk, these regulations are used mostly against them. Third, the present implementation of the Jewish-Zionist character of the state carries certain discriminations against Arabs. Fourth, Jewish public opinion not only condones constraints imposed on Arabs, but it also endorses preferential treatment of Jews. Each one of these factors, let alone the special effect of their combination, is sufficient to downgrade Arabs to a status of second-class citizens. A critical review of laws and statutes by Kretzmer reveals considerable discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens despite the prevalence of the legal principle of equality in Israel. A substantial digression from the principle is caused by the special legal status accorded to the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund. They perform quasi-governmental functions, such as planning and funding of new rural localities, support for cultural enterprises, provision of assistance to the elderly and other disadvantaged groups, and development and leasing of lands. Yet by their own constitution, these powerful institutions are obliged to serve Jews only. At the same time, Arabs are prevented from setting up their own fund-raising organization abroad, parallel to the United Jewish Appeal, because of the penalty of receiving money from hostile or terrorist bodies. Discrimination is also embedded in the Jewish Religious Services Law, which provides for publicly funded religious services to Jews only. The bulk of the discrimination is, however, rather covert. The extensive use of military service as a criterion for allocation of benefits is the most striking because most Jews serve in the army whereas most Arabs do not. It is proper to give certain benefits to ex-soldiers within the first three years of their discharge. But in Israel, anyone who has served in the army or has had an immediate family member serve in the army is entitled to extra allowance for large families and for easy terms of loans for

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housing. Unfair allocation of funds and extension of unequal services by governmental offices are quite common. For example, the subsidies Arab local councils receive from the Ministry of the Interior average about only one-third of the subsidies that comparable Jewish local councils receive. With minor exceptions, the various projects to close the ethnic and social gaps exclude Israeli Arabs, who would qualify according to a universal criterion of need. These include tax breaks given to development towns to encourage investments and residence there, numerous programs of compensatory education and cultural enrichment, and Project Renewal. Inappropriate use of security considerations to restrict Arab freedoms is also common. From time to time, the authorities employ the emergency regulations to restrict the movement of Arabs, to detain them, to refuse the incorporation of their associations, and to ban their publications. Some Arabs are also refused clearance to work as schoolteachers. For similar security offenses, Arabs tend to be tried in military courts while Jews (e.g., the Jewish underground) are tried in civilian courts. Of course, any visible threat to or disruption of internal security deserves prosecution, but the authorities often treat legitimate political dissent as an act of subversion. To illustrate, in 1980 a congress of various Arab organizations scheduled to meet publicly in Nazareth was banned by the government on the pretext that the group might be under the influence of the PLO. The Jewish public is understandably more ethnocentric than the Jewish legislators, policymakers, and administrators. In the 1988 survey, 74 percent of the Jews said that the state should prefer Jews to Arabs, 43 percent favored the denial of the right to vote to Israeli Arab citizens, and 45 percent supported, without any reservation, the outlawing of the Israeli Communist Party, which has been seated in the Knesset since 1948. In addition, 40 percent of the Jewish respondents agreed that Israel should seek and use any opportunity to encourage Israeli Arabs to leave the country, 37 percent had reservations about such a state policy toward fellow citizens, and only 23 percent objected. It is no less telling that 74 percent of the Jews were unwilling to have an Arab as a superior in a job. These attitudes should be understood against the background of the beliefs that the Arabs are not trustworthy, do not assume equal duties, and are generally less desirable for being non-Jews in a Jewish state. In view of such public opinion and state policies, it is no wonder that informal, daily discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens abounds. It is mostly widespread in hiring for white-collar jobs in the Jewish economy, in housing rentals, and in treatment by the police. Most Jews even fail to perceive the above differential practices as discrimination against Arabs. Instead they consider them as preferences rightfully accorded to themselves as Jews in a Jewish state. Furthermore, most Jews think that the Arabs do not deserve equal rights inasmuch as

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they do not fulfill equal duties (i.e., do not serve in the army). Finally, as long as most Jews continue to regard the Arabs as a potential fifth column, all the restrictions imposed on the Arabs appear as unavoidable and even justifiable. Status of a National

Minority

The Arabs in Israel constitute both an ethnic and a national minority. They are entitled to special collective rights as distinguishable members of a minority in addition to individual rights as indistinguishable citizens. In Israel today, the Arabs enjoy a status of an ethnic, but not a national, minority. The state recognizes the Arabs as a religious, linguistic, and cultural minority. Like the Jews, they are organized in religious communities that administer all matters of personal status. The Moslems, Christians, and Druzes enjoy freedom of worship and receive partial funding from the government for their religious services. Yet the Moslem community is not on equal footing with the dominant Jewish community in a number of areas. It lacks such institutions as a supreme religious council, local religious councils, and religious training seminaries, and it is devoid of control over the Waqf property (religious endowments). Rectification of these inequities will increasingly be pressed as a demand with the growing Islamic consciousness and fundamentalism among the Moslems in Israel. Arabs are also entitled by law to have Arabic schools, and there are Arabic channels in the state radio and television that cater to A r a b needs. Furthermore, since Arabic is Israel's second official language, anyone can use it in official dealings with governmental bodies (the courts and bureaucracy). Arabic is, nevertheless, much inferior to Hebrew in its status. It is not actually used along with Hebrew in the public domain, especially in street and locality signs, and it is not a required language in Jewish schools like Hebrew is in Arab schools. Yet the Jewish public shows a remarkable willingness to promote the use of Arabic. While 83 percent of the Jews in the 1985 survey supported the continued dominance of Hebrew in state institutions, 48 percent favored making Arabic a required language in the public display of names of streets and localities, and 50 percent went so far as to endorse the teaching of Arabic in Jewish schools at a level equal to English, even if this would necessitate cutting down on other subjects. These favorable views were even more popular among the special sample of political leaders in the study. Arabs function well as a cultural minority. Their considerable culture retention is the result of the right to maintain a publicly funded separate system of Arab education, the freedom to preserve and cultivate their

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culture, the leeway to hold cultural ties with other Palestinians and with the Arab world, and the freedom to reside in three geocultural regions (90 percent of the Arabs live in the Galilee, Triangle, and the Northern Negev). Consequently, the Arabs have become a bicultural minority (they have adopted some patterns of the Israeli culture in addition to their main Arab culture) rather than an assimilating minority. It is also evident, however, that the A r a b culture is a minority culture (not part of the national culture) and is even looked down upon. With all that is still lacking, the Arab status as an ethnic minority is not basically problematic. As a matter of fact, it is part of the national consensus to keep Arabs a nonassimilating minority just as it is to keep Jews a nonassimilating majority. As long as Israel remains a Jewish-Zionist state, Jews would definitely have a vested interest in sustaining Arabs as an ethnic minority in order to reduce the danger of assimilation and intermarriage, as well as to prevent the transformation of Israel into a truly open, pluralistic society. The real problem lies in the denial of a status of a national minority to the Arabs. It is self-evident that they qualify as a national minority by being part of the larger Arab nation and the territorial Palestinian nation. At the same time, they are neither part of the wider Jewish nation nor of the nonexistent Israeli nation. If they are not part of the Israeli Jewish nation but are part of the Palestinian nation, why does Israel not recognize them as a national minority? Such a recognition implies acknowledgment of the Arab right to certain expressions of self-determination, and this is objectionable to Jews on several grounds. First, Jews feel that conceding national rights to the Arabs would invalidate the exclusivity of their own claims to the land. Second, recognition of Israeli Arabs as a Palestinian national minority would, for many Jews, define them as part of the enemy, supposedly strengthen their ties with the belligerent Palestinian people, and push them to undermine the state. Third, national minorities are inclined to demand rights to autonomy and even secession. Irredentism is feared in particular because the bulk of the area in which Israeli Arabs live today was earmarked in the 1947 UN partition resolution for the state of Palestine but was seized and annexed by Israel in 1949. Since the Arabs are fearful of Jewish reactions, they are prudent in pursuing the goal of a Palestinian national minority status. It is rather clear that most of them have abandoned any desire or hope to secede to a Palestinian state. In fact, at present, there is no political movement among Israeli Arabs that is demanding the right of secession. 36 However, in the 1988 survey, 40 percent of the Israeli Arab respondents disagreed that the Galilee and Triangle should remain integral parts of Israel. Arab political organizations also refrain from making an explicit demand for autonomy. It seems that they have either not formed a policy

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on this matter or are deliberately vague in order not to antagonize the authorities. It is, however, abundantly clear from both their actions and the support lent to them by the A r a b masses that, since the mid-1970s, the Arabs have been seeking and building autonomous institutions. They set up numerous independent organizations to serve Arabs and demand official recognition as representative bodies of all Arabs. These organizations have mushroomed in almost every sphere, including lands, education, local authorities, welfare, and health. This is true, for instance, of the A r a b Student Committees on each campus and nationally, and of the most powerful Committee of Heads of Arab Local Councils. 37 The Jewish response has uniformly been official reluctance accompanied by expedient willingness to talk to them unofficially. The Arabs have also managed to form the Progressive List for Peace, the Democratic A r a b Party, and the Islamic Movement, in addition to the Communist Party, as predominantly or exclusively A r a b political parties or movements. A r a b public opinion favors institutional (nonterritorial) autonomy. In the 1985 survey, 65 percent agreed that Arabs should become organized independently, like Orthodox Jews, in order to advance their vital interests. In addition, 71.5 percent of the Arabs favored assuming control over their system of education, and overwhelming majorities supported the formation of independent A r a b institutions: 85 percent supported an A r a b trade union, 86 percent an independent A r a b press, and 88 percent an A r a b university. They were, however, divided on the question of A r a b self-rule in the Galilee and Triangle: 34 percent were in favor, 35 percent had reservations, and 31 percent were opposed. On the other hand, most Jews object to A r a b institutional autonomy. For instance, in the same survey, only 25 percent of the Jews favored an A r a b trade union, 23 percent an independent A r a b press, and 25 percent an A r a b university. Active Participation in Politics At first glance, Israeli Arabs look as if they are well integrated into the mainstream of Israeli politics. Their participation rate in the 1988 Knesset elections was 73 percent compared to 80 percent among the Jews; in the 1989 Histadrut elections the percentages were 58 and 55, respectively. In these elections, the A r a b vote was split between predominantly Arab and Jewish lists, and A r a b candidates were elected for office. The Arabs also maintain a large network of independent political movements and organizations that represent and fight for A r a b interests. They are engaged in mass politics, mostly the use of demonstrations and general strikes, in a struggle for both equality and peace. A deeper examination, however, would detect three major problems with Israeli A r a b politics. First, independent A r a b organizations are denied official recognition, and governmental and quasi-governmental

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offices refuse to deal with them directly. The Arabs expect the authorities to recognize their organizations as representative, to be heard and negotiated with, and to make headway. Most Jews, on the other hand, feel that the Arabs are accumulating too much power, presenting nationalist and unreasonable demands, and unjustifiably tipping the delicate balance of Arab-Jewish relations. The other disagreement hovers over Arab extraparliamentary politics. The Arab use of general strikes and demonstrations has become rather common. For instance, during the first year of the intifada, Israeli Arabs held three, well-observed, general strikes (on December 21,1987, in solidarity with the intifada; on March 30, 1988, on Land Day; and on November 15,1988, in protest of the demolition of fifteen illegal buildings in Taibeh). Israeli Arabs feel that it is their democratic right to take any lawful act of protest. Although Israeli Jews are no longer alarmed by these firm kinds of measures and the authorities no longer make threats or intervene, they both continue to consider them illegitimate and counterproductive. To cite from the 1988 survey, 74 percent of the Arabs as compared to only 20 percent of the Jews favored Arab general strikes, and 67 percent and 18 percent, respectively, approved of Arab protest actions abroad. The Arabs believed in the effectiveness of demonstrations (79 percent), shutdowns of local councils (79 percent), and general strikes (81 percent) by Arabs to effect change, while Jews would be rather skeptical of these protest measures if they were asked. Along with the strategy to build an independent base of power, to mobilize the Arab masses for protest, and to force the authorities to negotiate and make concessions, the Arabs would like to move from being outside protesters to being actual participants in coalition politics and in decisionmaking. The formation of the Arab Democratic Party by Darawshe in 1988 was explicitly intended to achieve this goal. Popular Arab sentiment for the inclusion of Arabs in power coalitions is overwhelming. In the 1985 survey, 87 percent of the Arabs (compared to 39 percent of the Jews) favored the participation in coalition government of existing or new political parties that truly represent the interests of Arabs in Israel. Similarly, 73 percent of the Arabs (23 percent of the Jews) favored, in principle, the possibility, created after the 1984 Knesset elections, of forming a Labor government supported by the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality and the Progressive List for Peace. Arabs have so far been excluded from national power coalitions because they reject the Jewish national consensus on retaining the Jewish-Zionist character of the state, preventing the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and keeping the status quo of Jewish dominance. The exclusion of the Arabs from national power and the unsettling fate of their representative organizations as permanent opposition parties

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present Israeli democracy as having the severe problem of "the tyranny of the majority." Such a problem causes tension and unrest among subordinate minorities, as shown in the case of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.

Policy Implications Let me suggest certain policy implications for a better management, not resolution, of the three sets of conflict discussed in this chapter. It is recommended to take the following steps in order to increase Israel's resources and reduce inequality without hurting social solidarity: 1. Economic growth is essential to expand the overall available resources and opportunities in the society and to bring them up to par with Western standards. This is the most important means to decrease emigration, to enhance the attraction of the country to potential immigrants, and to keep the trust of the population in the system. All the governmental efforts to initiate economic growth since 1974 have failed despite the rise in capital imports. It is evident that the root cause of the failure is the diversion of resources for tackling the external conflict (namely, national security and settlements in the territories). Therefore, the two issues should be tied together in the public consciousness of Israelis, possibly to force them to make a rational choice between a compromise needed to settle the Palestinian question and continued economic stagnation. The chances to reach a peace settlement would probably improve if the connection were adequately made. 2. The economy must be restructured and reoriented toward efficiency and competitiveness in the world market. The remedies should include reduction of redundant labor in both the public and private sector, and the closure of inefficient industries. Adequate unemployment and welfare compensation must be paid to temporarily dislocated workers, and investment from abroad and within should be made in order to start up new, internationally competitive enterprises that will be profitable and generate the kind of domestic surplus that will make Israel a dynamic economy. Israel especially needs investment in the building of high-technology industries, retraining the labor force, and payment of higher wages. To achieve these goals, it is also important, among other things, to dismantle the Histadrut industrial complex. Since the Histadrut plants officially belong to the workers, they should be given or sold at a low price to their employees before being offered to the highest bidder in the private market. The reduction of the Histadrut to a set of trade unions will better protect the workers and create the necessary conditions for the emergence

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of a genuine Israeli left. 38 3. The development of a national social policy is necessary to obtain the following goals: (a) encouragement of a culture of individuals who assume responsibility for themselves, their families, and the society at large instead of a culture of dependency and demands; (b) increasing social mobility, especially for the lower strata; and (c) "enlarging the responsibility of the state for long crisis periods in the life of individuals and for the dependent populations." 39 To further these ends, more emphasis should be placed on training and educating unskilled and semiskilled workers, and decentralizing the provision of services while retaining governmental planning and supervision. The following measures could improve ethnic relations and preclude ethnic tensions from distorting and destabilizing Israeli democracy: 1. A national ethnic policy should be formulated that would include the national social policy as a major component. This would weaken the disproportionate ethnic composition of social strata and increase equality of resources between Oriental and Ashkenazic Jews. Special privileges should be given to discharged soldiers, the entitlements of new couples should be made equal to those of new immigrants, and Orientals must be brought on a par with Ashkenazim in university attendance. 2. Certain patterns of Arab culture, especially Arabic language, history, music, literature, architecture, and human relations, should be cultivated in addition to the Sephardic and Oriental heritage. Reorientation of Israel to the Arab world, along with the orientation to the West, will bestow on Oriental Jews a worthwhile role and status. 3. The ethnic issue should be placed on the national agenda to correct the general tendency to ignore it. An important way to do this is to reopen the question of the absorption of the mass immigration in the 1950s in order to remove it as a major bone of contention between the two communities. The responsibility of the government for the creation of ethnic inequalities must be recognized, Ashkenazic benefits should be acknowledged, and Oriental resentment and grievances should be aired. Public discussion of the 1950s is essential to combat current stereotypes and hidden animosities, as well as for the promotion of mutual understanding and acceptance. The following steps should be adopted, even before peace with the Arab world is reached, in order to improve Arab-Jewish coexistence: 1. There is a need to diversify the state and public symbols to enable Arabs to identify with Israel while keeping its Jewish-Zionist character.

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Measures will include the cultural reorientation of Israel to the Arab world; the spread of Arabic; and the incorporation of Arab heroes and emblems in stamps, street names, and the like. 2. All acts of discrimination and restrictions that make for unequal individual rights must be removed, and the right to dissent on Zionism and Palestinian nationalism must be respected. 3. Arabs should be granted the status of a Palestinian national minority, and their right to control certain institutions, their Palestinian identity and culture, and their national leadership must be recognized. 4. Predominantly Arab parties must be accepted into coalition governments, and Arabs should be incorporated into national power positions.

Conclusion The cleavages along class, ethnicity, and nationality will probably be exacerbated by the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s. It is forecasted that 1.5 million will settle in the country during the 1990s, and they will increase the total population of Israel by one-third. To provide these new immigrants with adequate housing, employment, education, health, and welfare services, billions of dollars are needed. If the enormous sums will not be raised abroad, the resident population that already suffers from a shortage of resources will be further squeezed by heavier taxation, higher prices, a further rise in unemployment, and a decline of services. The immigrants, who are pushed out by virulent anti-Semitism, economic deterioration, and political instability in the former Soviet Union and channeled perforce to Israel by the closure of U.S. doors, will be even more adversely affected. On the other hand, if the exorbitant costs of immigrant absorption will be borne by external sources, Israel will experience a huge expansion of its economy, with everyone benefiting. Assuming that Israel will fail to raise abroad the bulk of the necessary monies, the per capita resources will decrease and inequality will increase. The erosion of the welfare state will especially hurt the middle, working, and poor strata. The gaps between the haves and have-nots will rise, intensifying the social tensions. There will be a real growth of the poor since the Soviet immigration comes with a very large proportion of dependents, especially old persons and single-parent families. Orientals will be harder hit by the Soviet mass influx than Ashkenazim. First, since most Orientals are in the middle and lower classes, they will be hurt disproportionately. Second, they will lose their numerical majority and strategic power as voters to be lured by special dispensation.40 Third, those among the Orientals who are in the process of upward

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mobility will be hardest hit because they will face tough competition for jobs from the newcomers. The highly qualified and credentialed new arrivals will be forced into downward mobility that will place them into the same niches of the economy most sought by mobile Orientals. 41 Israeli Arabs will also suffer if the Israeli pie will have to be divided among a greater number of people. Their weight in the population and electorate will diminish, their demands for larger development funds will increasingly be overlooked, and they will face tougher competition for all kinds of jobs and university admissions. In addition, they may be directly threatened by new governmental projects to Judaize predominantly Arab areas. Their threshold of intolerance of the forthcoming deprivations is particularly low because of their unwavering objection to Jewish immigration. Israel's top priority should therefore be mobilization of resources abroad to expand the economy and to forestall the unfavorable developments. This is a very difficult task to achieve because of the immense sums involved and the tough competition for credits in the world market. The economic problem is, however, entangled with the progress made in the peace front. If stalemate, violence, and hard-line policies on the part of the Arab and Israeli sides will persist, Israel will not be able to attract the vital investments, loans, and grants in aid. Yet the tying of the economic to the peace issue has in store a promise of handling both of these issues at the same time. Finally, to what extent do the divisions under discussion distort and potentially destabilize Israeli democracy? Dominance by the middle and higher classes exists in Israel as in other industrial societies, notwithstanding the early socialist pretense of the founders of Israel. Class inequality is growing, drawing Israel even further into the semi-Western category of countries. Yet for various reasons, social class is not a political issue, and on this score Israel rather resembles Western societies. However, Israel's weakest point is that it generates much less wealth than Western countries. Although capital imports compensate partly for low productivity and zero economic growth, Israelis as a whole are deprived relative to Westerners to whom they compare themselves. This deprivation will reduce the confidence in the political system; once peace is achieved, it may become a basis for popular discontent and not just a push for emigration, as it is now. As a result of the entrenched dominance of Ashkenazim in the areas of class, culture, and politics, ethnic deprivations and grievances are not pressed as issues. This is a distortion of Israeli democracy. In view of the Ashkenazic dominance in Israel and world Jewry, all one can realistically hope for is greater equalization of resources. The main problem is the living conditions of the Oriental working class. Other issues are power

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positions for ambitious Orientals and letting Orientals have more cultural impact. Such reforms will not do away with Ashkenazic dominance, but they will make it more bearable. The Arab question is Israel's most severe issue. Jewish dominance is total, even legally and socially institutionalized, raising the dilemma of the tyranny of the majority. This thorny Arab minority problem is further complicated by Israel's ethnic democracy and the Palestinian question. The Arabs cannot be fully equal and cannot fully identify themselves with the state as long as it remains Jewish and committed to Zionism. They will remain mistrusted by Jews and the state as long as the conflict with the Arab world persists. However, the problem could be scaled down by a policy that diversifies state and public symbols, redistributes resources, better protects individual civil rights, bestows the status of a Palestinian national minority, and accepts Israeli Arabs into coalition politics. All these reforms may be implemented without necessarily renouncing the Jewish-Zionist character of the state. But all the required changes cannot be undertaken without recasting Zionism. The classical streams of Labor, Revisionist, and religious Zionism cannot cope with the necessity to fully accept Oriental Jews and Israeli Arabs as an integral part of society and to reorient the state toward the Middle East without losing its ties to the West. Neither can these old Zionisms respect the moral right of the Jews in the diaspora to remain there and to cultivate centers that successfully compete with Israel. There is a dire need for a new Zionism that entails a fresh synthesis of all these diverse requirements and contradictions.

Notes The first draft of this chapter was written in 1989-1990 while I was a research fellow at the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia, to which I am indebted for the facilities, release time, and congenial atmosphere. The draft was presented at the International Conference on "Israeli Democracy Under Stress," Hoover Institution, Stanford University, June 1990. A revised version benefited from the comments of Larry Diamond and other participants in the conference, to whom I am grateful. The study is based in part on findings from four public opinion surveys, of which the first three were funded by The Ford Foundation directly or through Israel Foundations Trustees; the 1988 survey was funded by a grant from the D F G (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschft) received through the Arnold Bergstraesser Institut, Freiburg, Germany. The funding from these foundations is greatly appreciated. The 1988 survey was part of a comparative study of South Africa, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and Israel and based on the joint comparative questionnaire. Professor Theodor Hanf headed the entire project and the DFG funded it. The contribution of the joint team to the 1988 study is highly acknowledged.

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1. The World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 179. 2. Arie Shachar and Maya Choshen, "Israel Among Nations: A Statistical Analysis of Israel's Position Between the Developed and the Developing World." Paper presented at the conference on trends of change in Israeli society, the Faculty of the Social Sciences, The Hebrew University, December 1989. 3. Beverly Silver, "The Contradictions of Semiperipheral 'Success': The Case of Israel," in Willian G. Martin, ed., Semiperipheral States in the World Economy, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990). 4. Silver, "The Contradictions of Semiperipheral 'Success,'" applies a world economy system analysis to Israel, arguing that, like other semiperipheral states it experienced a period of economic growth until the 1970s and stagnation thereafter. The success in the previous period was expedited by an activist national leadership with a strong developmentalist ideology, the state autonomy as against the relative weakness of both the bourgeoisie and working class, the attraction of capital by nonmarket mechanisms, and the ability to find a niche in the expanding world market by keeping wages lower and using available resources efficiently. The later deterioration is caused by unfavorable conditions for growth created by the success in the previous period: the weakening of the state, the increased cost of labor, and the depression of the world market. Semiperipheral states cannot join the core states, eventually deteriorating because they lack the large capital necessary to sustain an economy of innovation. Israel has exceptionally escaped this destiny thanks to the U.S. aid. 5. Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Statistical Abstract of Israel 1989 (Jerusalem: CBS, 1990), pp. 344—345. All the following social statistics are taken from this publication unless otherwise indicated. 6. For surveys of various aspects of the Israeli economy, see Yoram BenPorath, ed., The Israeli Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1986). 7. CBS, Statistical Abstract, pp. 296-297. 8. Ibid., p. 310. 9. Ibid., p. 298. 10. Institute of Social Insurance, Annual Survey 1988 (Jerusalem: National Insurance Institute, 1989), p. 50, in Hebrew. Poverty is defined as having 50 percent or less of the median disposable income per standard person ($197.50 per month for one, $316 for two, $417 for three, $506 for four, etc.). The 1988 income survey included 83 percent of the population. It is not clear how the incidence of poverty would be affected if the nonwage and rural heads of households were included. 11. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged• The Inner City of Underclass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 12. The Gini coefficient would have been 0.4493 instead of 0.3160 (CBS, Statistical Abstract, p. 67). 13. Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 83-92. 14. Throughout this chapter, figures are quoted from two public opinion surveys of the Jewish population and two surveys of the Arab population. They were taken in 1985 and 1988 and are comparable across time. Each one was based on personal interviews with statewide, representative samples of 1,200 men and women, aged 18 or older, and living in Israel within its pre-1967 borders, excluding East Jerusalem. They are reported in full in Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel, Vol. 2: Change and Continuity in Mutual Intolerance (Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press, 1992). All the following survey figures are taken from

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this publication unless otherwise indicated. 15. To illustrate, the proportion rejecting the statement that "whatever my personal efforts are in Israel, I will not get the education and job I am entitled to" ranged from 88.1 percent among Jews at the top of the occupational prestige scale to 72.5 percent among Jews at the bottom. This is true for all other beliefs. T h e contrast in beliefs between the top and bottom of the hierarchy (Jews scoring 81 to 100 versus 0 to 20 on the occupational prestige scale of 0 to 100) is as follows: believing that Israel is a middle-class society, 76.3 versus 69.2 percent; classifying themselves in the middle class or higher, 94.2 versus 86.8 percent; seeing factors related to personal performance (hard work, education, experience, and trustfulness) as determinants of success, 75.5 versus 67.7 percent; agreeing that one is personally rewarded according to personal efforts, 88.1 versus 72.5 percent; and that one's children will enjoy the standards one has, 87.0 versus 68.2 percent. 16. For the gains of all Israeli groups (i.e., Ashkenazim, Orientals, and Israeli Arabs) from Palestinian cheap labor, see Noah Lewin-Epstein and Moshe Semyonov, "Ethnic Group Mobility in the Israeli Labor Market," American Sociological Review 51, no. 3 (June 1986), pp. 342-351. 17. The research literature on Jewish ethnicity in Israel is enormous. For a review and a selected bibliography with abstracts, see Sammy Smooha, Social Research on Jewish Ethnicity in Israel 1948-1986 (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1987). For a comprehensive study of the available data on ethnic differences in sociodemographic characteristics, residential distribution, mixed marriages, educational attainment, and voting behavior, see U. O. Schmelz, S. DellaPergola, and U. Avner, Ethnic Differences Among Israeli Jews: A New Look (Jerusalem: The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and American Jewish Year Book (Jerusalem: The American Jewish Committee, 1991). Documentation is kept here to a bare minimum. 18. Studies show that the chances of Orientals completing an academic high school and attending a university is even lower than those of Christian and even Moslem Arabs. In the absence of vocational schooling in the Arab sector, the Arabs go to academic high schools and then proceed to college. It is not necessary to discriminate against Arabs in academically oriented education in high schools and universities because it is possible to practice overt discrimination against them after graduation when they seek employment. For these findings and explanations, see Yossi Shavit, "Tracking and the Educational Spiral: Arab and Jewish Patterns of Educational Expansion," Comparative Education Review 33, no. 2 (May 1989), pp. 217-231; and Yossi Shavit, "Segregation, Tracking, and the Educational Attainment of Minorities: Arabs and Oriental Jews in Israel," American Sociological Review 55, no. 1 (February 1990), pp. 115-126. 19. Yaacov Nahon, Patterns of Educational Expansion and the Structure of Occupational Opportunities: The Ethnic Dimension (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1987), in Hebrew. 20. Israel lacks affirmative action in the U.S. sense that publicly funded universities and employers are required by the government to make special effort to recruit members of disadvantaged groups. For a review of the existing programs, see Natan Lerner, "Affirmative Action in Israel," in International Perspectives on Affirmative Action, A Conference Report (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1984), pp. 110-153. 21. Elazar argues that contemporary ethnic cultural differences stem from the gulf between the classical and romantic cultures on which Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews draw, respectively; see Daniel Elazar, The Other Jews: The

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Sephardim Today (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 30-40. 22. Ha'aretz, May 21,1978. 23. The Israeli anthropologist Kressel maintains that Oriental Jews are still imbued by "Arabism," which is a main impediment to their social mobility; see Gideon Kressel, "Arabism (Urubah): A 'Concealed' Cultural Factor in the Ethnic 'Gap' in Israel," Israel Social Science Review 2, no. 1 (1984), pp. 66-79. 24. In the 1988 public opinion survey, 37.8 percent of the Jewish respondents favored a distinct Western culture for Israel, 23.9 percent a Western culture in which Arab elements are incorporated, 20.1 percent a mixed culture consisting of Western and Arab elements, 5.6 percent an Arab culture in which Western elements are incorporated, 0.6 percent a distinct Arab culture, and 12 percent rejected both cultures. Support of a mixed Arab-Jewish or predominantly A r a b culture was 33.5 percent among Orientals as compared to 17.9 percent among Ashkenazim. In view of the stigmatization of Arab culture in Israel today, its relatively larger endorsement by Oriental Jews should be appreciated. Peace may widen the ethnic cultural preferences further. 25. Yochanan Peres made this argument in 1977 after the Likud ascendance to power. 26. For a discussion of Begin's version, see Ilan Peleg, Begin's Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel's Move to the Right (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). 27. Erik Cohen, "The Changing Legitimations of the State of Israel," Studies in Contemporary Jewry 5 (1989), pp. 148-165. 28. Shlomo Avineri, "Political Aspects," in Alouph Hareven, ed., On the Difficulty of Being Israeli (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Van Leer Foundation, 1983), pp. 289-295, in Hebrew. 29. Elazar presents another, equally unconvincing view that the SephardicOriental majority, organized in the Likud and carrying a new Sephardic Zionism that blends tradition with nationalism, is becoming Israel's dominant group; see Daniel Elazar, Israel: Building a New Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 30. Certain sections from this part of the chapter are adapted from Sammy Smooha, "Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: The Status of the A r a b Minority in Israel," Ethnic and Racial Studies 13, no. 3 (July 1990), pp. 389-413. 31. For a detailed discussion and documentation of the key issues dividing Israeli Arabs and Jews, see Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel, vol. 1 (1989) and vol. 2 (1992) (Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press). 32. South Africa is another Western case of a racially or ethnically constituted state, but since the radical shift in its policy in February 1990, it will lose this character gradually. 33. The representative national sample of the Arab population within the Green Line consisted of 9.6 percent Druzes, 14.7 percent Christians, 8.1 percent Bedouin, and 67.7 percent non-Bedouin Moslems. 34. According to the 1985 amendment to the election law, for any election list to be approved for participation in the Knesset elections, it must not deny Israel as the state of the Jewish people, deny democracy, or incite racism. 35. David Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press, 1991). 36. Even the Sons of the Village Movement, which stands for a Palestinian or a secular-democratic state in all of Palestine instead of Israel, does not demand the right to secession for Israeli Arabs. The Israeli Communist Party demanded this right until the early 1960s as part of its support for the full implementation of

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the 1947 UN resolution to establish the state of Palestine along with the state of Israel. 37. Majid Al-Haj and Henry Rosenfeld, Arab Local Government in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990). 38. Kleinman critically analyzes the failure of the Histadrut to protect the interests of its members and to redistribute national resources. His analysis implies that the Histadrut could have played this role despite its dual, self-contradictory structure; see Ephraim Kleinman, "The Histadrut Economy of Israel: In Search of Criteria," Jerusalem Quarterly 41 (Winter 1987), pp. 77-94. 39. This and other objectives are well articulated by Raphaella Bilski-BenHur, "Social Policy in Israel—a Critique," Jerusalem Quarterly 39 (1986), pp. 44-56. 40. The overwhelming majority of Soviet Jews are Ashkenazic. Of all the 279,826 Jews who arrived from the Soviet Union between 1968 and September 1990,5.9 percent came from Armenia, the Caucuses, and Azerbaijan; 11.7 percent from Georgia; and 11.0 percent from Central Asia (these are official figures released by the Research and Planning Branch, Ministry of Immigrant Absorption). While most of these Jews are non-Ashkenazic, their proportion in the entire Soviet Jewry and among the potential immigrants is much smaller. 41. The economic distribution of the 55,904 Soviet Jews in the labor force who came to Israel from November 1,1989, to September 30,1990, included 41 percent in the top category of scientific and professional occupations and 34 percent in the technical and semiprofessional fields (the respective proportions in the previous 1974-1981 wave of Soviet immigrants were 27 percent and 21 percent). Displaced downward, these immigrants will successfully compete with upwardly mobile Israelis of Oriental origin.

17 The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Israeli Democracy Yoram Peri

Living by the Sword Several factors have shaped the character of the Israeli political system: the ethos and ideology of the founding fathers, the political culture of the Zionist movement and of prestate Jewish society in Palestine, and Jewish tradition. Though all of these factors were indeed significant, today it has become clear that the predominant influence on the shape of politics in Israel is one that has always been considered peripheral: national security—i.e., the Arab-Israeli conflict. A number of Western democracies have lived through periods of war that left an imprint on their forms of government and society. It is also true that, since World War II, numerous nations have come into existence by means of wars of national liberation. Nevertheless, the fate of Israel in this respect is distinct from that of any other democratic state. Israel is the only democracy in the world that has been in a state of war since independence. The dimensions of this war are total, threatening along all its borders, or aiming at no less than total destruction of the state ("policide" is Harkabi's term for the phenomenon). Usually, they go hand in hand. A slightly more detailed analysis of these factors unique to the security of Israel, a nation that lives by its sword (in the words of Moshe Dayan), will make it clear why the Arab-Israeli conflict is the dominant shaping influence over democracy. Permanent War Since its creation in 1948, and actually even before then—since the Zionist movement began to build the Jewish national home in Palestine after World War I—Israel has never won legitimacy in the eyes of either the neighboring Arab states or the Palestinians. The Arabs did not even recognize Israel's right to exist; liquidating Israel through war was made an Arab national goal. Since its inception, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have participated in seven wars of varying types (from one-front wars to 343

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wars on all fronts; from wars fought against a single military organization to wars fought against a coalition of four national armies) that have varied in duration from one hundred hours (the Sinai Campaign of 1956) to a little less than two years (the War of Independence, from December 1947 until June 1949), or longer than six years (the ongoing intifada, which began in December 1987). Even in the periods between wars there was no peace, the single exception being Israel's relations with Egypt since 1979. During these times, a condition reigned that was defined as "neither war nor peace," or "less war," or "beleaguered war," or "latent war." Hostile actions never ceased. Even in periods during which Israel was in a state of "fundamental security" (in the language of the designers of Israel's security doctrine) when there was a strategic balance between Israel and the armies of the Arab states, the country still suffered from problems of "day-to-day security," that is, from attacks against its citizens and interests. To put it another way, Israel's "natural" state of existence was one of permanent war. Subconventional

Warfare

In additional to regular wars, Israel found itself in a continual state of subconventional warfare. This was waged along the length of its borders, or deep within its territory, against Israeli targets throughout the world, and in the territories occupied since 1967. Israel is one of those Western nations that have been targeted the most by international terror over the last decade. As a consequence, the war against terror is an important element in its national security effort. Fear of a "Fifth

Column"

As in every democracy, Israel's national security has a domestic component. However, Israel's situation is unique in this category, too. Palestinian Arabs make up one-fifth of the population of the state of Israel. While they enjoy full Israeli citizenship, their national, or ethnic, identity is tied to the Arab world, with whom Israel is in a state of war. This dual allegiance creates what many Israelis perceive as a problem of a "fifth column." This situation, however, causes a much deeper problem, one tied to the definition of the collective identity of Israeli society. The Israeli nation-state is not the state of an Israeli nation (most of the state's citizens do not define themselves as citizens of such a nation). Rather, it is the Jewish nation-state. As such, what, then, is the meaning of national security? Is it the security of the state or of the nation? Is it also the security

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of the nation against a portion of its own citizens? Military Government Since 1967, Israel has occupied the territories on the West B a n k of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians live. Since that time, these Palestinians have been ruled by Israeli military government. They have never ceased to protest against this situation, if at varying degrees of intensity. However, since December 1987, the population of the territories has been engaged in no less than a war of national liberation, known as the intifada. It is subversive warfare, or "revolutionary warfare," as the French called it in Algeria, and it has completely altered the pattern of Israeli rule in the territories. This war has cost the I D F alone one billion dollars (the damage to the whole of the Israeli economy is even greater); it has caused the deaths of eight hundred Palestinians in the territories (more than the total number killed during the preceding twenty years); and it has forced the I D F to permanently deploy more than five times (even up to ten times) the number of troops that were stationed in the territories in the years before the intifada. All these factors, together with the fact that Israel is a Jewish state in conflict with the Muslim world and in violent conflict with fundamentalist Muslim movements, create a complex set of national security problems that have direct bearing on the character of Israeli society.

The Religion of Security Power as a Principle in the Israeli Reality One cannot analyze the issue of national security in Israel without taking into account the special and complex relationship that Israeli society has to the concept of power. The annals of Zionism tell the story of a movement that sought to unite a diaspora and establish a sovereign national state. But it is also the story of a people who were denied military or physical power throughout their history, aspiring to attain such power. T h e modern Zionist myth contends that Jewish existence in the galut, in exile, was characterized first and foremost by the absence of power; as such, it was an existence without security. Existence of the Jewish State, in contrast, postulates power and grants the Jews security. 1 It is impossible to overstate the operative significance of this psychological and cultural factor in the making of Israel's foreign and defense policy. This ideology explains, for instance, the principle of "self reliance," a fundamental component of the Israeli security doctrine, as well as

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Israel's disrespect for international guarantees and for the United Nations, and its tendency to rely more on military options rather than political or diplomatic arrangements. 2 The Metaphysics

of Security

As is the case with all other national security concepts, the Israeli view of national security is not a product of an evaluation of security needs and an optimal answer to those evaluated needs. That is to say, it is not a product of a cognitive, rational thought process on the part of those who are responsible for national security, but rather a result of a collection of intertwined factors, among them "the reflection of the experiences of the nation, of the political art, and of certain ideologies."3 The history of the Jewish people and the Zionist movement have left a deep imprint on Israeli perceptions of security. Israeli views on the subject actually rest on a deep foundation of beliefs, fundamental presuppositions, and values regarding basic issues of Jewish collective existence: Is the world essentially hostile or not? What is the nature of the relations between the Jews and the other peoples of the world? Is national existence guaranteed in any situation and under any condition, or does the threat of annihilation constantly hover over us? Indeed, in the few studies conducted on the subject in Israel, a clear connection was discovered between the basic system of beliefs and those very concrete issues of national security that appear on the national agenda. Thus, for instance, there is a relationship between what researchers call a siege mentality, characteristic of Israelis, and their views on security. Generally attributing warlike intentions to the Arabs is a direct consequence of the belief that "the whole world is against us. "4 In the same way, the willingness to take risks in war is connected to the belief that "God is on our side." Asher Arian found a correlation between a willingness to return the occupied territories and the attitude toward the question, "Is the whole world against us?" Not surprisingly, a high congruence exists between sensing war to be imminent and a refusal to give up territory.5 Arian and his colleagues call the considerable role played by personal beliefs in the formation of concepts of security extra-rational. This is what justifies the use, by a number of scholars, of the concept of the "religion of security."6 This "religion" is a system of beliefs that does not include security matters per se, but expresses a broad world view that relates to fundamental issues about the democratic nature of the society and even the nature of the cosmic order. The influence of this "religion" is so great because the domain of security was never strictly defined in Israel. Rather, the opposite is the

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case. Because of its unusual situation, there was always a tendency to widen the boundaries of Israel's security concerns to include more than traditional military issues. Thus, not only does the balance of power, or the army, fall within the Israeli definition of security, but other subjects are included as well. A fair reflection of the breadth of this definition are those subjects on which newspaper editors will voluntary accept censorship for security reasons. The list includes energy, aliyah (immigration), and contacts between Israel and states with which it has no diplomatic relations. A good example of this broadened conception of security was given by Shimon Peres when he defined Israel's security as including aliyah, absorption, settlement, control of the skies and the sea, and scientific and technological development. "Security is not a limited function, but a multiple e f f o r t . . . concentrating national energy and using it to reinforce the nation's ability to survive."7 Debate over what is and is not included in the concept of security is ongoing in Israel because once a sphere of life is included under the rubric of "security," it is possible to exclude it from those rules that govern civil society. How, then, does the external conflict influence Israel's democracy, system of government, and way of life?

The Effect of Security on the Nature of Democratic Life The Legal

Situation

Karl Deutsch noted that the work of Israeli scholars studying Israeli politics and society suffers from a severe defect. Despite their professionalism, they actually exclude an important section of the society they purport to be analyzing in their studies: the Arab public in Israel. The exclusive concentration on the Jewish sector in most of the research on Israel helps to present a distorted picture. 8 But that is not all: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, under Israeli rule since 1967, are also considered off limits. The fact that the future status of these territories is unresolved and is the cause of disagreement and debate, and that these areas are under military rule in what is defined as a temporary arrangement, makes it possible for the Israeli scholar to disclaim their integrality to the Israeli system, and disregard them when analyzing Israeli society. However, the state of Israel has a longer history with these territories (since 1967) than without them (1948-1967). More than half the Israeli population does not even remember a time when these territories were not under Israeli control. In addition, the West Bank and Gaza Strip have

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been highly integrated into Israel, largely due to the 70,000 Jews who inhabit the over fifty settlements dispersed throughout the territories. Thus, anyone analyzing Israeli society or politics who excludes the territories from that analysis will be making an a priori determination—legitimate, yet clearly arbitrary—of the boundaries of the Israeli commonwealth without taking into account one of its important, and even decisive, components. Because it is impossible to ignore the situation in the territories or the problem of Israeli Arabs, it is instructive to test the issue through an analysis of the Israeli legal system. Within Israel—that is, within the internationally recognized borders and the occupied territories—three separate legal systems exist simultaneously. The first legality is the regular one, that designed for "normal" conditions. The second is comprised of the Defence Regulations, 1945. This parallel system empowers the government to place severe restrictions on civilian freedoms, almost without limit. Until 1963, this legal system had full jurisdiction over Israeli Arabs who then lived under the control of a military administration whose very existence was a product of the emergency Defence Regulations. The third legal system is that of the military administration in the occupied territories, which has been in existence since 1967. This system has jurisdiction over the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The simultaneous existence of three legal systems in one state is itself a subject worthy of study, but one outside the framework of our current discussion. Clearly, however, it is inconsistent with accepted democratic presumptions. Public Opinion

on the Relations

Between

Ruler and

Ruled

The Israeli religion of security is a very general phenomenon. "Just as a child accepts, unquestioningly, the religion he was born into . . . so too, does the Israeli child absorb at a very early age the basics of the core-belief of national security."9 It is at the same time most effective and wields considerable influence over the way Israelis relate to democratic arrangements and procedures. What does this mean? The concept of citizenship lies at the heart of the democratic system. Public opinion shapes the making of policy. While no categorical claim is made that such influence is absolute, it is assumed that the public has an important role to play in determining the public agenda and in creating the climate in which policy is formulated and carried out. Yet, studies of democracy in Israel do not point to the existence of this model; they suggest its opposite. This means that government policy

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has a greater impact on public opinion than public opinion has on the formulation of policy. Coplin, for instance, asserts that the politicians are well aware of their ability to influence public opinion. They thus manipulate opinion so as to support policies that have already been decided. "Often, public opinion is used to justify actions already taken rather than prepare the public for future policies."10 Thus, Naomi Keis claims that the political leadership in Israel wields considerable influence over public opinion. The public usually consents to government policy once it is decided.11 Arian, Talmud, and Herman discovered a wealth of evidence suggesting that the greater the connection to security issues, the greater is public acquiescence to the government's stand.12 The majority of Israelis view themselves as ignorant in the area of security, powerless to affect decisions made on security matters, and prepared to adopt those decisions presented to them by the leadership. Eighty-two percent of the participants in a national sample said they rely on the declarations of the leadership. Seventy-two percent thought that the credibility of the mass media can be trusted in security matters. Fifty-seven percent said that the interviews of political leaders in the media help them, either very much or to some extent, to crystallize their own opinions about various security matters, with an additional 22 percent saying that they are helped to a small extent by such interviews. The same survey discovered similar levels of reliance on senior military officers and mass media commentaries. This model of the structure of Israeli public opinion in matters related to security is corroborated by a study that investigated public stands on what has been the central political question of the day since 1967: the future status of the territories. A representative sample of the Jewish adult population was asked to express its opinion on the "peace for territory" formula. (The unpublished study was carried out by the Institute for Applied Social Research in Jerusalem.) The topic was tested by means of a series of four questions. First, a positive formulation (Question A) was used: "Would you support a peace agreement if it involved relinquishing most of the territories?" Then the question was posed negatively (Question B): "Would you support keeping most of the territories even if this would prevent a peace agreement?" The next two questions, rather than being concerned with the original opinions of the participants, were designed to test opinions as responses to government policy. This was done in both a positive fashion (Question C: "If the government supported a peace agreement which involved relinquishing most of the territories and the parliamentary opposition opposed the proposal, what would your stand be?") and negatively (Question D: "If a peace proposal was made which involved relinquishing most of the territories and the government was opposed, what would your stand be?")

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T a b l e 17.1 A . Would you support a peace agreement if it involved relinquishing most of the territories? D e f i n i t e l y or probably support 45% Definitely or probably o p p o s e 55% B. W o u l d you support keeping most of the territories e v e n if this w o u l d prevent a p e a c e agreement? Definitely or probably support 30% Definitely or probably o p p o s e 70% C. If the government supported a peace agreement which involved relinquishing most of the territories and the parliamentary opposition o p p o s e d the proposal, what w o u l d your stand b e ? Definitely or probably support the government 54% Definitely or probably o p p o s e the government 46% D . If a peace proposal was m a d e which involved relinquishing most of the territories and the g o v e r n m e n t was o p p o s e d , what w o u l d your stand b e ? Definitely or probably support the government 64% Definitely or probably o p p o s e the government 36%

It is apparent in Table 17.1 that the public in Israel would support any decision made by the government even if it were opposed to the person's initial stand on the issue (although in the instance of a hawkish decision, the level of support is higher). Faith in the religion of security creates a situation whereby the Israeli public willfully accepts restrictions on individual freedoms and on democratic arrangements and procedures. Eighty-eight percent of the participants in the study made by Arian and his colleagues replied that it is essential to support the government in times of crisis or war. More than one-third claimed that criticism of the government during wartime should be prohibited. In another study, it was found that approximately one-third of Israelis assume that "the slightest threat to national security justifies a severe limitation of democracy."13 It was found that about two-thirds of Israelis consider freedom of expression in the media to be injurious to national security, and only one-third feel that freedom of expression, as exercised in the Israeli media, is beneficial to national security. Thus close to one-half of Israelis think that "the Israeli media has too much freedom." 14 The Government's

Modus

Operandi

Social Mobilization and War Economy. The Israeli experience of permanent war, of being a "democracy on the defense," has resulted in an

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extensive mobilization of social resources to meet the perceived security needs. The figures in this area are well known and do not require further specification or analysis: During the 1980s, approximately one-quarter of the annual budget was earmarked directly for defense. In the average year, 12 to 13 percent of all the resources available to the Israeli economy (the gross national product and foreign aid) were used for security purposes. If we were to include indirect factors in this figure (such as payment of the foreign debt or defense expenditures that do not appear in the budget of the Ministry of Defense), then the figure would be more like 16 to 17 percent. Most Israeli males are required, on the average, to spend five years in military service (this figure includes regular army service and reserve duty). The percentage of Israel's population drafted into the army is one of the highest in the world. The concern for security also affects areas of life not directly connected to defense. For instance, in the late 1960s and early 1970s as Israel decided to base her supply of armaments on local production, industry in Israel shifted en masse in the direction of defense-related production. In the 1980s, approximately one-quarter of all industrial workers were employed in defense industries, and about 20 percent of the country's exports were defense related.15 This mobilization of society affects, first of ali, the economy. The extensive mobilization of human resources for state purposes, when combined with the state's active role in the distribution of these resources, results in a degree of government intervention in the economy that is one of the highest among Western nations. For years, this intervention attributed to the social democratic ideology and practices of the Labor Party. But it was the security situation in Israel that actually created a war economy, or state socialism, just as it did in other Western countries during times of war. The high degree of state involvement finds expression not only in a politicization of the economy, but in other, more extensive changes affecting the relationship of the state to civil society—specifically the involvement of the former in the latter. The increased power of the state is found in a plethora of spheres: the existence of very large government and public service apparatuses, the considerable dependence of citizens on the government bureaucracy, and strong regulatory practices in all areas of life. The Israeli version of statism would never have survived for so long if it did not rest upon as strong a foundation as the "security situation," the predisposition of Israelis to award the state almost complete discretion in matters of national security. State Control and Surveillance. This relationship between state and society is paralleled in the relations that prevail between the state and the indi-

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vidual. In any country, a state of emergency causes an expansion of the mechanisms of surveillance and control used by the state against its citizenry. It provokes the growth of an extensive apparatus whose purpose is domestic control, and an increase of government involvement in the private life of the citizen. No systematic study is required to recognize this state of affairs. The police and the security services man roadblocks on the main arteries throughout the country, stopping vehicles for spot-checks. Army and security personnel carefully screen the entrances to shopping centers and other public places; moviegoers or theatergoers must submit to having their bags searched as they enter; and luggage at Ben-Gurion International Airport undergoes one of the most thorough security checks in the world. Parents of schoolchildren regularly comb the school grounds and take turns standing guard at school entrances and exits. The telephones of foreign journalists are often tapped by the military censor, and tens of thousands of Israelis volunteer for service in the civil guard that patrols their neighborhoods. And this list of precautionary measures is far from complete. Israel is a small society, with a strong collectivist character, whose democracy is a formal one (that is, based on free elections) and not a liberal democracy (based on protection of the rights of minorities and the individual). For this reason, the public does not actively resist the deep involvement of the state (which, in any case, is perceived to be the representative of the collective) in its private affairs. Thus the degree of sensitivity Israelis display toward issues of civil and private rights is not very high. This attitude is revealed in the relatively marginal role played by those social organizations and political parties whose activities focus on these concerns. Raison D'état. The complex nature of Israel's security needs has often led the authorities to rely on the principle of raison d'état; they know the public tends to accept this justification. From the founding of the state until the end of the 1980s, the courts supported this practice. When representatives of the government would explain their actions, or errors, as stemming from "security considerations," the courts did not consider themselves authorized to substitute their own reasoning for that of the authorities. In any event, the courts only have jurisdiction over a limited part of the realm of security. Up until the mid-1980s, there had never been an instance of the courts annulling a decision of the security authorities on the grounds of a flaw in the reasoning of the latter.16 Even since the courts have begun to increase their activity in this area, such intervention is still rare, occurring in only a minimum of cases.

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Moreover, for many years, judges would accept, without further investigation, any announcement to the court by the security authorities, by means of a document signed by a minister in the government, that disclosure of certain facts before the court would damage the security of the state. This practice has been only partially corrected; a petitioner to the court is still unable to discover what evidence supports a particular decision. This makes it impossible to assail, or even examine, that decision. A more complicated question arose in this area when the rule of law was applied to the war on terrorism. The war against terror is seen by Israelis as a "gray area." It is not a war according to the rules of international law, nor is it a police action taken in times of peace. In this twilight zone, as it is defined by Israeli politicians, the rule of law becomes obscured. This view was even given expression in the opinion of the deputy president of the Supreme Court: There is no doubt that someone filling a position of responsibility for security has a particular problem in always adhering to the law. The degree of deviation varies from country to country, but it exists even in those countries where the democratic government's protection of civil liberties is not to be questioned. 17

Honorable Judge Ben-Porat expressed her understanding with the view that there are situations in which "the national leaders who are responsible for the country's well-being and security see certain deviations from the law made in order to ensure that security is not to be condemned." She made do with the ruling that "the more moderate the deviation is from the law, the more desirable it is to reach that optimal situation in which the law and the maintenance of national security are the same. But we judges should not decide ourselves." 18 This stand, taken by Judge Ben-Porat, was a minority opinion, however. Judge Aharon Barak gave unambiguous expression to the majority: "There is no security without the law. The rule of law is a component of national security." Thus, he followed the path of the president of the Supreme Court, who stated that "national security also rests on the rule of law." 19 In light of the comments of national leaders, however, it is fair to state that from a public standpoint, the question remains open as to whether security stands, along with the war on terror, somewhere in that twilight zone outside the law. The secrecy surrounding the activities of the internal security services makes it all the more difficult to determine the extent of the actions carried out on the "periphery of the law," that gray area of the war against terror. Evidence is accumulating from the war against the intifada that corrobo-

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rates the suspicion that this secrecy is not as rare a p h e n o m e n o n as once thought. Repeated complaints by Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin about the Supreme Court's legal obstacles to pursuing the war against the intifada only strengthens this impression. 20 Qualified Democracy (on an Ethnic Basis). The Arab-Israeli conflict has caused the most harm to the integrity of Israeli democracy in the area of relations toward the country's A r a b population. In the occupied territories, where 1.5 million Palestinians live under military rule, relations are rather straightforward. The population there does not enjoy a democratic way of life. There are numerous restrictions on individual and civil freedoms, with the Palestinians living under the strict control of Israeli authorities. Since the intifada began, this control has only increased, and life in the territories today resembles life under "military occupation" more than ever. Clearly, continuation of military rule cannot be consistent with democratic values. For the A r a b citizens of Israel, the situation is much more complicated. The approximately one-fifth of the country's population who are Arabs would seem to be citizens of equal standing, but because they belong to the A r a b nation (with whom Israel is in a state of war), the matter is considerably more complex. For instance, because security defines the boundaries of the Israeli collectivity, contribution to that security is the key to one's membership in the collective. The fact that Israeli Arabs do not serve in the army sociologically disenfranchises them from Israeli society. Moreover, this becomes an excuse for discrimination, despite the fact that the law requires equality without regard to creed, race, religion, or sex. This explains why Israeli Arabs have difficulty finding positions as industrial engineers: Most industries are associated with defense production. This is also why even the courts sometimes tend to mete out harsher sentences to Arabs than to Jews who are convicted of the same crime. T h e condition of Israeli Arabs has also greatly deteriorated since the outbreak of the intifada. In contrast to all the previous Israeli wars, when the I D F fought against an organized A r a b army, this time soldiers are being sent to fight against the civilian Palestinian population, including women and children. The conflict has therefore acquired the nature of a interethnic conflict between rival communities. This has led more and more Israelis to blur the difference between the p r o - P L O Palestinian residents of the territories who are in revolt with those Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel. Consequently, the stereotype of the Palestinian has been reinforced, as have the calls to consider Israeli Arabs as if they were Palestinians living under the occupational authorities in the territories. This change finds

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expression not only in public opinion and the behavior of Jewish individuals, but also in the demands made of the government, and even in the actions taken by governmental bodies themselves. For example, since the intifada began, Arab Israelis have been subjected to much more stringent treatment by the police than they had experienced before the intifada. These processes result in the public's increased willingness to limit democratic arrangements in Israel to the Jewish population, thus denying them to Arab citizens. Obviously, this idea of qualifying democracy is inconsistent with its basic principles.

Two Final Observations In spite of the fact that the prolonged external conflict has an unhealthy effect on Israeli democracy, both on those values and beliefs held by the public and on the procedures of government, it would be a mistake not to make two qualifying observations at this time. First, one should not look upon the Israeli society since independence from a static perspective. Important changes have occurred over the years, changes that should not be ignored. The Supreme Court, for instance, no longer indiscriminately accepts a priori the reasoning of the government on matters of security. In the Alon Moreh decision of 1979, the Court canceled a land seizure that had been ordered by the army, explaining that the action was illegal. In other words, the Court decided to examine the realm of reasons and motivations—the substance—of the decisions taken by the security authorities. A similar view guided Justice Barak in 1989 when he dismissed the arguments of the military censor in a case involving the newspaper Hadashot. Here, too, the judge denied the defense establishment the exclusive status as sole arbiter of "security considerations" for the state of Israel. The Israeli media has also changed its attitude significantly toward the security issue. If in the 1950s and 1960s the media assented to self-censorship and the dictates of the defense authorities, since 1974 it has assumed a much more critical stance on the subject of defense. The media's pointed criticism of the government and the minister of defense during the Lebanese War, or of the behavior of the IDF in its war against the intifada, as well as its imputation of some of the activities of the security services, are only a few examples of this new attitude. This process can be viewed as a result of a weakening of the national consensus on security. If this process has not yet reached that core of values and beliefs that constitute the religion of security, it has already mitigated, to one degree or another, the negative effects the security issue has on democracy in Israel.

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The second observation is comparative. Israel's security situation has caused injury to its democracy, and especially to that aspect of democratic life relating to the status of Arabs. If a condition of permanent war naturally encourages the creation of a garrison state, as Harold Lasswell predicted, then shouldn't the damage actually be much greater than it is? Perhaps this limited injury is testimony to the strength of the democratic forces in the country. Soon an answer will be forthcoming. Israel must face the issue of a political solution to the conflict with her neighbors and be put to the test that Arnold Toynbee described in his book War and Civilization. Like other evils, war has an insidious way of appearing not intolerable until it has secured such a stranglehold upon the lives of its addicts that they no longer have the power to escape from its grip when its deadline has become manifest. 2 '

Notes 1. David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, 1986). See also Yoram Peri, Between Battles and Ballots: Israel Military in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 2. Aluf Hareven, "The Jewish State Whose Essence is Strength?" in Giora Rozen, ed., The Lebanese War (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad), pp. 115-134. 3. L. Jensen, Explaining Foreign Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1982), pp. 71-72. 4. Daniel Bar-Tal, "Contents and Origins of the Israeli's Belief About Security." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Tel Aviv, June 1989. 5. Asher Arian, Ilan Talmud, and Tamar Herman, National Security and Public Opinion in Israel (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, June 1989). 6. Bar-Tal, "Contents and Origins of the Israeli's Belief About Security." 7. Shimon Peres, From These Men (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), pp. 47-48. 8. Karl W. Deutsch, "Introduction," in Ernest Krausz, ed., Politics and Society in Israel (New Brunswick, N.J., and Oxford: Transaction Books, 1985), pp. 3-4. 9. Arian, Talmud, and Herman, National Security and Public Opinion in Israel. 10. W. Coplin, "Domestic Politics and the Making of Foreign Policy," in W. Coplin, ed., Introduction to International Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1974). 11. Naomi Keis, "The Influence of Public Policy on Public Opinion in Israel 1967-1974," in State, Government and International Relations, no. 8 (September 1975), pp. 36-53, in Hebrew. 12. Arian, Talmud, and Herman, National Security and Public Opinion in Israel. 13. Yochanan Peres, "Tolerance—Two Years Later," Israeli Democracy (Winter 1990), pp. 16-18. 14. Ephraim Yaar, "Who's Afraid of a Free Press?" Israeli Democracy

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(Winter 1990), pp. 19-20. 15. Yoram Peri and Amnon Neubach, The Military Industrial Complex in Israel (Te! Aviv: International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1985). 16. Yitzhak Zamir, "Human Rights and National Security." Lecture by the Government's Senior Legal Adviser before the Israeli National Academy of Science, December 13,1988. 17. Supreme Court Decision 428/86, "Collection of Supreme Court Decisions," vol. 40,1986, pp. 505-623. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Yitzhak Rabin. Appearance before the Knesset Committee on Defense and Foreign Affairs, February 20,1990. 21. Arnold J. Toynbee, War and Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. viii.

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18 Directions for Reform Larry Diamond and Ehud Sprinzak

A s this volume has documented, Israeli democracy suffers from a number of serious stresses and shortcomings. Some of these are inherent in the nature of democracy, which inevitably involves trade-offs between competing values and interests. Some of these are inescapable in a multiethnic democracy still in the process of absorbing massive waves of immigration. Some are intrinsic to the special character of the Israeli state as a Jewish and Zionist democracy, a combination that is difficult but by no means irreconciliable, in the view of most of our contributors. Some—like the threat of terrorism or war from neighboring states—depend in part on forces outside Israel's control. Some of these can only be improved or relieved over a long period of time; political socialization through the educational system must obviously have a generational time perspective. There is at least one institutional arena, however, where reform could have—and is already showing signs of beginning to have—a relatively immediate and substantial impact. It is a problem area that has frustrated and even infuriated a wide cross-section of Israel's population, symbolizing and, in many ways, leading a diffuse malaise. It is, by coincidence, also an arena through which all the other problems of the system seem to flow, and in the process become intensified. It is the realm in which successful reforms seem most likely to have a rapid tonic effect on several other dimensions of deadlock, stagnation, and malfunctioning, partly by reshaping the process through which they are addressed and partly because of the symbolic and "spillover" effects of having achieved any signficant reform at all. A s readers of this volume are no doubt aware, we are talking, of course, about the political system, especially the electoral system. Several glaring deficiencies in the electoral system demand attention. First, most reformers agree that the pure proportionality of the system must be attenuated. While a majoritarian electoral system—like the firstpast-the-post, single-member-district system of England or the United States—is clearly inappropriate for a society as deeply and complexly cleaved as that of Israel, some way must be found to reduce the fragmentation and proliferation of political parties. While the reduction from 361

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fifteen to ten parties elected to the Knesset in 1992 is a step in the right direction, further consolidation is needed. Pure proportionality has tended to produce not pure democracy, but its opposite: narrow, militant, forces holding the country hostage to their demands, not only in the formation of a government, but in the threat to bring it down if this or that legislation is passed. Second, electoral reform must somehow strengthen the hand of the prime minister and his or her ability to form and head a government. Thus it is widely agreed that the authority of the prime minister to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers should be explicitly reinforced in the legal code. Without overturning the convention by which major policies are decided by the cabinet, the authority of the prime minister over the economy and other critical matters, such as immigration absorption, needs to be strengthened. Third, not only does the position of the prime minister need to be strengthened, but that of the Knesset as an institution as well. Israel's parliamentary coalition politics, which produces control of the Knesset's majority by the prime minister and his cabinet, as well as the total dependence of most Knesset coalition members on their party leaders (who are bound to maintain the coalition), make the Knesset more often than not a rubber seal for the government's activities. A parliamentary system, by definition, does not encompass the separation of powers found in a presidential system like that of the United States, but the ability of the Knesset and its committees to act as an independent check on the actions of the ministries and the executive branch overall would clearly strengthen the quality of Israeli democracy. As Arye Carmon explains in his foreword to this volume, the Political Reform Program of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) features a wide range of activities designed to enhance the information and understanding of Knesset members, and so improve their capacity to make an independent contribution to governance in Israel. The staffing and technical resources of the Knesset also need considerable augmentation. Finally, the system must also become more accountable to the people. This requires in part some modification of the type of PR system now in place in Israel, in which all members of the Knesset are elected from a single national "closed" list, chosen hierarchically by party central committees (until the Labor Party introduced democratic innovations in 1992), with no possibility for voters to modify it.

Alternatives for Electoral Reform There is no clear agreement in or outside Israel as to what constitutes the most sensible electoral reform for Israel. Two principal approaches, hav-

Directions

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Reform

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ing to do with the structure of the executive, now divide the reform camp in Israel. This division is reflected among the contributors to this volume, among the two specialists who address the issue in this volume, Bogdanor and Lijphart, and even among the two editors. The reform alternatives we consider below share a number of broad underlying goals and specific instruments. However, they differ sharply on a crucial institutional issue: how to elect the prime minister. Election of the

Knesset

About the process and procedures for electing the Knesset, there is much agreement. Both of us as editors, and both Bogdanor and Lijphart as prominent students of electoral systems, agree that three types of reform are needed in the way Israel elects its Knesset. First, Israel's system of pure proportional representation must be modified to reduce the number of parties in the Knesset and so facilitate the formation of governing coalitions. The obvious first imperative in this regard is to raise the minimum threshold for entry into the Knesset from the current 1.5 percent. In order to reduce significantly the number of parties, the threshold must be raised to at least 3 or 3.5 percent (i.e., a minimum of four Knesset seats). This would reduce the number of parties in the Knesset from the current ten to somewhere between seven and nine—still a large number, but one from which coalition governments will be at least somewhat easier to fashion. A second unambiguous priority in our view is to open up the closedlist system of proportional representation to voter choice in the selection of party candidates. This is now a major area of research by IDI, and of innovation, reform, and experimentation by the two major parties (which have been advised by IDI). Already, Labor has changed the political landscape by using what has been dubbed a national "primary election" in February 1992 to select its candidates for prime minister and the Knesset. 1 We would go further, as most P R systems do, to give the voter at least some influence over which candidates on their preferred party list get elected to the Knesset, while also remaining sensitive to the need to preserve inducements for party cohesion (which tend to be undermined by fully open lists, and by the constituency element we recommend below). There is an overriding need in Israel today to open up its highly closed and hierarchical parties. Reforms in this direction would be likely to produce high-quality Knesset members who would respond more positively to the public interest and the requirements of good government, and be less confined by the interests and dictates of the party machines. (Democratizing the internal governance of political parties is another important requirement in this regard. While the parties law of March 1992 took an important step in requiring political parties to have and abide by

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written constitutions, it did not mandate that their leaders be elected by democratic procedures, or, in fact, that their procedures be guided, at bottom, by democratic principles.) The third reform is implied by the second. If lists are to become open in a meaningful way, they must be small enough to be comprehensible to the voters. A voter cannot possibly get to know all 120 candidates on a party list (or even half of them) well enough to rank them sensibly. This fact—along with the need for representatives to be more accessible and accountable to the voters (a need long emphasized by IDI)—implies that Israel must introduce a constituency element into its electoral system. The form we favor, along with the IDI Forum on Electoral Reform, is multimember districts of variable size.2 Here we more or less fully accept Bogdanor's arguments and proposals. The German model—which elects half the parliament from party lists and half from districts (single-member districts in Germany, and three-member districts in the proposal of the Bipartisan Committee on Electoral Reform in Israel)—may be more complex than Israel needs; as Bogdanor notes, even much of Germany's relatively sophisticated electorate does not seem to understand the difference between the two votes they cast. By allowing for permanent, natural constituency boundaries, variable-size districts would eliminate the potential for gerrymandering, and the whole messy, political process of constituency delimitation that goes with it. Instead of having "to re-draw constituency boundaries before every election . . . the number of representatives from each district would simply be updated in accordance to any population shifts." 3 Whereas the adapted German model would still elect half the Knesset from a national (and presumably relatively closed) list, two-thirds or more of the Knesset members in the system proposed here would be elected from and responsible to (more or less, depending on district size) specific territorial constituencies. 4 Reforming

the Prime

Ministership

There are three key imperatives in reforming the executive branch of government in Israel. A leading party must be able to form a government much more quickly and decisively than is now the case; a government, once established, must have some immunity from the opportunistic ease with which governments can now be toppled in the Knesset; and the prime minister must have much greater effective power to shape and reshape the cabinet. Two rival approaches have competed for the support of reform elements in Israel. Each would move the system sharply in these directions. One would go further than the other toward radical change, altering a principal element of parliamentary democracy: indirect election of the prime minister. Both would still enable a government to be brought down

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by a majority of the Knesset, but under more restrictive conditions. Both would continue to draw the prime minister from the parliament, and all or most of the cabinet as well. Both would preserve the convention of cabinet government, in which government decisions are made by a majority vote of the cabinet. Yet both would considerably enhance the authority of the prime minister to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers. Under either plan, but somewhat differently in each, the country would know the identity of the prime minister immediately after the election, and the process of bargaining to form coalitions would thus occur mainly beforehand, in a more open fashion. The essential difference between the two proposals is in how a government is formed following a national election. The more radical plan, initiated in 1986 by a group of four Tel Aviv University law professors, was offered as part of a proposed new constitution for Israel, and was later merged into a common reform plan by a group of four Knesset members. Under this plan, the prime minister would not be chosen by the Knesset following postelection coalition bargaining, as is now the case. Instead, he or she would be elected directly by the people in balloting separate from, but concurrent with, the elections for the Knesset. A critical feature of this plan requires that the successful candidate win an absolute majority of the vote, providing for a runoff election between the two leading candidates if none obtains a majority in the first round. Within thirty days of the election, the prime minister would then simply present his or her cabinet to the elected Knesset; a vote of approval would not be required. Since the head of government would already have been decided, negotiations to assemble the cabinet would be greatly streamlined, to say the least. 5 In March 1992 the Knesset adopted a diluted form of this proposal for direct election of the prime minister, which requires the prime minister-elect to obtain the approval of an absolute majority of the Knesset (sixty-one votes) for his newly created government. A failure to do so within fortyfive days mandates the calling of new elections to both the Knesset and the prime ministership. Hesitant to apply the electoral reform immediately, the Knesset ruled that the new bill will only go into effect in the election of the Fourteenth Knesset (scheduled to take place in 1996).6 Many political scientists and analysts (Israeli and non-Israeli) have criticized this plan for introducing quasi-presidential government, with its majoritarian, winner-take-all features, into a society that requires consensus structures. 7 There is a sense in which the plan is majoritarian: Only a candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote in a direct election can become prime minister (unless he temporarily succeeds to the office, as in the United States). This has its clear advantages, putting the choice of prime minister in the hands of the voters directly rather than in a frenetically bargaining Knesset, and enhancing the power and prestige of the

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head of government thus directly elected.8 It also has its dangers, which should not be ignored. Direct election will tend to further personalize the office of prime minister. One of its greatest and most oft-cited dangers is that it could enable the elected prime minister to claim a "plebiscitarían" mandate for action far beyond the real preferences of a deeply divided electorate, forced in a runoff to choose between two candidates, neither of whom may truly be desired by a majority of the population. And it would be introduced into a system that lacks (at least for now) the constraints and checks of a written constitution. To some extent, at least, the parliamentary nature of the system would continue to limit these plebiscitarían and winner-take-all tendencies. For, in sharp contrast to any presidential system, the term of the prime minister would not be completely fixed. Unlike in presidential systems, there would be a readily accessible constitutional means for removing a head of government who is incompetent, abusive, or merely unable to work with the legislature. Under the direct election plan adopted by the Knesset, the maximum term of the prime minister will remain four years, but it will continue to be vulnerable to termination before that time via a Knesset vote of no-confidence. 9 However, this no-confidence measure could not opportunistically sabotage a government, bringing it down and then throwing it open to a bidding bazaar, as happened in the spring of 1990. A vote to terminate the government would also terminate the life of the Knesset and require all the politicians to face the voters again. Precisely because direct election preserves the no-confidence vote, and also because it entails a runoff election, it does not eliminate the need for coalition and consensus in the Israeli system. However, advocates of the plan believe it would drive the pursuit of consensus toward the center rather than the extremes. Because the candidates in the runoff election would likely be those from Labor and Likud (the pragmatic left and right parties on the spectrum), their flanks would be protected, and they would be compelled to compete and reach out for what Bogdanor calls "the floating vote in the center." Some considerable coalition understandings would probably be forged among parties in advance of this runoff election (and probably in advance of the first round as well), but small, extreme parties could not extract fantastic concessions without offending that floating center vote necessary to win. Once a prime minister is directly elected, his party will continue to need support from other parties to govern, for two reasons. First, it will not be able to pass legislation without majority support in the Knesset. And, more immediately, it will not be able to survive a vote of no-confidence (or even, under the adopted plan, take office) without the backing of an absolute majority (sixty-one members) of the Knesset. Critics worry that direct election could plunge Israeli democracy into

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a new politics of populist demagogy and authoritarian abuse. Direct election gives the prime minister a mandate and source of legitimacy independent of the parliament. This, critics contend, contradicts the logic of a parliamentary system and the consensual need of a deeply divided society. The Knesset might have the formal authority to dismiss an abusive prime minister, but would it use it against a charismatic incumbent with a strong base of support, or even one skillful in using patronage to maintain majority support in the Knesset? This prospect is seen as particularly dangerous in Israel for three reasons. First, the country lacks a strong constitution and bill of rights that could serve to check and balance the executive's authority. Second, being a highly unitary system, it lacks the additional layers of independent authority that would further circumscribe the power of a self-aggrandizing prime minister. Third, in the context of an ambivalent political culture—in which, as Yuchtman-Yaar and Peres show, about two in every five citizens favor "a strong leadership which will 'impose order'. . . without having to depend on elections or Knesset votes"—public opinion may also prove an inadequate barrier to the inflation and abuse of an electoral "mandate." 10 Perhaps the most serious and realistic danger of direct election is that it does not ensure enhanced governability. Rather, it could generate confrontation and crisis between the Knesset and the independently elected prime minister. The form of governmental deadlock might be quite different than the impasses at coalition making of the 1980s and 1990, but potentially no less severe. It is presumed that the candidates of the two largest parties will be the ones to contest the runoff election for prime minister. But the sharpest departure in the system of direct election is to put considerably more emphasis on the personalities of the rival candidates, rather than their parties and party programs. With the growing power and spread of television, this personalization of the electoral process is a growing trend even in purely parliamentary systems,11 and was strikingly evidenced in Israel's June 1992 elections. It can only be accentuated by direct election. What if the Israeli voters elect as prime minister a strong, charismatic personality not from a major party? Advocates of direct election present strong arguments to show why and how the system can contain such a prime minister (or any other type) from abusing power. They are less clear in indicating how parliamentary government can function well in this circumstance. If the prime minister is popular, a vote of no-confidence might only backfire in punishing the Knesset that passed it, and MKs might know this. Moreover, if a Knesset that did not choose the prime minister removed him strictly because of its political disagreements with him, this could be seen to contradict the principle of direct popular election. Direct election also gives the prime minister the power to dissolve the

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Knesset (triggering a new direct election for prime minister as well). Thus the flexibility in the system cuts both ways, and can also be a tool (or a weapon) in the hand of the prime minister. At a minimum, lacking the benefit of support through party discipline, a minority government would, like presidential government in the United States for most of the last twenty years, have to fashion a new coalition with virtually every piece of legislation it sought. Under these circumstances, the recurrence of political extortion would not be difficult to imagine. The problem would arise as well if one of the two major parties won the prime ministership while the other gained effective control of the Knesset (most likely through working arrangements with smaller parties). "Without a parliamentary majority, government would continue to be ineffective and the crisis of authority would only worsen."12 The likelihood of this scenario would be heightened if, as some analysts speculate, direct election of the prime minister creates centripetal competition for the center vote only in the election for prime minister, while giving free rein for extremist or alternative voting in the balloting for party lists for the Knesset. In that event, a directly elected prime minister would have to do business with a Knesset in which his party has fewer members than it would have had if voters had only one ballot to indicate their preference both for prime minister and for a party in the Knesset. The issue is not an academic one; many political observers believe that the Labor Party would have won a smaller Knesset plurality in 1992 if voters could have voted for the relatively popular Yitzhak Rabin without having to vote for the Labor Party list. The principal advantage of the alternative reform plan put forward by IDI is that it preserves the necessity for any prime minister to command majority support in the Knesset. This alternative reform plan, known as "prime ministerial government," strengthens the executive without recourse to direct elections. Yet, rather ingeniously, it also bypasses the postelection process of negotiations to form a government. Under this plan, there would continue to be a single national election to choose the Knesset and the prime minister. The head of the party (or parliamentary bloc of parties) receiving the most votes would automatically be designated by the president to be prime minister and form a government, assuming office immediately. The prime minister would present his or her cabinet and government program to the Knesset within twenty-one days of taking office. No vote of confidence or confirmation by the Knesset would be necessary (although the prime minister would be free to ask for one). As in the current system and the direct election alternative, either the Knesset or the prime minister could opt to dissolve the Knesset, bringing new elections.13 As under current law, the Knesset could dissolve itself by a majority vote of its members, and it could remove the prime

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minister by a vote of no-confidence—but with a crucial difference. The Knesset would be constrained to pass, as in Germany and some other parliamentary democracies, a "constructive vote of no-confidence," meaning that it could not bring down the existing government unless it elected simultaneously a new prime minister. Together, the constructive vote of no-confidence and the automatic designation of prime minister would reduce the ability of small parties to sabotage the system or blackmail the larger parties with demands that enjoy little support among the electorate as a whole. These measures would thus augment the effect of the parallel proposal to raise the electoral threshold for the Knesset, in order to reduce party fragmentation. In the end, the choice between the two reform alternatives comes down to a difficult trade-off: How much independent authority does it make sense to bestow upon the head of government in Israel? Advocates of direct election believe that recurrent governmental paralysis and stalemate constitute the greatest political problems facing the country, and that the overriding reform priority is to give a prime minister clear authority to govern. Advocates of "prime ministerial government" believe that this is a worthy goal, but that it is limited by the intrinsic divisions in the society, which cannot be overridden by sheer political power without doing even more damage to the country. As IDI argues, "Decisions about going to war, signing a peace, and fixing permanent borders are matters which require a broad-based consensus, one that can hardly be commanded by a prime minister who could be elected by a bare majority of the eligible voters."14 With the adoption in March 1992 of the modified plan for direct election of the prime minister, the debate between these two reform alternatives appears to have been settled for the time being. Nevertheless, an age of reform is also an age of experimentation, and no one—neither political scientist nor politician—can be certain of how this experiment will function until it operates. Reform and renovation of Israeli democracy will be a process many years in the making, and reform advocates must be prepared to modify institutional changes that do not work as intended. The issue of direct election is one that could quite possibly be revisited in the years to come.

The Question of a Constitution There is a growing agreement that an overhaul of Israel's political system would remain incomplete without the making of a comprehensive constitution. As Ehud Sprinzak shows, the commitment to a constitution was an essential part of Israel's Declaration of Independence, which the nation's

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leaders of the time cynically failed to fulfill. This failure, however, has apparently not removed the issue from the public agenda. As years went by and the internal tensions within Israeli society intensified, more scholars and legislators started to talk and write about the need for a written constitution that would include a bill of rights and judicial review. What was not so clear in Israel of the 1950s became much more evident in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus Israelis have learned the hard way that a young democracy can function properly without a constitution only as long as it is inspired by high ideals, public spirit, and a broad sense of collective fulfillment. But once the pristine idealism is gone, and the consensus over collective values is eroded by a combination of selfish individualism and ideological polarization, the unchecked powers that be tend to move quickly from universalism to particularism, and to reward their supporters at the expense of the powerless public. Israel, as Pnina Lahav demonstrates, has been blessed with an outstanding Supreme Court, which has gradually made itself a bastion of civil and individual liberties. But the lack of a constitution and a bill of rights has made the struggle to protect liberties very hard, very slow, and on many occasions impossible. Many of the excessive privileges enjoyed today by the nation's ultraorthodox minority, as a result of its political blackmail, would have been declared illegal or unconstitutional had the nation had a constitution and judicial review. The same is true of much of the Knesset "illegalistic" legislation of retroactive bills and laws providing special allocations to be distributed by individual Knesset members. When speaking about a constitution, one has to remember the point made many years ago by the father of Israeli political science, the late Professor Benjamine Akzin. The main purpose of a written constitution is not to put in order the routine life of a nation, or to make sure the administration carries out the instructions of the political leaders. Its job is also not to secure observance of the law by the citizens. These functions are performed by ordinary laws and the state's agencies of law enforcement. The function of a constitution is to restrain and control the top decisionmakers and lawmakers who are in a position to make laws and change them at will. A constitution, we are told by Akzin, is the only political device that can check the mighty, the rulers who cannot be controlled by the agencies of law enforcement because they run them. 15 A constitution, to be sure, is not a magic key that can close at once all doors of illegal political culture and ungovernability. But in the context of a general cultural commitment to democracy, it is very useful, and in the vast majority of modern democracies, it has been proven a most effective instrument of good government. A constitution is also a great educational device. Almost every schoolchild in the United States identifies with the Constitution, its ideas, and

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symbols. The charge that a political or public action in the United States is "unconstitutional" is very serious and the nightmare of most U.S. politicians. President Nixon resigned because of such accusations (lest he be impeached), and President Reagan was badly damaged by a similar charge during the "Iran-Contra" hearings in 1987. In a classic study, American political scientist Murray Edelman showed that a democratic regime does not rely solely on civic practices and political institutions. Every working democratic regime is founded, in addition, on a system of symbols, rites, and rituals with which people identify.16 Children begin absorbing these rituals at an early age. Students learn them in schools and make them part of their collective behavior. Generations of citizens grow up with loyalty to those rituals. Thus a constitution is not only the fundamental norm constraining laws and shaping legal conventions, it is also the symbol and guidepost of a democratic political culture. To be sure, Israel's system of Basic Laws already provides a de facto constitutional framework for the country. With the enactment in March 1992 of the two new Basic Laws on freedom of occupation and human dignity, Israel has taken important additional steps toward the effective creation of a constitution. Indeed, one of the country's most eminent jurists, Aharon Barak, recently observed that we are witnessing a "constitutional revolution." The two new Basic Laws "have revolutionized the judicial and constitutional status of the basic rights of man in Israel."17 However, this progress remains inadequate for four reasons. First, not all the Basic Laws are presently entrenched (requiring an absolute Knesset majority to amend). Second, the Basic Laws are missing many of the provisions required for a secure democratic framework. In particular, even though the law on "The Dignity of Man" was a major step forward, it is not entrenched as a Basic Law, nor does it explicitly protect such essential democratic rights as freedom of expression, belief, association, and movement, as well as equality before the law. Neither does it encompass rights affecting the status of women in particular, including those bearing on marriage and divorce. These omissions were offered as tactical concessions to the religious parties, which continue to object to the idea of a written constitution other than the Torah. However, there are signs of encouraging progress toward reconciling these concerns for the sanctity of religious law (and of religious ways of life) with the need for entrenched protection of specific political rights. In passing a law on human dignity, however partial, the Knesset has crossed an important political threshold. A third compelling reason for completing a coherent constitution is to limit the power of the government, both legislative and executive. While the Supreme Court has taken important steps to do this at times, Court action can be overridden by an absolute majority of the Knesset. A written constitution will make it easier for the Court to extend and protect

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democratic rights. The need for a constitution will become more compelling still with the enhancement of executive power that will result from direct election of the prime minister. Finally, no patchwork system of Basic Laws can substitute for a coherent and comprehensive constitution. Thus, the challenge for Israel, now being pursued by the Knesset's Constitutional Committee, is not only to fill in the gaps in Israel's existing Basic Laws but to unite them into a coherent whole. As former Justice Minister Dan Meridor declared at a recent Knesset forum on the issue, "The time has come for a constitution, and it is even late." 18

Conclusion The political reforms we have discussed above should not be viewed as a magical elixir that will cure all of Israel's ills. Excessive expectations would, in fact, be dangerous, by setting the stage for even deeper cynicism when they go unfulfilled. The chapters in this volume have stressed the variety of sources of democratic stress in Israel. No set of political reforms will eliminate them overnight, nor even over many years. In the absence of visionary, creative, and courageous leadership, pursuing many avenues of reform, these other stresses will persist and no doubt intensify. But the type of leadership a country can expect is not unrelated to the nature of its political institutions. Where those institutions facilitate or even reward the polarizing pursuit of narrow interests, where they compel the negotiation of cynical, divisive, and financially draining compromises as a necessity for governing, where they do not adequately restrain power and protect liberty, vision is likely to be muddied and courage overwhelmed by the short-term necessities of political survival. There is no more basic and immediate priority in a democracy—whether one that is beginning or one that is reforming—than to find the right institutional framework for the context. Electoral reform will not alter the deep underlying divisions in Israeli politics and society. It will not in itself remove the bottlenecks in the economy or the politicization of the state. It will not produce a consensus on the issue of the occupied territories where one does not now exist. It will not reconcile the hawks and the doves, the religious and the secular, the socialists and the liberals, the Jews and the Arabs. But by reducing the fragmentation in Israeli politics and strengthening the capacity of a party leader to form and shape a government, it may make these divisions more manageable and the country more governable. By making political leaders more accountable to the people and parties more open to preferences and inputs from the grassroots, political reform could reduce public cynicism

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and reinvigorate the practice of democracy in Israel. Together with the other political reforms discussed here, electoral reform could have significant symbolic and spillover effects, marking the rallying cry and driving wedge of the Age of Reform that Israel so urgently needs. The massive recent tide of immigration from the former Soviet Union underscores not only the need for action but the tremendous rejuvenating possibilities that could be unleashed by a broad array of institutional reforms. For the Israel that could be, these new Jewish immigrants are a precious resource, representing one of the most technically, intellectually, and artistically gifted mass immigrations in human history. They are also probably the last major population group outside of Israel that will make aliya. Should Israel fail to absorb these immigrants successfully in the coming years, or should it fail to continue to attract the large numbers of Jews from the former Soviet Union who have not yet emigrated, it would be a lost opportunity of incalculable proportions, a terrible blow to the country's collective self-image and economic and strategic potential. Absorbing this last great Jewish immigration will require that Israel's economic, social, and political institutions begin to function more effectively. This will, in turn, necessitate a host of interrelated reforms in the coming years. If Israel can reduce fragmentation and improve representation and responsiveness in its electoral system, if it can strengthen accountability and democratic procedures within its political parties and its governmental system overall, if it can enhance governability while also decentralizing power, it will not only go far toward relieving the stresses that have plagued its democratic system, it will become once again an example and beacon of hope to developing democracies around the world.

Notes 1. In truth, these were not "primary elections" in the U.S. sense of the term, since the voters consisted only of formal dues-paying members of a particular party. But opening up candidate selection to active party members in this way was a major step in the internal democratization of Israel's political parties. A similar procedure is being considered by Likud. 2. The views and analysis of the IDI Forum are expressed in Israel Diaspora Institute, Electoral Reform in Israel: An Abstract (February 1990), pp. 12-18, and Israel Diaspora Institute, Electoral Reform in Israel, report no. 5, May 1989, pp. 41-51. See also the panel discussion of these issues in Israel Diaspora Institute, Electoral Reform in Israel: Part Three, report no. 9, June 1990, pp. 22-36. 3. Electoral Reform in Israel: An Abstract, p. 18. 4. In moving to the two-level system—district-wide lists but with nationally proportional results—the Israeli system would move closer to the norm for European parliamentary systems, which tend to eschew nationwide lists because

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they leave MPs too distant from the voters but value the goal of proportionality (modified by a threshold such as the 4 percent in Sweden). 5. The plan is spelled in its entirety, as a proposed "Basic Law: The Government," in Electoral Reform in Israel: An Abstract, pp. 13-24. 6. The form of direct election adopted by the Knesset weakened the provision for direct election by preserving the existing requirement that a newly elected government obtain the support of an absolute majority of the Knesset, and by also preserving at sixty-one the number of votes needed to bring down a government through a vote of no-confidence. The original proposal for direct election required seventy votes to dismiss the prime minister (and thus also call new Knesset elections) with a single resolution. However, with sixty-one votes, the Knesset would still have been able to dissolve itself and trigger a ne w prime ministerial election as well (although this simple majority would have to have been sustained through the full process of parliamentary legislation in all its stages). It appears that the Thirteenth Knesset may have a majority in favor of returning to the original plan for direct election. 7. See, for example, Electoral Reform in Israel, pp. 15-18, and Electoral Reform in Israel An Abstract, pp. 21-22. For a debate on this system, see Electoral Reform in Israel Part Three, pp. 37-51. 8. However, by requiring an immediate vote of confidence for the government of a newly elected prime minister, the provision for direct election adopted by the Knesset may have only a modest effect in reducing the need for bargaining and horse-trading to assemble a coalition government. 9. Bogdanor would go so far as to eliminate the capacity of the Knesset to remove a directly elected prime minister by a vote of no-confidence, while preserving the prime minister's ability (like that of the French president) to dismiss the Knesset. This would clearly cross the threshold into a semipresidential system, with all of its problems for a deeply cleaved society. 10. These and other arguments against direct election are articulated in Electoral Reform in Israel, pp. 15-18, and Electoral Reform in Israel An Abstract, pp. 21-22. 11. Juan J. Linz, "Change and Continuity in the Nature of Contemporary Democracies," in Gary Marks and Larry Diamond, eds., Reexamining Democracy (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992), pp. 182-207. 12. Electoral Reform in Israel An Abstract, p. 9. 13. In the IDI plan, the prime minister could dissolve the Knesset starting from the twenty-second day after assuming office, but would have to give fourteen days' notice. Electoral Reform in Israel An Abstract, p. 23. 14. Ibid., p. 21. 15. Quoted in Shevach Weiss, The Knesset (Tel Aviv: Achiasaf, 1978), pp. 24-25, in Hebrew. 16. Murray J. Edelman, The Symbolic Use of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964). 17. Aharon Barak, "The Constitutional Revolution," Mishpat Umimshat (Law and Government in Israel) 3, no. 1 (August 1992), p. 12, in Hebrew. 18. Forum for members of the Knesset, organized by the Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem, November 10,1992.

About the Contributors

Myron J. Aronoff is professor of political science and anthropology at Rutgers University. He is the author of Frontiertown: The Politics of Community Building in Israel, Power and Ritual in the Israel Labor Party, and Israeli Visions and Divisions. He is past president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology and was the founding president of the Association for Israel Studies. Vernon Bogdanor is reader in government at Oxford University and a fellow of Brasenose College. He has been an adviser to the Czechoslovak and Hungarian governments on their new constitutions and was a U.K. government delegate to the CSCE Conference in Oslo in 1991. His books include Devolution, The People and the Party System, and Multi-Party Politics and the Constitution. Arye Carmon is founder and president of the Israel Democracy Institute. In this capacity he has been involved for the past several years in promoting projects that aim at reinforcing Israeli democracy, such as advancing electoral reform in Israel, providing the Knesset with professional assistance, establishing the quarterly Israeli Democracy, and stressing the link between economic and political reforms. He has taught the history of Nazi Germany and the holocaust as well as democratic education at Ben-Gurion and Tel Aviv Universities and at UCLA, and has written extensively on these subjects. Larry Diamond is senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. He is co-editor, with Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, of the three-volume Democracy in Developing Countries and the editor of The Democratic Revolution: Struggles for Freedom and Pluralism in the Developing World and Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries. His recent writing, have focused on domestic and international factors in the global expansion of democracy. Yaron Ezrahi is an authority on the theory and culture of modern democracies. He has written extensively on the subject, particularly on the impact of 375

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About

the

Contributors

modern science and technology on democratic governments and the conduct of public affairs. He is the author of The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. He is currently working on a book on the subject of "Power and Conscience in Modern Israel." Pnina Lahav is professor at Boston University School of Law, where she teaches constitutional law and political and civil liberties. She has published numerous articles analyzing Israeli legal culture, and is currently completing the intellectual biography of Israel's former chief justice, Simon Agranat. Charles S. Liebman is professor of political science and director of the Argov Center for the Study of the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University. He is the author of numerous studies of religion and politics in Israel. Arend Lijphart is professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. A specialist in comparative politics, his books include Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries, Power-Sharing in South Africa, and Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government. Yochanan Peres is professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on ethnic relations, the family, and Israeli democracy. He is co-author of Trends in Israeli Democracy: The Public's View. Yoram Peri is the editor-in-chief of Davar, a daily published in Tel Aviv. Formerly professor of political science at Tel Aviv University and a fellow at the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, he is the author of Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli Military in Politics. Yonathan Shapiro was chairman of the Department of Sociology and is currently dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University. Among his books are The Leadership of the American Zionist Organization, 1897-1930; The Formative Years of the Israeli Labor Party; and The Road to Power: Herut Party in Israel. Ira Sharkansky has been professor of political science and public administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1975. Among his books are The Political Economy of Israel and Ancient and Modern Israel: An Exploration of Political Parallels. Sammy Smooha is professor of sociology at the University of Haifa. A specialist on comparative ethnic relations, he has published widely on the internal divisions in Israel. His books include Israel: Pluralism and Conflict, Social Research on Arabs in Israel (2 vols.), Social Research on Jewish Ethnicity in Israel, and Arabs and Jews in Israel (2 vols.).

About

the

Contributors

377

Ehud Sprinzak teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is author of IIlegalism in Israeli Political Culture and numerous essays on Israeli legal culture, political radicalism, Jewish religious fundamentalism, and terrorism. His latest book, The Ascendance of the Israeli Radical Right, won the 1992 Michael Landau Prize for the best book on Israel and Middle Eastern politics. Gadi Wolfsfeld is director of the Smart Family Communication Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior lecturer in political science and communication. His research interests include Israeli political behavior and political communication, and he is author of The Politics of Provocation: Participation and Protest in Israel, the first book to be published on political participation in Israel. Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar is professor of sociology and social psychology and former dean (1986-1991) of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University. His work focuses on organizations, work, and social inequalities, with a special emphasis on Israeli society. His numerous publications include Trends in Israeli Democracy: The Public's View (co-authored with Yochanan Peres), and he is now working on an examination of the role of the Supreme Court of Justice and its legitimacy in the context of Israel's political culture.

Index

Achdut Ha'avodah, 69,72,89,130 Agranat, Simon, 134-139,146 Agudat Israel, 282, 285, 286. See also Haredi, parties Ahad Ha'am, 278 Aliya Bilti-Legalit. See Illegal Immigration Altalena, 188 Anti-System Parties. See Political Parties Arab Democratic Party, 326,332, 333 Arab-Israeli Conflict, 17,18,19,259, 262,270,296,304,316,325-334,335336,337,343-356 Aranne, Zalman, 181 Ashkenazic Jews, 244 (table), 245, 246 (table), 247 (table); and conflict with Oriental Jews, 17-18,19,296, 316-325,335,336-338

Ben-Gurion, David, 52,54,55,83,84, 88,90,128,130-131,132,133,142, 179-180,259, 260,298, 315; and Altalena, 188; and electoral reform, 8889,100; and constitution, 183-184; and Histadrut, 69-70; and Lavon Affair, 184-185; and mamlachtiut, 89, 176,180-184 Ben Porat, Miriam, 145, 353 Bernadotte, Count Folke, 130,131 Black Panther Movement (1971), 324 Canaanite Movement, 265 Citizens' Rights Movement, 92,240 Civil Service Commission, 157,159 Coalition Crisis (1990), 3-4,125,163164,366 Collectivism, 66-67 Council of Higher Education, 160-161 CRM. See Citizens' Rights Movement

Bagatz. See High Court of Justice Balfour Declaration, 179 Barak, Aharon, 127,142,143,144, 145,147,187 Bar Koziba, Shimon (bar Kochba), 55,56 Basic Laws, 102,112,154; the Government, 1,97; the Knesset, 84,140; Human Dignity and Freedom, 147; Freedom of Occupation, 147 Begin, Menachem, 55,58,89,133, 187,249

Darawshe, Abdel Wahab. See Arab Democratic Party DASH. See Democratic Movement for Change Dayan, Moshe, 181,182,343 Declaration of Independence, 13,126, 129-130,131,132,133,134,136-139, 183,184,226,229,257,369 Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, 240 Democratic Movement for Change,

Index prepared by Brad Rothschild. 379

380

87,88,89,187 Direct Election of Prime Minster, 1, 8,9, 96-100,107,119-120,193,362, 363, 364-369. See also R e f o r m D M C . See D e m o c r a t i c M o v e m e n t for Change D o m i n a n t Party System. See Political Parties E h a n , A b b a , 133,187 Egged Bus Cooperative, 160,161-162 Elections; 1977,186-187; 1992, ix, 256, 367, 368; and L a b o r Party, xiii, 59, 147, 270 E l e c t o r a l System, 84-88; Britain ( W e s t m i n s t e r M o d e l ) , 90-91, 116; " f i r s t - p a s t - t h e - p o s t system," 83, 89, 90, 361; G e r m a n y , 91-94, 96; m u l t i - m e m b e r district, 94-96; prop o r t i o n a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , xii, 8, 9, 10-11, 34, 84, 88-89, 90, 91, 110, 115-116, 1 1 9 , 1 2 2 , 363; r e f o r m of, 88-105, 214; s i n g l e - m e m b e r district, 361 Elites, 23; and democracy, 23, 25-30; illegalism of, 11-12,175-193, 262 Eshkol, Levi, 5 5 , 1 3 9 , 1 7 6 , 1 8 1 , 1 8 5 "First-Past-the-Post" System, 83,89, 90, 361 Galili, Israel, 187 Gulf W a r (1991), 225-226,229 Gush E m u n i m (Bloc of the Faithful), 51,281,282,283 H a d a s h . See Democratic Front for Peace and Equality H a g a n a Bilti-Legalit. See Illegal D e fense H a l a k a h (Jewish Law), 15-16,273, 277, 288 H a p o e l Hatzair, 72 H a r e d i ( U l t r a - O r t h o d o x ) Jews, 2 8 0 281; Haredi-leumi, 282; Haredi parties, 282-284,286. See also A g u d a t

Index

Israel; Shas H a r k a b i , Yehoshatat, 55 H a s h o m e r Hatzair, 73-74 H e b r e w University, 160, 258, 260 H e r u t Party, 76, 78,133,188-191, 315. See also Likud Herzl, T h e o d o r e , 54-55, 257, 258 Hess, Moses, 54, 55,56 High Court of Justice, 125,131,134, 146. See also Supreme C o u r t Histadrut, 17, 54, 55, 6 8 - 7 8 , 1 5 8 , 1 5 9 , 160,161,164-165,310, 315-316, 332, 334; role of H a s h o m e r Hatzair in, 73-74; and World Zionist Organization, 68-75 Hityashvut Bilti-Legalit. See Illegal Settlement Holocaust, 57, 264, 301-303 IDF. See Zahal IDI. See Israel D e m o c r a c y Institute Illegal D e f e n s e , 179,191 Illegal Immigration, 179,191 Illegal Settlement, 179,191 Illegalism, 147; of elites, 1 1 - 1 2 , 1 7 5 193, 262; functional, 175,177-180; latent, 175-176,180-184; manifest, 176,184-187; in Yishuv, 179 Intifada, 13, 58-59, 86,203,222-223, 224, 225, 229-230, 231, 232, 235-236, 238-239, 282, 327, 333, 344, 345, 353, 354, 355 Irgun, 182,188 Islamic M o v e m e n t , 332 Israel D e m o c r a c y Institute, ix, x, xiii, xiv, xvi, 363,364, 368, 369; Political R e f o r m P r o g r a m , xi-xvi, 362; International F o r u m on Electoral Reform, xi, 364 Israel D e f e n s e Force. See Zahal Israeli A r a b s , 105,348, 354-355; civil liberties of, 327-328; discrimination against, 327-330,336; as a national minority, 330-332, 336; as a "fifth column," 344-345, 354; in politics, 332-334, 336; and political action,

Index 211-213 Israeli Communist Party (Maky), 133, 137 Jabotinsky, Vladimir Zeev, 55,77,142 Jewish Agency, 153,159,325,328 Jewish National Fund, 325,328 Joseph, Bernard, 128-129,130 Judges Law, 129,133,134 Judicial Restraint, 141,142,144 Kach Party, 85, Kahane, Meir, 85,143,293-294 Katzenelson, Berl, 142,179 Kiryat Arba, 2300 Kol Ha'am vs. Minister of Interior, 10,126,133-134,137,138,142 Kubersky Commission (1985), 166 Kupat Cholim, 161 Labor Party, 3,8, 52, 53, 55, 69, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 97,159,164,174-175, 203 (Table), 240, 241-242,243, 247, 248,282, 283,285,315,319-320,322, 333,351,368; and discrimination against Oriental Jews, 188; and 1977 elections, 186-187; and 1992 elections, xiii, 59,147; in national unity government, 161; and reform, 2, 85, 88, 362, 363; scandals in, 179. See also Mapai Landau, Moshe, 126,138,140,142, 143 Lavon Affair, 184-185 Law of Government Companies, 159 Law of Return, 284 Lebanese War. See Operation Peace for the Galilee Lehi (Stern Gang), 131,182 Libai, David, 120-121 Liberal Democracy, 1,6,12,14-15, 68-69,79,265-266,270,352 Liberal Party, 164,188,315 Likud Party, xiii, 3,8,55,59,84,85, 86,87,92,93,175,187-189,203 (Table), 240,256,258,262,270,282,

381 285,310,315,322-323; "Mapaization" of, 187-191; and reform, 2 Likud-Labor Alliance. See National Unity Government Local Government, xiii-xiv Lynn, Uriel, 120 Maky. See Israeli Communist Party Mamlachtiut (statism), 49,55, 89,163, 176,180-184,294,298-299,304 Mapai, 7,11,69,72-78, 84, 86, 89, 130, 315; and Lavon Affair, 185; and World Zionist Organization, 72-75, 77-78. See also Labor Party Mapam, 89, 92,130, 240, 315 Meir, Golda, 181,182,185,187 Meretz Party, 59, 86 Mitterrand, Francois, 97 Moledet Party, 86,240,322 Namir, Mordechai, 181 National Religious Party, 74,283,285, 322 National Unity Government (19841990), 3, 86-87,89,113,154,161, 176,187-189,190, 202,203 (Table), 204,283,285 NRP. See National Religious Party Operation Peace for the Galilee, 86 Opposition Parties, role of. See Political Parties Oriental Jews, 244 (Table), 245,246 (table), 248,277,278; and conflict with Ashkenazim, 17,18-19, 296, 316-325, 335,336-338; Labor Party discrimination of, 188 Oz, Amos, 59 Palestine Liberation Organization, 13,59,97,143,190,327,328,329 Palestinian Arabs, 6,13,18,130,145146; and Israel, 235-236; refugee problem, 264-265 Peres, Shimon, 97,181,182,190,347 Perestroika, 164

Index

382 Platto-Sharon Party, 85 PLO. See Palestine Liberation Organization Political Appointments, 155-159 Political Corruption, 32-33 Political Parties, anti-system, 76-77; dominant party system, 75-78,86, opposition parties, 78-79 Primary Elections, 2,85, 88,213 Privatization, 164—167 Progressive Arab Movement, 326 Progressive Party for Peace, 144,240, 326,327,332,333 Proportional Representation, xii, 8,9, 10-11, 34-35, 84, 88-89, 90, 91,110, 115-116,119,122, 362, 363 Public Protest, 199-216 Rabin, Yitzhak, 146,190,368 RAFI Party, 89 Ratz Party. See Citizens' Rights Movement Reagan, Ronald, 156,164 Referendum, 8,100-103 Reform; "age of," ix-xiii, xvi, 2,19, 193-196; of political system, x, xii— xvi, 31,107,118-122,213-216,361373; constitutional, 193-194; economic, 163-168; electoral, xiixiii, 7-9,19,88-105,214,361-367, 372-373; and Labor Party, 2,362, 363; and Likud, 2; of local government, xiii-xiv. See also Direct Election of Prime Minister Revisionist Party, 76-78. See also Herat Revisionist Zionism, 6,322,338 Rozen, Pinhas, 128,129 Rubinstein, Amnon, 120,147 Sadat, Anwar, 59 Sanbar Commission (1980), 166 Sapir, Pinhas, 176,185-186,187 Security Issues, 346-349 Shakdiel, Lea, 144 Shalit Case. See "Who Is a Jew?"

Issue Shamgar, Meir, 127,142,143,144, 145,146 Shamir, Yitzhak, 86,97,262,278, and Shin Bet Affair, 173-174,190 Sharon, Ariel, 278 Shas Party, 59,282, 284,286, 322. See also Haredi, parties Shin Bet Affair, 144-145,173-175, 190 Shinui Party, 240 Sick Fund. See Kupat Cholim Six Day War, 13,54,79,140,141,222, 258,260 Socialist Zionism, 6,66,257 Solel Boneh Construction Company, 161 State Comptroller, 159-160,161 State Service Law (1959), 157-158 Statism. See Mamlachtiut Stern Gang. See Lehi Supreme Court, xv, 1, 9-10,125-148, 327,370; and Ben-Gurion, 183; and Declaration of Independence, 136137,138-139; and Knesset, 128-129; and national security, 135-136,138; and territories, 145-146. See also High Court of Justice Survivalism, 296-297,298,300-303, 304 Techin Party, 240 Tel Hai Myth, 52-53 Thatcher, Margaret, 164 Trumpeldor, Yoseph, 52-53 Tsiddon, Yoash, 120 Tsomet Party, 240 Ultra-Orthodox Jews. See Haredi Jews United Nations (UN), 183,346; Partition Plan (1947), 183 Wadi Salib Riots (1959), 324 War of Attrition, 141 War of Independence, 182,344

Index

Warren Court (United States), 141142,146 Weizman, Chaim, 257,258 Weizman, Ezer, 97 Westminster Model. See Electoral System, Britain White Paper, 179 "Who Is a Jew?" Issue, 139-141, 284285 Women's Equal Rights Law (1951), 130 World Zionist Organization, 68,70, 77,159,160; and Hashomer Hatzair, 74-75; and Histadrut, 68-75; and

383 Mapai, 72-75,77-78; and Revisionist Party, 76-78 WZO. See World Zionist Organization Yadin, Yigal, 55,88,187 Yishuv (Jewish Community in Palestine), 7,47,48,49,53,83,175,179, 180, 257, 324 Yom Kippur War, 65,104,141 Zahal (Israel Defense Force), 53-54, 181,343,354,355 Zamir, Yitzhak, 173-174

About the Israel Democracy Institute

The Israel Democracy Institute is the first pro-active, policy-oriented think tank in Israel. It has undertaken to provide the best possible professional assistance to law- and decisionmakers in Israel, providing them with the kinds of services that are rendered by think tanks, the Congressional Research Service, and congressional aides in the United States. Israel's brief experience with regard to responsibility toward political sovereignty and direct participation in the political realm has been described in many ways. This young and crystallizing sovereignty is fostering the variegated facets of its nation-state, while existing continuously in the eye of the storm—in its ongoing struggle for survival, in its efforts to absorb new immigrants, in trying to break through the walls of its isolated economy. It is within this context that theoreticians in the academic world are frustrated as they are distanced from the ongoing hectic pace of decisionmaking among politicians. It is also within this context that the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) has endeavored to pioneer the establishment of practical and tangible means to bridge the gap between the world of knowledge and the practice of politics. IDI programs focus on political and economic reforms, the need to restructure the political system in Israel being a given. IDI research fellows work on options and recommendations to democratize political parties, reform the relationship between central and local governments, and reform the electoral system, as well as on a series of reforms in the politicaleconomic complex. Political and economic reforms are supported by the Institute's computerized information center, which provides lawmakers with a comparative perspective. A variety of "extra-curricular" activities for the members of the Knesset complements the other two programs. Israel Democracy Institute P.O. Box 4702 Jerusalem, Israel 91040 Tel: 02-818244 Fax: 02-635319 384

About the Book

Since the crises of coalition rule and the onset of the intifada in the late 1980s, Israel has been experiencing a growing sense of frustration with its political institutions, which have hardly changed since the Jewish state was founded almost half a century ago. Although Israel remains a democracy—no small achievement given the extraordinary challenges it has had to confront—it has been paying a heavy price for the stresses and shortcomings of its political system. In this timely volume, leading experts on Israeli politics, government, and society trace the origins of democracy in Israel and the multiple sources of stress that have been eroding its quality and culture. Chapters address the politics of protest, the behavior of elites, trends in public attitudes, the perfonnance of the Supreme Court, the roles of civil society, education, religion, social cleavages, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the electoral system, and alternatives for reform of Israel's democratic institutions While the editors see many causes for concern, they argue that Israel has now entered an "Age of Reform" that has already introduced significant innovations. Continued institutional reform, including further electoral reform and the completion of a constitution, could, they argue, significantly enhance the vitality and effectiveness of democracy in Israel.

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