With the help of a PowerPoint presentation created by Doron Zehavi — husband of Amit Yaniv-Zehavi, the emissary (shlichah) from Israel to Milwaukee working in the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center — The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle offers this guide to the Israeli national elections scheduled for Tuesday, March 17.
Like the U.S. national government, Israel’s national government has separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers; but it works there in a different way.
The legislative power is in the Knesset (Assembly or Parliament), containing 120 members elected by Israel’s general public in secret ballot.
The executive is authorized by the Knesset, not elected separately. Its prime minister is usually the head of the political party that receives the largest number of Knesset representatives elected.
The judiciary, Israel’s court system, is elected by a committee that includes members of the Knesset and government ministers.
In Israel, the entire country constitutes a single electoral constituency. Moreover, voters choose parties rather than individual candidates.
The election day, Yom HaBocher, is a national holiday. Every citizen 18 and older who lives in Israel or represents Israel in an official capacity abroad can vote.
Each party receives a number of seats proportional to its percentage of the total votes — if that percentage is larger than 3.2 percent. Parties receiving less than that percentage of votes are purged out.
At present, 12 parties are represented in the Knesset. A coalition of parties eventually forms the executive part of the Israel government.
Israel’s president orders the candidate who has “the best odds” to form a governing coalition of at least 61 Knesset members. Once this prime minister candidate forms the coalition, it is approved by the Knesset.
In the 2013 elections, four parties of the 12 elected formed the governing coalition, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party.
These coalitions are often very fragile, as the members of the parties often have very different national, religious, security and economic views.
Knesset members belonging to and opposed to the governing coalition can vote to end the government before its four-year term is complete and call for new elections — which is what happened this past December.
Zehavi classifies the present parties as right, left or center.
• Left: Mahaneh Zioni, Meretz and United Arab List.
• Center: Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Shas and United Torah Judaism.
Some of these parties constitute coalitions of smaller parties. Moreover, more parties than these may be running in the coming elections.
Loading ...