The Elections In Israel 1988

Forty years after becoming an independent state, Israel is still involved in deadly strife with many of its Arab neighbors and with the Palestinians under its military control. The protracted Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most fundamental features of the Israeli experience; it overshadows economic and social decisions, and often sets the poli

As the momentum toward peace in the Middle East surges and wanes, the intensity of politics in Israel takes on added relevance. There can be little doubt that the historic Israel-PLO peace accord could not have occurred were it not for the turnabout elections of 1992. This volume, the seventh in a series begun in 1969, carries on the tradition of offering in-depth analyses of the major issues, actors, and parties involved in Israeli politics. Leading social scientists from Israeli and North American universities and research institutes, using different methods and coming from diverse intellectual traditions, address questions such as whether the elections were a referendum on the return of the Territories; what roles the PLO and the United States played in the election results; how technological changes in political communications, packaging of candidates, and opinion polls affected the results; what contributions such groups as women, Arabs, and members of various religions made to the change in government; and whether the political reforms instituted before the elections resulted from changes in the mood of the electorate or brought about changes in Israel's policy.

Leading social scientists from Israeli and American universities, using different methods and representing diverse intellectual traditions, address the precedent-setting events of Israel's 1996 elections. The contributors discuss the meaning of collective identity, the role of religion and nationalism in modern Israel, the political behavior of Israeli Arabs, the secrets of success of the immigrant party. Also discussed are issues such as the impact of the direct election law on party organization, primaries and coalition-formation calculations, the repeated electoral failure of Shimon Peres, and the role of the media in the election campaign. The 1996 elections in Israel represented a "first" in Israeli politics in many ways. For the first time Israelis directly elected their prime minister and, in simultaneous but separate elections, they elected their 120-member Knesset (parliament). Also, it was the first time that elections were held after the mutual recognition of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization following the Oslo accords and it was the first election held after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rubin. The political parties made widespread use of primaries in 1996, and hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union cast their first ballots. The large support for a party supported by former-Soviet immigrants highlighted the emergence of sectarian interests. This was also expressed in the surge for the two Arab parties from five seats in 1992 to nine seats in 1996, and for the three Jewish religious parties whose combined representation grew from 16 to 23 seats.

On November 1, 1988, more than 2.5 million Israeli voters went to the polls to elect the country's twelfth Knesset. The election came after four years of a national unity government that many thought would collapse soon after its installation in September 1984. Because the two major parties around whom the grand coalition was built - Labor and Likud - had nowhere to go, the government survived the full term. In both major parties, the 1988 elections were hotly contested and many new faces appeared. The big news of the election was the gain in strength of the religious right, the ultra-Orthodox parties, a trend not predicted by a single election analyst. In many ways, the 1988 Knesset elections indicated a transformed Israeli polity, but not a revolutionized one. Who's the Boss in Israel is the first book on Israeli politics to cover an entire cycle of Israeli elections - for the Knesset, local authorities, and the Histadrut - which occurred over a fifteen-month span beginning in November 1988. Thirteen world-class scholars present a consistent, clear, and convincing picture of one of Israel's more puzzling elections. Their essays focus on the major political parties; campaign issues, such as foreign policy, war and peace, and party financing; and municipal and labor union elections. Included is first-hand data not easily found elsewhere, and the chapters on the local and Histadrut elections add a dimension that is not well known but helps in understanding electoral behavior. This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive discussion of the Israeli electoral scene as it existed prior to the 1988 elections and the present state and course of Israeli politics.

Social scientist from Israel and American universities and research Institutes address questions discussed in the 1992 elections.