Analysis and Comments on 19th Knesset Coalition

Analysis of the Parties in the Knesset
		17th Knesset (2006)	18th Knesset  (2009)	19th Knesset (2013)
Party Orientation	Party / List	Actual	Actual	Actual
Fluid Parties Sub-totals	Shinui Yesh Atid Pensioners Be’Aliya Beitenu Meretz / Greens Am Ehad Brit Leumi	-   -   7   - 11   5   -   - --- 23	-   -   -   - 15   3   -   - --- 18	- 19   -   -   -   6   -   - --- 25
Solid central parties Sub-totals	Labour Likud Kadima Hatnuah	19 12 29   - --- 60	13 27 28   - --- 68	15 31   2   6 --- 54
Solid right parties Sub-totals	Shas Torah Judaism Mafdal Jewish Home Echud Leumi.	12   6   9   -   - --- 27	11   5   4   3   - --- 23	11   7   - 12   - --- 30
Solid Arab parties Sub-totals	Hadash United Arab Balad	3   4   3 --- 10	4   4   3 --- 11	4   4   3 --- 11
Total		120	120	120

In order to point out some future trends and draw some conclusions from the above table the parties are grouped into four categories. The results for 18th Knesset were  analysed  after the inauguration of Netanyahu's Coalition in March 2009 and published at the time in:

Chapter 13 of Total Representation by Aharon Nathan and Prof Ivo Skrabalo ERS Publications, London 2009. (Paper Back in AMAZON at £11.99). It was prepared with full participation of the late Professor Gideon Doron.

Here the analysis is carried forward to review the formation of Netanyahu's new coalition. Being in or out of the Coalition can impact on the future of the Parties.

The assumption by the Parties  and the public that Netanyahu would lead the new Government distorted the results and confused everyone, the electorate and the various Party leaders. It also blinded Likud senior members during  the campaign for the  2013 Elections who behaved with arrogance as if success is in the pocket. Despite this we have to keep a sense of proportion.  Yesh Atid 19 + Hatnuah 6 + Kadima 2 = 27 i.e. one less than Kadima in 2009 with 28 seats. However Lapid managed to get out with his 19 more than Tsipi Livni could  manage with her 28. Our electoral System and our politics are failing everybody. A change is very  long  overdue  before we get into another debacle of 2 Ballots directly or worse through the back door destroy our parliamentary democracy by raising the threshold (Achuz Chasima) and granting presidential power to the prime minister.

Netanyahu: The moment the results were announced Netanyahu made a simple calculation and moved quickly. With Shas and Yahadut Ha-Torah he had 49.  Lapid on the other hand with Benet, Tsipi, Shelli, Zhava and Mofaz theoretically could  secure 60 and the Arab Parties would  be only too ready to be neutral.  49 versus 60 could have left Netanyahu and Likud out in the cold. He could not have met Benet without losing his only cartd/weapon of Shas/Yahdut left in his hand to threaten with. The key was Lapid not Benet. And with the former  playing hard to get and with Shelly even harder, Netanyahu had no choice but to act swiftly in secret away from the press cameras. By treating  Tsipi generously (a forced marriage of convenience) he theoretically secured 55 thus closing the door in the face of  Lapid. Netanyahu from his point of view  used wisely the few cards left to him. He actually managed to save his  premiership and his Likud Party. And with  the same brilliant stroke in  appointing Tsipi he signalled to Obama and Abu Mazen that he  was now ready for real dialogues especially as the Feiglin/Settlers faction within Likud proved an obstacle in the past and a liability in the elections. Moreover Netanyahu through  facilitating a ministerial  appointment for  Amir Peretz rendered both Labour and Hatnuah split down the middle and weakened both. All very clever  moves! However this weakening  may now open the door for Lapid to become the Centre-Left alternative to Likud in the next elections may be sooner than envisaged. Lieberman, the most likely successor to the  Likud  Leadership if he survives his Court Case must take notice.

Shelly Yechimovitch made all the mistakes in the book from the moment she was elected Labour  leader. She played the self-righteous in a field of sinners. She did not learn from Tsipi Livni's bitter experience  when in the last Knesset  she allowed Netanyahu to manoeuvre her into  the  Opposition. No credible aspiring Party leader should declare during the election that he/she is campaigning to be in the Opposition. By sidelining Amir Peretz and Mitzna she showed political immaturity and her  defeatist stance helped Lapid to project himself as the sole  alternative to Netanyahu's dominance without presuming to be next prime minister. Shelly did and compounded her defeat by refusing to join the New Government as the senior partner and secure the Finance Ministry. She led herself and Labour to a precarious and uncertain future existence as a leading party. Ben Gurion must be turning in his grave!

Tsipi Livni : By accepting Netanyahu's olive branch  with alacrity she kept her hope of  leading, may be with Olmert,  the Centre-Left against Lapid in time to come. 

Mofaz before, during and  after the elections managed to snatch defeat  time and time again from the jaws of victory despite the fact that he had all the right policies, on Palestine, electoral reform and on the inclusion of the religious in the army. Mofaz by retiring from politics and the Knesset could help what is left of Kadima in a  future possible survival if Olmert decides eventually to return to his old Party.  

  

Fluid Parties

Over the years Fluid parties seem to come and go. Each starts with a flourish and a fanfare, only to disappear soon afterwards. They are mainly secular in outlook and centred in and around Tel Aviv. The future fluid parties and their chances will depend which direction they go left or right. Apart from Beitenu, their voters have supported Kadima in the 2009 elections. Beitenu is the exception. Its voters, backed by Russian immigrants, have more in common with Likud. As predicted in my review  way back in 2009 its members gravitated  towards Likud  and  merged with Likud just before the elections in  2013. In view of the election  results it is unlikely that this merger will revert back to its two  constituents. Lieberman, the sworn enemy of Shas, is now inseparable from Netanyahu and Likud constituting together the Centre Right in Israeli politics.  

Meretz which lost seats to Kadima in 2009 has regained its strength to 6 seats thanks to a clear and sincere leadership of Zahava Gal-On. However without the big guns of Sarid, Beilin and Ran Cohen it cannot continue its orphan situation.  It will have to  go back to its original  home and unite with Labour to their mutual benefit and may even save Labour from extinction if the Histadrut supports this union.   

Yesh Atid, despite its protestations, is like Shinui  a secular party centred in and around Tel-Aviv. It rode on a temporary tide of the social protests of the Rothschild Bld., and  the disintegration of Kadima and drew voters from the same sector. To stay as a leading party it has to replace one of the two centre parties, left of centre Labour or right of centre Likud. With Beitenu within Likud and having shed the liabilities of Shas/Torah, Likud has established itself as the Right-Centre Party in Israel. For Yesh Atid to replace the traditional Labour it has to move to the left. It is then that the two main Parties will model themselves on the Two Party Pattern in the West in UK, France or  USA. The adoption of YESH Yitsug Shalem Electoral System(TR Total Representation) will ensure the election of two big parties as simulations have shown. This in turn will bring  stability to the government and to the body politics of Israel.

                                            

       

Solid Centre Parties

The Solid parties are the old Zionist parties with ideologies and outlooks inherited from the two main streams of Zionism, led in Israel by the two flag-bearers Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin. Labour and Likud were well defined. In 2009 it was Kadima that was left undecided after the  elections for the 18^th Knesset. Which turn was it going to take?  

Prime Minister Sharon set up Kadima to replace Likud. He then added a sprinkling of Labour leaders to facilitate his then-impending evacuation of Gaza, and in order to pave the road for peace with the Palestinians. He looked upon Tsipi Livni as a potential successor in the distant future. So the Kadima -- call it New Likud under Sharon – that he created was a right-of-centre party. Sharon untimely withdrawal from politics was followed  by an  internal  strife between Tsipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, and later on at the party primaries between her and Shaul Mofaz – a perceived hawk who was brought into Likud by Sharon.  This had created a new situation that  forced Kadima to fight to replace Labour as a new left-of-centre party. It had  no chance of  replacing Likud after 2009 as the latter had already consolidated its position in the Knesset, in the government and in the country at large as the right–of-centre party. The big question was  which party will lead the left-of-centre in the country. The fight for this position was going to be life or death for one or the other of Kadima or Labour. Unexpectedly it was Kadima not Labour that disintegrated at the end  leaving Labour in command of the Centre-Left  backed by the Histadrut. 

Towards the 2013 elections the utter failure  of Labour, Kadima and Hatuah to unite and the untimely defection of Amir Peretz to Hatnuah resulted in Netanyahu's Likud-Beitenu staying ahead to produce the biggest faction in the new Knesset with markedly reduced majority. None of the leaders of the former  three parties could project a credible Prime Minister's image. Moreover their collective failure to unite left their voters  demoralized and disorientated leaving a gaping space for Yesh-Atid to forge ahead. This result created a tug of war between the two sides of the Centre-Left. Labour unwisely, declared that it would lead the Opposition to Netanyahu. But with  Yesh Atid  joining the government together with Hatnuah (with Tsipi and Amir Peretz) Labour is left vulnerable. In the new situation it is most likely that Lapid's Yesh Atid will replace  Labour as the future Centre-Left Party.

 

Jewish Religious Parties

The Jewish religious parties, with the exception of Torah Judaism, were  weakening as their supporters were slowly moving to the main stream  parties. 

Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) halted this trend amongst the Jewish ultra-nationalist religious factions by recruiting seculars and appealing to the traditionalists. Its leader Naphtali Benet was the biggest winner of the elections by unexpectedly allying  himself to Lapid.  Will his success  strengthen his party and revive the glorious days of Hapoel Hamizrachi of the 50s!? 

Shas made a fatal mistake. While Benet allied himself with Lapid it allied itself with Yahadut Ha-Torah. Even if Lapid could have tolerated Shas at  least as a Sephardic and socialist partner he could not swallow its sandwich with Charedic Yahadut HaTorah. Shas  has two sides to it. On the one hand it is religious, the way Arab Jews generally were in their diasporas. Unlike in the West a Jew could not be both an Arab and a Jew at the same time the way English, French or German could. But in Israel  things are moving on.  Without the  spiritual leadership of  Rabbi Ovadiah Yossef it is difficult to predict the fortunes of Shas as a Sephardic Party.  It has another side to it, the welfare and socialist. It is seen by many poor in the Sephardic communities  as protector of their welfare  But for how long? Unless it emphasises its social side and accept traditional but not strictly religious Jews along the lines of Benet, it will continue to weaken. The emergence of Jewish Home in this context and the efforts of  Derii inside and Amsalem outside Shas in the same direction will hasten the disintegration of Shas especially now that it was left out of the Coalition. Sooner or later membership of both these Parties will merge officially or through movements of members' allegiances. This applies   especially to Shas voters as the label of Sephardi does not appeal anymore to the second and third generations of its oriental  immigrant populations  themselves.

That leaves Torah Judaism as the only true religious party drawing more and more support from the young generation of  true Ashkenazi Charedim helped by increasing birth rate in those  communities and  near 100% voters' participation. It will continue to draw financial and moral support from its diasporas in America and elsewhere.

Arab Parties

The power of the Arab vote has to be taken together with the Druze vote. The Druze have secured four seats out of 120 in the 18th Knesset, far beyond the proportion of their numbers in Israel’s total population which is only 1.6 per cent. The reason for this is that they serve in the army and have no problem swearing allegiance to the state. Their communities are used to this in Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, while the Muslim and Christian Arabs in Israel distance themselves from the  Jewish parties, the Druze don’t have any problem with that. They claim Jethro, Moses' father-in-law to be  their exclusive Prophet!  Being a minority everywhere they learnt to  run with the rabbits and hunt with the hounds. Things may change now with the increasing anti-Israel belligerence of the Muslim MKs and the encouraging spirit of the Arab Spring. The chasm between Arab MKs and their Jewish counterparts is widening. This chasm will draw the young Druze towards the Arab Muslims. It is a worrying trend. 

The Arab, mainly Muslim parties,  are becoming stronger as independent groupings. That is fine and is what democracy is all about. The problems will arise when Islamist elements infiltrate and take over one of them, which would sharpen the conflict with the main Jewish Zionist parties and could lead to conflict and even violence. Political leaders in Israel need to wake up in time to bring about internal reconciliation and pave the way to integrate all their Arab citizens into the social and political fabric of the country. The introduction of YESH/TR can help in that direction.

Meantime the three Arab parties stood still in 2013. The elections brought no change in their fortunes. However few undercurrent trends could be detected during their campaigns. On the one hand Daam an urban Arab/Jewish voice that called for Arab-Jewish integration in Jaffa was  completely ignored by all sides. Hadash faired no better. That left the field wide open for the militant extremists headed by Balad and Hanin Zuabi. Unfortunately that will be the voice which will unfairly  project the allegiance of the Arabs of Israel in the present Knesset and impact on the image of Israel abroad.  A reform of the electoral system based on 60/60 will strengthen and these Parties. A threshold of more than the present 2% will unify the Arab Parties and merge them into one big party that can theoretically secure  more than  20 seats in future  Knessets.   

TR YESH 90/30 can avoid this danger and bring real transformation  by integrating the Arab citizens and their representatives within the main stream parties. 

YESH avoids the necessity of corrupt primaries and  simplifies the  elections of Party Leaders. It  bestows representation for all voters in the peripheries and ensures the accountability of MKs and Parties. It is simple to introduce and cheap to operate. It creates two big parties and avoids the need to leave the country without effective government 6 months before and 45 days after each elections. Moreover it can save at least one billion Shekel out of the 1.5 Israel Treasury has to dish out. It will be irresponsible for all the Parties in Israel not to study its details seriously.

Aharon Nathan, 

London, 16th March 2013

Representation in Democracy (AV Modified is what the Con-Lib coalition needs)

AV Modified is what the Con-Lib coalition needs in order to provide what the Lib-Dems require and what both Conservative and Labour MPs can be persuaded to swallow.

1. The Con-Lib coalition is a wonderful expression of the character of our political traditions of compromise and practicality. We should all welcome it as a step on the road to re-enforce our representative democracy which has been smothered under adversarial ideologies fostered by the FPTP System. This Coalition-Government, unlike other governments for decades, is a majority government, elected and backed by 59 % of the voters. However it is based on a freak result that is unlikely to recur while FPTP rules in its present form. The adoption of AV will not only increase democratic representation but it could bring about much wider participation of the electorate from the recent low levels of around 60 per cent.

2. Most important of all is that together with Labour that has pledged to back a referendum on AV in its Manifesto, the proportion of the actual voters of the last election backing AV stands at 88 per cent representing the votes of the three big Parties. Therefore a referendum on AV becomes mandatory in this Parliament. The terms of this referendum and how it will operate however should be explained clearly in a simple and unambiguous manner to the public leaving no place for confusion. Only a single YES or NO answer to one clear question can be effective and can induce a majority of the public to participate.

3. A big advantage of AV over other systems is its flexibility; this makes it possible to introduce it gently without going against the grain of our traditions where the relationship of the MP to his/her constituents is sacrosanct. The British balk at revolution. AV provides the evolution which we all prefer. AV retains the FPTP System with its backbone of the Constituency. It simply modifies the FPTP slightly without drastically changing its essence. In addition if AV is applied wisely it can strengthen rather than weaken the status of Parliament and Parliamentarians, lying so low lately in the eyes of the public. Moreover by keeping the FPTP system intact, AV can preserve the stability of future governments. The doors for Hang Parliament is not open ajar.

4. For all these reasons it is imperative that while introducing AV we are careful not to disturb the way voters have been accustomed over the generations to cast their votes. Voters are used to vote with one X for one individual candidate that belongs to a party. Even an independent is deemed by the constituent voters as belonging to a one-member party. Changing that will result in even less participation as indeed happened at least in England both in the elections for the European Parliament and the London Mayor. If you ask a voter who represents him/her in either institution they will tell you which party but very rarely can an actual voter point out which elected individual represents him/her.

5. Some MPs and certainly many Conservatives consider AV in its present form as giving two votes to those who sticks to the traditional one ballot to choose one individual candidate. So how to proceed? The answer is simplicity itself. Instead of confusing the busy citizen with a list of candidates to choose one and grade the others in a long list of preferences the voter can choose his/her preferred candidate and his/her party as is the case today. If that specific vote doe not succeed in electing the Constituency MP “CMP” in a simple majority that vote goes to that candidate’s party and added together with such other unsuccessful votes nationwide to elect a limited number of Party MPs “PMP”. Say 100 PMPs or a 20 per cent of the present total MPs.

6. By substituting the long lists of graded preferences and passing on the unsuccessful votes to the candidate’s party, this version of AV gives some weight to the votes of unsuccessful candidates and brings fairness into the electoral process. AV in this modified version preserves the Westminster model of FPTP for the traditionalists and infuses it with a dose of PR to satisfy the innovators ensuring a greater representation. Thus AV in this way carries electoral reform without an upheaval.

7. This modification of AV is borrowed from another electoral system called TR Total Representation. (A brief summary of it can be found on : http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=154 which is the Electoral Reform Society website. I urge all those interested in electoral reform to read it.) This modification of AV renders it more effective and useful if we really are serious at reforming our present system of FPTP.

8. The Lib-Dems’ zero option of “PR or nothing” kept them for decades as a protest party. And so they would have stayed after the recent elections. It is the failure of the Conservatives to gain those extra 20 seats that gave an unexpected opportunity to Nick Clegg. To his credit he exploited it to the full. Now a door is opened both to improve the Lib-Dems’s present and future influence in politics while reforming the electoral system for his party’s sake as well as that of the country. Politics is the art of the possible. A bird in hand is better than five on the tree. If the Lib-Dems push now for this version of AV and secure a YES vote in the referendum they can at least be sure of achieving a partial reform that both big parties could reluctantly swallow while giving the Lib-Dems the non-recurring chance to double their seats in the Commons. An AV simulation of the results of the recent elections that follows using this version of AV shows just that. It is based on re-calculating the figures from the real results.

9. AV needs one ballot paper with one vote. By retaining the votes cast for the unsuccessful candidates and using them to elect Party MPs, instead of throwing them to the dust bins, it secures direct representation to every vote cast albeit with different weighting, In this way AV injects a limited dose of PR into the system without destroying it. AV accommodate both Systems of FPTP and PR Proportional Representation in a form of co-habitation.

10. This version of AV requires all candidates (including those competing in Party Lists) to start off by running in the constituencies. It dispenses with long list ballot papers which mix party allegiances and confuse the busy citizen in the voting booth.

11. The PR element of AV 2010 gives an active role and leverage to the runners-up in the constituencies by keeping their hopes alive in between elections even in “safe seats” They are given a chance to compete for a PMP seat at any General Election depending on their level of support or wait for another round at the next. Thus AV converts the rival runner-ups into vigilant watch-dogs, monitoring the incumbent MPs and guaranteeing their constant accountability.

How AV 2010 works
12. AV in both versions, is a constituency-based system. For it to work properly, constituencies need to have roughly similar number of voters each to avoid gerrymandering. This is fair and indeed what David Cameron wants. The majority of seats in parliament, say 80%, will be awarded to the winners in simple majorities of these races, just as they are under the Westminster system today.

13. So each party puts up candidates for election in the various seats. Their names appear on the ballot paper in alphabetical order and next to each name is the party he or she represents. However, these candidates also appear on their own party’s national “list” of all its candidates headed by the party leader.

14. Voters go to the polls and put a cross against their preferred local candidate. Whoever wins a simple majority of the votes becomes that Constituency’s Member of Parliament (CMP) – again, just like today.

15. From then on, the innovations begin. All the “successful” ballots drop out. So if you voted for candidate X and candidate X wins, your ballot is judged to have already secured representation. As for the “unsuccessful” ballots (for example, if you voted for candidate Y, but candidate Y did not win in your constituency) these are placed in a giant nationwide pool – and it is from these unsuccessful votes that the remaining seats (20%) are decided using the PR method and awarded to the various parties to select Party Members of Parliament (PMPs)

16. These remaining seats are allocated proportionally amongst the parties according to a quota of a minimum number of required votes per seat. This is reached by dividing the nationwide number of “unsuccessful” votes by the number of the allocated seats of PMPs. Obviously in an 80/20 FPTP/ PR as recommended here the legitimacy and the status of the PMP is assured by the fact that he/she needs often 3 to 5 times as many party voters countrywide to be elected as that needed by the CMP in the constituency.

17. Unlike in other list-based systems, the way these seats are awarded depends crucially on how the candidates performed in their constituencies. The party leader – if failed to secure a CMP seat directly–should automatically be allocated the first PMP seat secured by that Leader’s Party to avoid disrupting the party in the wake of a general election. All the other PMP seats available to each Party are awarded in priority to the highest scorers of that Party’s Candidates in the Constituencies in the early First-Past-The-Post part of the election. They are most likely also to be the strongest runners-up in their constituencies. Their number in each party depends on the number of votes nationwide that their respective parties gain. Everything therefore depends on the number of votes each potential PMP candidate and his/her party secures.

Arguments in Support of AV(2010)
- Each voter is required to cast only one ballot.
- No votes are “wasted”, with most going on to secure at least some level of representation, albeit with different weightings.
- Its PR element is relatively simple to understand and easy to operate
- All MPs would have to start off as constituency candidates, and all votes are worth fighting for even in “safe seats” because there is a potential prize also for coming second.
- It gives minority views the chance of a voice in parliament without giving them undue influence, because the system is still weighted heavily towards First-Past-The-Post.

Arguments against AV (2010)
- It creates two “classes” of MPs (CMP and PMP) However unlike in other such systems, most of the “Party” MPs would also have to score at least second in their constituencies and therefore would continue to retain a close link with the constituency waiting for the next opportunity notwithstanding the fact that they don’t serve as constituency MPs.
- The centre of the duties of the CMP is the constituency, that of the PMP is to add strength to the Party in Parliament while preparing for the next round of elections.
- All existing constituency boundaries would have to be redrawn periodically (as the case is now) but more to ensure similar and comparable sizes of the number of the electorate in all constituencies in line with the Conservatives’ thinking.

Israel Arab Conflict (Post Annapolis)

Three years post Annapolis, the solution remains the same - unilateral disengagement.

In my article of 15 Dec 2007 on Annapolis I concluded:

The leaderships of the two main protagonists of Annapolis are too weak to deliver an agreement; but of the two, it is the fragmentation of the Arab side that will eventually scupper any possible resolution.

So what is left for Israel to do when this year [2007] passes without conclusion? The answer is to be prepared to declare that it would implement withdrawal from the West Bank unilaterally along the lines and spirit of the agreement reached by president Bush and Prime Minister Sharon as embodied in their exchange of letter of 14th April 2004 and take immediate steps to implement them. The majority of Israelis, including Israeli Arabs, will support that move. And so will the electorate if a general election or referendum is called.

With Sharon sadly incapacitated it was left to Ehud Olmert to lead Kadima in a General Election. His Manifesto centred around the Peace Process. He won on that basis and therefore had a mandate, indeed an obligation to do just that. But the Lebanon War, the lack of support from Tsipi Livni and the misguided subsequent Vinograd Commission sapped all his strength. Actions and reactions by politicians and media were taken over by form of words rather than substance of contents. Olmert nevertheless battled bravely to the last minute of his tenure with tenacity and single mindedness. At the end with “et tu Brute” behaviour of Ehud Barak joining the cabal and a legal indictment hanging over his head, he was left with no choice but to leave it to Tsipi Livni to take over. She failed to form a government and led the country into another divisive general election at the end of which she failed yet again to form a government. Livni’s frontal attack on Shas paradoxically gave a golden opportunity to a defunct Likud to revive and lead the extreme Right. Sharon’s Kadima lost its Sharon’s central ground and moved to the Left. And the real victim of all this Byzantine politics was of course the peace process. So another three years passed of paralysis of the leaderships of both sides and the sufferings of their ordinary citizens

What Now?

Since then another war in Gaza; and more bereaved and more orphans on both sides. Israel’s image in the world, unjustifiably and unjustly, has been left tarnished. We are weary, the Arabs are weary and America is exasperated. We lost a big chance handed to us by President Bush and our good friend Condoleezza Rice. And that was when Binyamin Netanyahu took the wrong decision at the time by opposing, indeed sabotaging, instead of embracing Sharons’ policy of unilateral disengagement first from Gaza and then from the un-defendable parts of the West Bank. Sadly for him, and unfortunate for us, Sharon is unable any more to help guide us to see the light which could lead us to the end of a tunnel we have been stuck in since the end of the Six-Day War. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak failed separately in the past to broker peace for us. Would they jointly now achieve a breakthrough? It looks doubtful. However a new hope appears on the horizon: The Mofaz Plan. With politics paralysed as a result of a dysfunctional system of government and with Prime Minister Netanyahu tossed around by a chaotic coalition with a non existent sense of collective responsibility, he is unable to pursue a cohesive policy for peace. He is letting the Israeli media and daily events inside and outside the country buffet him and dictate his moves. Democracy, and certainly representative and participatory democracy, has become a misnomer in Israel. The Knesset is becoming the laughing stock of the Israeli public.

It is at this juncture that MK Shaul Mofaz, an ex Chief of Staff and a former Minister of Defence under Sharon, boldly went public on November 11, 2009 with his Plan. He proposed to move in two phases to a peace agreement with the Palestinians with the immediate establishment of an independent disarmed Palestinian state in the West Bank and in Gaza, preempting a possible move by the Arabs while simultaneously engaging in direct dialogue, State to State, with the Palestinians on the final status issues. He says (and his words are paraphrazed below):

I believe that a permanent Palestinian state with temporary borders and simultaneous negotiations on the core issues: borders, refugees and Jerusalem, will allow us to rebuild the trust between the two sides, and totally change the atmosphere in our region. In this process, we must have the support of the moderate Arab countries, the European countries and the leadership of the United States.

The second phase of my plan would be the implementation of the agreements reached between the two sides on the final status issues.

Before implementing final status agreements, the Palestinians must provide a clear statement about the end to demands and end to the conflict. We have to build a mechanism for potential mediation if gaps still exist between the two sides; and I call for a referendum in Israel to approve what was achieved during the negotiations on the core issues before implementing the second phase. I have full confidence that the moment the Prime Minister of Israel adopts this plan, and the moment the President of the U.S. approves of it as the right direction to move forward, we will be able to achieve an agreement.

 

And then Mofaz added remarkably that in certain conditions he would talk with Hamas and that if they are elected subsequently by the Palestinians he would have no problem in dealing with them as the legitimate government.

It is important to read his statement and interviews in full. It still needs some modifications and adjustments esprcially with regard to Gaza. But here is a policy and here is a man who can move it forward. This is the voice of Mofaz and the hand of Sharon. We better listen to this Plan coming from a statesman with impeccable credentials, integrity and authority. He reiterated since then that with neither Prime Minister Netanyahu nor the Leader of the Opposition, Tsipi Livni, following a clear declared policy he finds himself unable to support either. But he emphasised that he is prepared to support one or other or both if they come up with a clear declared policy. Naturally he favours the general lines of his Plan, but he did not say that they are set in stone.

And turning to the paralysis of the body politics in Israel that is preventing both Government and Opposition to act decisively Mofaz wisely added recently a second proviso for his support. That is a clear, well defined reform of the electoral system that could lead to a stable government and a true representative democracy.

Mofaz did not specify his position on Jerusalem wisely leaving it vague. I believe the problems of Jerusalem are not insurmountable and in this context it is folly to ignore the views of Meir Shetreet and Haim Ramon who both served under Olmert. The Arab villages around Jerusalem were never part of historic Jerusalem notwithstanding their inclusion within the Municipal Borders of the Capital today. Moreover it is important to remember that even Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph, the Spiritual Mentor of Shas Party might, when the chips are down, opt for sparing Jewish Life over adding Jewish Land when confronted with seeking a painful balance between the two. He expressed such views at the time of the evacuation of Gaza.

And finally in dealing with all this it is important not to get swept overboard by the recent episode of the meeting in the White House of President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. It will prove to be an insignificant passing cloud. Obama is a friend of Israel but he is also the President of the United States and leader of the free world. We err if we try to read into the way that meeting was conducted a sudden change of US policy. There are deep and enduring mutual interests between the two countries which have solid strategic basis. The analysis of the different sides including the US to the Arab Israeli Conflict in my article of 2007 has not altered. Geography and demography don’t change overnight. But it is important that we move swiftly to help reduce tension with our strongest ally and the best way to do that may lie in the Mofaz Plan.

Aharon Nathan, 26th March 2010

Israel: A Federation of Ghettos or a Unitary State

About the website

1. This website is a collection of essays that I have written over many years commenting on the development in Israel vis-à-vis its conflict with its Arab neighbours. My view today is that we have reached an impasse in our relations especially with the Palestinians and that only through complete separation can we rebuild cooperation and trust. The mutual hatred between them and us is so great and the wounds are so deep that it will need a long time to heal. The theme of these essays is that years of missed opportunities on both sides made it gradually impossible for us to co-exist in peace. Moreover, outside mediators, individuals and countries, far from assisting reconciliation and healing added to the divide through supporting one side or the other. Based on my intimate knowledge and experiences of Israelis and Arabs alike only a Three State, not a Two State solution, with separate states on the West Bank and Gaza, can pave the way to an enduring peace in the Holy Land and the region.

2. My feeling is that we, on the Israeli side, out of frustration have stopped thinking realistically and have withdrawn into ourselves mentally. Our preoccupation with the ups and downs of our internal political quarrels and our obsessive touchiness about what the world thinks of us and needs us to do have been dividing our people and thus making it more difficult for us to be consensual in finding new solutions to the conflict. We have to stop fighting the last war and correct the last failure to reach accommodation with our neighbours. Time and time again we have been missing opportunities because of the inability of successive governments to gather domestic support only to have to face a more difficult next round. Moreover this internal division is causing confusion amongst friends and foes of Israel worldwide. They don’t know anymore who speaks for Israel in Israel.

3. Israel started as the outward looking embodiment of the Zionist Movement of emancipation and slowly drifted back into an inward looking country reviving in its soul the very Ghetto concept that it sacrificed so much to shake off. And even worse than that. The shettetel village mentality so much derided by the early Zionists seems to have been revived in the psyche of the ruling elite in Israel today. Our people are divided politically and socially into ghetto-groups not only in ideology and political orientation but even in the way they think, in the way they reflect on events. The premises on which these processes are built are so divergent that the more they probe the more they find themselves torn apart. In my continuous dialogue over the years as a committed Zionist with my fellow Israelis, I stressed our need to face realities and not hide behind slogans and wishful thinking. Ideas and proposals that looked outlandish at the time turned out subsequently to be right leaving Israel always behind the Curve of Peace that we all yearned to achieve. I believe that so will it be with my idea for a three-state instead of two-state solution that I have been advocating for so long.

4. As a keen observer I attempt to see events with the finality they lead up to. When one freely and dispassionately projects events against the objective realities on the ground it is not difficult to foresee their eventual consequences. And when circumstances change it is important to modify and adapt these proposals rather than to wring the hand and bury the head in the sand. My views and forebodings although voiced since the day of my discharge from active military service after the 6-Day War were recorded on a Website at least from 2001 onwards. Unfortunately when my Israeli friends read my pleading they respond politely to what to them looks, coming from an Israeli now living abroad, as the views of someone they perceive to be out of touch. But it is because I live abroad and detached that I can see things clearer.

5. While tracing our own mistakes over the years it is as important to emphasise that the responsibility for these missed opportunities is shared and is as much caused by the actions and lack of initiative by our Arab neighbours. While their boycotts and hostilities served to strengthen us, their disengagement from us served to weaken them and almost to lull them into a state of inertia and slumber activated only by outbursts of violence against Israel and just as often against each other. They also have closed their minds to positive compromises that are as much in their interest to contribute towards a peaceful co-existence. And yet when Jews and Arabs meet away from the glare of cameras and public media both sides quickly realise that what unites them in common interest in the region outweighs what keeps them apart through slogans and public rhetoric. Today the acute and violent divisions and fraternal in-fighting amongst the Arabs stand in their way to help themselves let alone help our common objectives. There are many Palestinians as well as Israelis who could see the truth of the arguments in this book but they are over-ruled and overwhelmed by their politicians and their hostile public and media. When I have the occasion to talk to Arab friends inside Israel or abroad they often tend to react positively and certainly more rationally to my analysis than my Jewish friends whose emotions get the better of their cool judgement.

6. Israel’s conflict with the Arabs started long before the birth of the State. It persisted as such till the Yom Kippur War of 1973. From that time onwards and specifically after the Peace Treaty with Egypt and Jordan the conflict was re-focussed and was converted into a narrower Israel-Palestinian Conflict. The Arab countries conveniently washed their hands of their responsibilities to their Palestinian brothers for their joined debacles of the 1948 War and 6-Day War and left them to their own devices. Instead, the Israel Issue became a tool in their leaders’ hands used to suppress and divert attention from their internal dissents and protests. Israel is portrayed as the Satan, the danger, the threat. The fact though, and the Arabs know it very well, is that the tiny strip of land that is Israel and even the total number of Jews worldwide can never constitute a threat to the Arabs when matched in comparison with their huge lands, populations and resources. Far from the Arabs in Israel who are portrayed as being a minority, it is Israel’s Jewish population which is in fact a tiny minority within the Arab World surrounding them. And this situation cannot change in the future owing to the fact that Jews were never proselytising both as a nation and as a religion. The real crisis today is that the leaders of the outdated regimes of the Arab Sunni countries suddenly woke up to dangers from within to their class, wealth and privileges. These come not from Israel but from new movements of militant nationalism and a bigger danger of radicalised religion inside and the threat of Shiite Iran from outside. The Nasserite secular elite in Egypt, the ruling Bedouin Royalty of Jordan and the sectarian Alawyte dictatorship of Syria could see that the disgruntled Palestinians are becoming the new real threat to their regimes and their stability. That is why they have been distancing themselves from them. However they found it convenient to fan the flame, to perpetuate the Bogey, in order to blame everything on Israel away from these internal problems. Instead of keeping the responsibility for Gaza in Egypt’s hands and that of the West Bank in Jordan’s, we foolishly swallowed this new narrow positioning of the Conflict and acquiesced without questioning its consequences. It is Israel’s fault that it did not take its opportunity to insist on keeping Egypt and Jordan involved with the disastrous results which are unfolding today.

7. Along the borders of Egypt and Jordan Israel became unwittingly the policeman preventing safe passage and infiltration of Palestinians slowly into other Arab countries and beyond creating a huge pressure cooker waiting to explode. Thus Israel has been protecting the Arab regimes from “contaminating” their local restive population by the enlightened Palestinians who learnt the benefits of democracy from their Israeli occupiers. This new vested interest in keeping the Conflict on the boil is becoming dominant not only in Egypt and Jordan but also in other Arab countries and recently in the hands of Ahmedi-Nejad in Iran who carried it to the ridiculous denial not just of medieval or biblical myths but of the undisputed recent history of the Holocaust. It is tragic that these same countries forget that they have themselves aggravated the plight of the Palestinians through their policies of Judenrein and their clinical ethnic-cleansing of their own Jewish communities. Instead of looking into their dire need to modernise their economies and repair their fractured societies they seem to vent their frustration on tiny Israel which they themselves strengthened with the swelling numbers of Arab Jews driven by them into Israel.

8. Israel, without being aware of it, is responding on queue and plunging itself in the even bigger conflicts of the region by aligning itself absolutely on the side of the West instead of displaying neutral and moderating influence. The Arabs of Israel, 20 per cent of its population, could have been instrumental in this respect. Jewish Israelis are free to be in touch and even use Jews abroad to comment and even exert pressure in the internal affairs of Israel. Not so are Israeli Arabs. They are prevented and even accused of treason when they try similar ways in their relationship with Arabs or Muslims outside the country. Israelis look at them as the fifth column and lately they themselves started behaving as such. But relationships of Israeli Arabs across the Border could have been to the advantage of Israel in all fields, political, social and international. Imagine the reactions of Western Public and Media to our Arab Knesset Members forming part of our official delegations and our own Arabs from Israel occupying key positions in our embassies abroad.

9. The UN following the 1948 War of Israel Independence helped initially through its Aid Agencies to ameliorate the conditions of the Arab Refugees then but not the Jewish Refugees from Arab countries. However while alleviating day to day sufferings they indirectly served to perpetuate the problem of those refugees. Indeed the UN created a whole bureaucracy with a life and a vested interest of its own. One is forgiven to speculate when these UN Agencies intervene (always against Israel) whether they do that out of carrying out UN policies, which anyway they themselves initiate, or simply for institutionalised self preservation to protect jobs for life to which they became too accustomed to let go. UNRWA developed into a self-perpetuating self-renewing fixture. Who remembers today the Indian Refugees from both sides of a similar conflict which occurred at the same time in 1948 when the British Colonial Power left both India and Palestine with the legacy of years of Divide and Rule. This comparison struck me suddenly when I saw on television President Musharraf of Pakistan on a state visit to India taking tea amicably and without recrimination with the Indian occupants of his abandoned family house where he was born in New Delhi.

10. Europe cannot escape its responsibility either. Its ambivalence towards the Jews may be explained by 2000 years of religious indoctrination but can never be morally justified in the 21^st century. Immediately after the Holocaust, the one country in Europe, Britain, which led the war against Nazism, actually led the way to deny the Jews the very fruit of the seed that their own Balfour Declaration had sown to provide a haven to the Holocaust survivors. Apart from Denmark, I cannot think of any other country in Europe which can honestly absolve itself of guilt. After few generations some countries, notably Germany, are bravely wrestling with their past to exorcise the ghosts which continue to cry out from the rafters of their Cathedrals. The most inexplicable attitude today however is displayed by Sweden and Norway. Apart from the personal example of King Haakon’s behaviour during World War II, neither country can claim complete innocence. Why their governments are leading the condemnation of Israel with so much ferocity is beyond comprehension. Instead of this idle holier than thou attitude towards Israel, Europe could solve the conflict overnight at a stroke by offering to take some Arab Refugees openly instead of granting refuge status invoking Human Rights to a stream of Islamists and economic migrants. After all they got rid of six million Jews that by now would have swelled into tens of millions. Europe is short of manpower. The Palestinians are mostly educated, intelligent and hard-working. And so that nobody might be tempted to pop up the question why not solve the Conflict by Europe taking back the descendants of its own Jews from Israel instead, the stark answer is that the Israelis have lost faith in Europe and are determined to die for the only country they can claim to be theirs historically and by UN sanction.

11. What is the solution then? Is Israel doomed? Of course not. Israel is there to stay, not because of its army, not because of its history, not because of the Holocaust, but because the 6 million Jews in Israel (more than half of whom are descendents anyway of ethnically-cleansed Arab Jewish Refugees) have nowhere else to go. They have no choice but to stand up and fight even if it is in a war of mutual destruction with their enemies. Only this realization will convince the Arabs to seek mutually acceptable solutions. So to sum up on our Israeli side I have been trying to illustrate in these essays the three unresolved-problems facing us today: defining stable borders, strengthening our participatory democracy and repairing our damaged image abroad. These are three intertwined themes of my writing over many years. I put my early life on the line for Israel. Now I am devoting what is left of it to advocate my tentative solutions to these three problems in order to help secure the future of my people and the future of the Alien that has chosen to continue to live amongst us.

12. The legacy politics of Israel’s founding fathers was gradually replaced with career politics. This is a sickness at the heart of our politics that needs to be cured. And the cure is simple. I have devoted the last 5 years advocating a change from our pure Proportional Electoral System to Total Representation, a new electoral system that fuses the two major electoral systems of first-past-the-Post and proportional representation. I have argued the case for this change in the President of Israel’s Commission, in many books and articles and recently in an English edition in cooperation with Prof. Ivo Skrabalo of Zagreb. (Total Representation: A New Electoral System for Modern Times).

I hope these essays are read by Arabs as well as by Jews. By getting to the core of the problems, their aim is to help create a realistic climate of co-existence that may help to propel forward the peace and reconciliation process.

Aharon Nathan, Wimbledon, 31^st December 2009

Representation in Democracy (TR - The Total Representation Electoral System)

TR is One Response to the MPs’ Expenses Crisis

TR, Total Representation, is a simplified version of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) It preserves a large element of the Westminster model and infuses it with a dose of PR to ensure a greater representation of voters’ preferences. TR’s appeal is in the way it carries out reform of parliament with minimum upheaval. Its distinctive feature of giving weight to the votes of unsuccessful candidates appeals to the deep sense of fairness of the British people.

Unlike similar mixed or hybrid systems TR is easy to understand and operate. It needs only one ballot and requires all candidates (including those competing in party lists) to start off by running in the constituencies.

The PR element of TR gives an active role and leverage to the runner-ups in the constituencies by keeping their hopes alive in between elections even in “safe seats” Thus TR converts the rival runner-ups into watch-dogs, monitoring the incumbent MPs and guaranteeing their constant accountability. In such situations it could have helped to avoid the present Expenses Crisis thanks to the permanent vigilance and opposition of the rival candidates throughout the duration of a parliament.

How TR works
TR is a constituency-based system. For it to work properly, each constituency needs to have roughly the same number of voters to avoid gerrymandering. The majority of seats in parliament (say 80%) will be awarded to the winners of these races, just as they are under the Westminster system today.

So each party puts up candidates for election in the various seats. Their names appear on the ballot paper in alphabetical order and next to each name is the party he or she represents. However, these candidates also appear on their own party’s national “list” of all its candidates headed by the party leader.

Voters go to the polls and put a cross against their preferred local candidate. Whoever wins a simple majority of those votes becomes that Constituency’s Member of Parliament (CMP) – again, just like today.

From then on, the innovations begin. All the “successful” ballots drop out. So if you voted for candidate X and candidate X wins, your ballot is judged to have already secured representation. As for the “unsuccessful” ballots (for example, if you voted for candidate Y, but candidate Y did not win in your constituency) these are placed in a giant nationwide pool – and it is from these that say the 20% of the remaining seats are decided using the PR method and awarded to the various parties to select Party Members of Parliament (PMPs)

These remaining seats are allocated according to a quota (ie a minimum number of required votes per seat). This is reached by dividing the number of “unsuccessful” votes by the number of the remaining seats. So, if there are 150 PMP seats available, and there were 15 million “unsuccessful” votes in the election, each party needs 100,000 votes to elect one PMP.

Unlike in other list-based systems, the way these seats are awarded depends crucially on how the candidates performed in the constituencies. With the exception of the party leader, who – if unsuccessful first time around – may be given first choice of a PMP seat, all the other PMP seats will end up being awarded either to those candidates who did best in the first-past-the-post election (in other words, the strongest runners-up), or to constituency candidates of minority parties who may have significant support nationwide but lack strength in any particular constituency. Everything depends on the number of votes each candidate secures.

Arguments in Support of TR
- Each voter is required to cast only one ballot
- Few votes are “wasted”, with most going on to secure at least some level of
representation, albeit with different weightings.
- Its PR element is relatively simple, and easy to understand and operate
- All MPs would have to start off as constituency candidates, and all votes are worth fighting
for even in “safe seats” because there is a potential prize for coming second.
- It gives minority views the chance of a voice in parliament without giving them undue
influence, because the system is still weighted towards first-past-the-post.
Arguments against TR
- It creates two classes of MPs (CMP and PMP) thus leading to the possibility of conflict between them. However unlike in other such systems, most of the “Party” MPs would also have to have performed relatively well in the constituency vote and would retain some link with that locality. While the centre of the duties of the CMP is the constituency, that of the PMP is the Party in parliament.
- All existing constituency boundaries would have to be redrawn. However any reform will anyway necessitate redrawing of boundaries.

By way of contributing to the present debate on electoral reform, a book on TR is being published, which will fully describe the TR system and its applications to parliament in Westminster. The book will be up-to-date and takes in recent political events. Dr Ken Ritchie, the Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, is contributing an introduction, which evaluates this new electoral system.

Aharon Nathan, 15th June 2009

Israel Arab Conflict (Address to the Academy for Political Development in Zagreb)

Seeking solutions for the Israel-Arab Conflict

Historical Background:

1. The Israel/Palestine conflict we witness today started as an Arab/Jewish confrontation at the beginning of the 20th century, with the rise of nationalism. The Jews were being persecuted in Eastern Europe but found no refuge in the West. They needed a national home and the only place they could claim any historical connection with was the Holy Land, the ancient home of the wandering Jew. Meanwhile, the Arabs were trying to free themselves, first from the yoke of their Muslim brothers, the Ottoman Turks, and then from the colonialist powers. Nationalism was the order of the age everywhere.

2. At the time, there were also the Middle Eastern Jewish Communities who lived, co-existing with other peoples, in Arab countries, sometimes tolerated but often not. As nationalism bubbled up everywhere they attempted to join and identify themselves with their Arab majorities – but they were never accepted. Their story is often overshadowed by the myriads of books written about Europe’s Jews and the establishment of Israel. Yet today, these descendants of Jews from Arab countries make up half of Israel’s population. Their claim to the right to live in peace in Israel is stronger than that of the European Jews, and even more so than that of the Palestinians. Unlike the Palestinians, with the whole of the huge Arab world open to them, Middle Eastern Jews have nowhere else to go but to live in tiny Israel. Think about it in another way. Let us for argument’s sake accept the Arab contention that Palestine, together with Israel, are all part of the Arab Land. It follows therefore that what in fact actually happened was that Eastern Jews have moved from one corner to another within the same Land. They are not invaders, not settlers. They are natives, and their ancestors were natives before the Arab conquest swept the Middle East in the seventh century. They are not the Crusaders that the Arabs today like to call Jews of European origin. To fully understand the present ME conflict it is important to learn about this aspect of it to see that there is not one set of ME refugees but two. And no better way to introduce this aspect of the conflict than to tell my own personal story. I was both witness and victim of the cruel process that made me a refugee in my own land.

3. I was born in Iraq, and was immersed in its culture and shared in its national aspirations. I was an Iraqi Jew growing up together with Iraqi Muslims. But my personal effort to integrate into the social and political fabric of the country, and God knows I did try, was always met with a rebuff by them. To them I was an alien. And by the time Israel was born in 1948, this rebuff became literally persecution. When all the doors were closed in my face, together with so many other Jews of my generation who were denied exit visas, we had to find a way to escape; literally to flee the country by crossing the border on foot. In my case that was via Iran, whose people I will always be indebted to for my safe passage at my desperate time of need.

4. There was no other country but Israel which would give refuge to me and to some 150 000 Jews who followed in 1950/52. These people could trace their ancestry back through 2500 years of continuous life in Iraq – long before the Arab Conquest. I arrived at the absorption centre in Israel in 1949. I found there a mixture of people: all dejected, all helpless. My fellow refugees from Arab countries were desperately trying to rebuild their lives out of nothing in a land of nothing. But it was the sight of the remnants of the Holocaust camps that broke my heart and my spirit. I saw frightened shadows of human beings, dazed, confused and broken, trying to regain their existence as humans. But worst of all, instead of natural hatred, rage and bitterness I found many of them trying to remove the concentration camp numbers on their arms because they felt guilty for being alive and ashamed of not having put up a fight before allowing themselves to be led as sheep to the Gas chambers. It is the combined images of the ethnically cleansed Arab Jews who lost their countries, and the Holocaust remnants of European Jews who lost their dignity, that are engraved in my being and in the mind of every Jew who says: “never again” That is why Israelis feel the need to keep their military power and even their nuclear shield –not because they are on a Samson-like suicidal mission. It is because they are determined to live with the pride and dignity denied to them in other countries throughout the ages. They are determined now that if they must die, they want to die fighting. For the Arabs, if they want to coexist with Israel, they should first remember this.

5. These fears, as reflected in my own personal story, must also be understood against wider Jewish history. Two thousand years of persecution, execution and forced conversion to Christianity and Islam, culminated in Hitler’s Final Solution, a solution which wiped out almost half the world’s Jewish population on the watch of the civilised world.

6. Today, it is worrying Israelis and Jews alike that what happened in Germany under the Nazis in the early 1930s is being re-enacted in a startlingly similar way in Europe. Every aspect of life in Israel, its people, its institutions, its places of learning, even its acclaimed courts of justice, are being demonized. Recently, this demonizing has been organized and reinforced by concerted bans and boycotts here in Europe in protest they say against the occupation of Palestinian lands, which in fact the majority of the people of Israel would be happy to hand back. All this sends shivers down the spines of Jews everywhere, reminding them of the anti-Semitic demonizing propaganda of the 1930s in Germany, which was the precursor of, and prepared the ground for the Holocaust. As Condoleezza Rice stated recently: Anti-Semitism is not just a historical fact but a current event.

7. The Arab World has played and continues to play its active part, too, in the Jewish tragedy. During World War 2 they made Jewish life in their midst a living hell. By the early 1950’s, when the safe haven of Israel opened, some 900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed to Israel from Arab countries leaving most Arab countries what the Nazis called Judenrein, lands without Jews. Therefore what the Nazis failed to do the Arab countries accomplished and perpetuated. And the world accepts that as normal.

8. In contrast, today, 20 per cent of Israeli citizens are Arabs who enjoy full rights. They sit in parliament and can find their way, as indeed they have done, to sit in the various national institutions – even in the cabinet and in the Supreme Court. Nobody denies their right to be where they are, having lived in Israel even before the creation of Israel. But in Iraq, there is not one single Jew now living there.

9. Iraqi Jews were part of the tide of 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Their plight and fate are forgotten because Israel did not leave them in camps to rot and did not ask the UN to set up agencies to perpetuate their misery and status as refugees. With help from Jews worldwide, these Jewish refugees with their bare hands gave themselves dignity, security and a future in stark contrast to the way rich, very rich, Arabs treated the then 700,000 Palestinian Refugees and disgracefully continue to treat their descendents since. Consequently, today only the Palestinian Refugees are remembered.

10. This, however, is not to gloss over the events of the 1948 War when the Arab Armies attacked the Jews in Palestine. Here no excuse or justification should wipe out or absolve either side of the wrongdoings, whether these were committed by State armies or by individual political leaders and local commanders. We need to deal not only with the memories but also with the outcome of that war. Irrespective of which side was to blame, the Arab countries which attacked, or the nascent State of Israel which needed to defend itself. It is the outcome that matters. Unless a just practical solution is found for the Palestinian refugees in the same way the Jews dealt with their own Jewish refugees, the Middle East will have no peace. But this will not happen until – in the words of Prince Hassan of Jordan – both sides begin to internalise the disaster and the suffering that befell each of them as a result of that war.

11. The Arabs, and recently even the historians of the conflict, name what happened to the Palestinians in the 1948 War “The Naqba”: in Arabic, the Disaster. But they conveniently ignore the Arab Jews’ corresponding Naqba. The reason for this is that while the Palestinian Naqba was a consequence of a war, the Arab Jews’ Naqba had much deeper historical roots. It was the culmination of the Judenrein process which threw the Arab Jews out of Arab countries, a process that is still reflected right now in Arab attitudes and prevents any compromise or solution of the Arab/Israeli conflict that has been festering since the creation of Israel.

The Islamist Version of Judenrhein:

12. Judenrhein is land pure and clean of Jews. This is a dream that Hitler designed for Europe, but the Arabs fulfilled it in their countries. This is the Arab side of the Holocaust, the real tragic “NAQBAH” of the Jews who lived for centuries in Arab countries. Today every nation in Europe tries to apologise for this policy. Not so the Arabs. They are proud of their achievement, which they declare day and night as a matter of religious piety.

13. Unfortunately for the Arabs, as was so unfortunate for the fanatical Germans this is not helping the Arabs themselves. In fact it is at the heart of their problems, pulling them back to the dark ages. Islamic learning and tolerance brought the Enlightenment into Christian Europe, but recently it seems – sadly – to be receding from their own nations.

14. The solution to the Arab and especially the Palestinian plight in their relationship with Israel could have been resolved long time ago, if only their leaders had grasped the immorality of the concept of Judenrhein, and even more so if the West stopped accepting it as the norm in Arab countries. This acquiescence fostered its encouragement, with disastrous effects for the Arabs themselves.

15. If, as recently as at the time of the evacuation of Gaza by Prime Minister Sharon, the Palestinians had stood up and said: we claim back Gaza as land belonging to the State of Palestine, restoring the status quo ante before the 6-day War, but we have no problem with the Jewish settlements there staying as part of Palestinian Gaza, with Israelis living the way they live today in Germany, England and the USA…. If the Palestinians had done this, today Gaza would have been the new Hong Kong of the Middle East, with Israel as its hinterland and market and source of finance. Unfortunately, they missed this chance, because the Judenrein that shaped their attitude towards Jews got the better of them. It continues to be the obstacle in the way of practical and mutually beneficial solutions.

16. Such a chance to act sensibly is still open and could prove to be the way forward today for the Palestinians with regard to the future State of Palestine. The ball is also in the court of the Syrians to start a process which will bring real peace and prosperity to the region. Bashar Al-Assad, the Syrian leader, who clamours for the Golan, should take the initiative and suggest that the Jews in the Golan Heights could stay – after the withdrawal of Israel – as citizens of Syria or as Israelis-in-residence in a Syrian Golan – subject, just like other citizens in Syria, to Syrian law. This is exactly the same way that foreigners live in England, France or Germany today. It is then that Israeli resistance to withdrawal on security grounds will melt away, and a great and prosperous Golan can offer itself to millions of tourists from all over the world, who will enjoy the fusion of Arab and Jewish culture reminiscent of the glorious days of Cordoba and Toledo.

The Way Forward:

17. Unfortunately the Arab countries surrounding Israel are facing acute internal problems of social strife, political bankruptcy and overwhelming population explosion. The Palestinians have been left to themselves, and they are revelling in their infighting and delusions, making it impossible to reach any accommodation with Israel. They have become a plaything in the hands of Arab countries who are fighting each other for supremacy; they are also a proxy in the Islamic tug-of-war between the Shiaa of Iran and the Sunni of Saudi Arabia and Bin Laden. New Nassers and new Arafats are popping up everywhere without the Arabs asking themselves what good their old heroes did for them and what purpose the new ones serve. With this hopeless situation prevailing, it was right and practical for Israel to build the controversial Security Wall and it was wise to act unilaterally to give both sides time to find a solution for co-existence. Although they acted late, Sharon and Olmert proved to be foresighted both in building the Security Wall and in evacuating Gaza.

18. Amidst this confusion, Arabs can only accept co-existence once it dawns on them that Israel is there to stay, not because of its army, not because of its history, not because of the Holocaust, but because the 6 million Jews in Israel (more than half of whom are descendents anyway of ethnically cleansed Arab Jewish Refugees) have nowhere else to go. They have no choice but to stand up and fight even if it is a war of mutual destruction with their enemies. Only this realization will convince the Arabs to seek mutually acceptable solutions.

19. On our side, the Israeli side, our social fissures and political instabilities are creating hesitancy and lack of resolve which are sabotaging the implementation of our only available policy: i.e securing ourselves unilaterally and quickly within defendable borders. These new borders have to be defended militarily and, even more importantly, they have to be acceptable in due course internationally through negotiation. We cannot solve these problems without introducing real changes in our political structures. Social divisions are impeding the process of fusing together our Jewish communities and integrating our Arab minorities. These, together with the political instability of governments, stand in the way both of our negotiations with the Arabs and the implementation of our only available policy of securing ourselves unilaterally. The new electoral system I have proposed: TR -- Total Representation – is key to the urgent changes needed to overcome these difficulties. At its core is the direct accountability of Parliament to ordinary citizens, making it easy for a broadly representative parliament and a stable government to evolve, and empowering them to make brave decisions for peace.

Conclusions and Solutions:

20. Unlike Christian or Muslim countries, Israel cannot be treated in isolation from the Jewish people worldwide. After what happened in Europe and in the Arab countries, Jews everywhere believe that the defeat of Israel would mean annihilation. Israel is all the Jewish People’s refuge of last resort.

21. Lasting Peace is not a matter of goodwill. It lasts only if it is based on the absence of potential future conflicts on the ground. In the aftermath of the recent tragic and unnecessary Gaza War, we Israelis, have to ask ourselves fundamental questions. These questions need to be daring, deep and all-encompassing. There is no doubt that for one century now our Arab neighbours have not accepted us. In turn we, on our side ceased long ago to try to understand them. A mental curtain has descended between the Arabs and us, and that includes our own Arab citizens. In fact we seem to live parallel lives – so much so that we have become accustomed to a view of each other only through telescopic gun-barrels.

22. The only thing that will work is maximum defensible real, physical separation of the two states of Israel and Palestine on the ground. The recent wars of Lebanon and Gaza and all the ensuing killing and destruction make separation more urgent and necessary – indeed mandatory. Gaza is at the core of the problem. It needs to be developed economically along the lines of Singapore or Hong Kong; it has to become a viable entity supporting its population. Some of its refugees have to be given means and opportunities and encouraged to resettle in the West Bank and in Arab Countries, including the sparsely-populated, labour-hungry Gulf. Its border to Sinai and Egypt has to be opened for free trade and interaction with the world beyond. Otherwise Gaza will remain a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

23. But Gaza also needs to cease being a potential threat to Israel. A situation has to be avoided where it can become the western arm of a future Palestinian pincer that together with Hebron on the eastern border of southern Israel will fuel future rising tension, leading to a conflagration that can have only one result: either Israel or Palestine will have to be divided into two halves, thus stoking up more violence. The solution here will have to be for Gaza to become an independent state. Europe has many examples of such small states that sprang into being out of realpolitik necessity. Today, the Palestinian President Abu Mazen’s West Bank is already separated from Hamas’s Gaza. Why not keep them that way for the sake of peace both for Israelis and Palestinians? Thus, four states will arise out of the old Palestine: Israel, Jordan, Palestine and the republic of Gaza. The result will be the final end and the last nail in the coffin of the ill-conceived British Mandate. These four states can join together in an economic Common Market that will bring stability, peace and prosperity to all their inhabitants.

24. How would the Egyptians react to the establishment of a separate state in Gaza? I believe they will welcome this solution which in effect would solve their own problem which is even more thorny and complex than that of Israel. Terrorist Gaza as it is today is a threat to Egypt through illegal infiltration. Hamas members find internal allies and homes amongst the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The border with Sinai is porous and out of control because both sides of it are united in their hatred of Israel. All this will change once it becomes the border between two Arab sovereign states controlled by passports and visas the same way that Egypt today protects its border with Libya and the Sudan. Egypt can facilitate the filtering of refugees to other Arab countries from the State of Gaza where the latter’s government becomes responsible for taking back undesirable elements. The inhabitants of the State of Gaza will be more interested in their livelihood and sooner or later will themselves throw out Hamas. In the new situation Israel can legitimately in the eyes of the world defend vigorously and effectively its border against a hostile state which will be responsible for its actions. Israel and Egypt will then have identical common interest instead of the present ambivalent attitude towards the Gazans and towards each other.

25. Jerusalem has to be divided into: Jerusalem Capital of Israel; and Al-Quds Capital of Palestine - Twin Cities with a clear SEPARATION between the two. Without this no peace will survive. Arab inhabitants in Jerusalem (those who were annexed after the-6 Day War) should revert to Palestine citizenship but can live as residents in Jerusalem if their residence falls within Israeli Jerusalem. Likewise, Jews who choose to stay in Al-Quds can retain their Israeli citizenship but continue to live as residents in Palestine subject to its laws after a period of protection by Israel.

26. Similar status should apply (after a period of protection by the Israeli army) to all Israelis who choose to stay in the new Palestine. This includes the Jewish enclave in Hebron. The same arrangement should be accorded to the cluster of Jewish settlements which fall on the borders of Palestine, in accordance with the spirit of the exchange of letters between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon of 14th April 2004. If the enclave of this cluster of settlements on the western border of new Palestine is allowed to remain within the sovereignty of Palestine then no need remains to the tortuous business of exchange of territories. Otherwise such exchange needs to be carried out by negotiations.

27. It is not our business to interfere and certainly not to decide for the Palestinians which government or leaders are best for them. The Palestinian President, Abu Mazen, is not in control. Hamas has to be brought directly into any negotiation for an enduring settlement. If either or both do not accept these or similar proposals, Israel should unilaterally implement them on its side of the new borders the way Prime Minister Sharon implemented the evacuation of Gaza, UNILATERALLY.

Aharon Nathan, Zagreb, 21st April 2009

Representation in Democracy (A New Electoral System Removes Major Existential Threats)

A New Electoral System Removes Major Existential Threats
An Address to Limmud London on 13th July 2008

1) Israel looks to be facing existential dangers today. Of course as long as it maintains a strong army and as long as its solid alliance with America endures it will continue to have adequate deterrents. The question of course is for how long? This is not a rhetorical question. America’s self interests and public opinion may sway and our neighbours’ military capabilities, regular or guerrilla, may improve. The only alternative therefore is settling the borders and normalising the relations with the Arab countries, and the sooner the better as the cost will mount.

2) In the short term Hezbollah, Hamas and the surrounding Arab countries are not immediate dangers. But the wave of Anti-Semitism which is poisoning opinions against Israel outside and the social and political disintegration inside the country are the real threat in the long run. No wonder we find such incongruous voices spelling this obvious observation: Ex–Knesset Speaker Avrom Burg, Nobel Laureate Prof. Oman and most recently Ahmedi-Nejad.

3) Central to these real threat is the break-down of Israel’s political structure that renders its three arms of the state dysfunctional. The people are exasperated and an irresponsible media is revelling in feeding their frustration. It sounds almost blasphemous but it needs to be said : the Israeli Media is unwittingly assuming a dual role of the Forth Arm and the Fifth Column in Israel. The most important controlling cure is reforming the electoral system which Israel has failed to do for 60 years.

4) The political structure is vital in shaping any country and gelling together its society. And at the heart of this structure is the electoral system which connects the sovereign people with their government. Unfortunately Israel chose by default the wrong electoral system for its specific requirements in 1948 and despite repeated attempts did not succeed to change it since .

5) Total Representation “TR” is an electoral system which can be adopted to suit many countries or adapted to improve existing systems. The purpose of this essay is to explain what TR is and how it works; and then to analyse why it is vital for Israel to adopt TR soon in the context of stemming the existential threats which Israel will be more and more exposed to in the future.

6) What is TR?

1. TR Total Representation is a new electoral system based on the premise that every single vote cast in an election has to end up with some representation in parliament, whether directly or indirectly.
2. It avoids the most serious defect of the Constituency First-Past-the-Post System familiar to us here in England, under which votes cast for the successful candidate are represented in parliament, while all the rest of the votes i.e. those cast for the unsuccessful candidates are left unrepresented, though they may make up most of the total vote in some constituencies.
3. The Proportional Representation System “PR”, as practiced in Israel on the other hand, does allow representation to all votes cast and gives them equal weight, but it encourages small political parties and splinter groups, resulting in weak coalition governments where factional rather than national interests take over. Its greatest deficiency, however, is the lack of a direct link between the members of the electorate and their individual representatives in parliament; unlike the Single Member Constituency System it transfers this link to the political parties.
4. ‘TR’ Total Representation offers a solution by combining the positive elements of both systems, i.e. the dominant element of representation in Proportional Representation and the direct link with the voter of the Constituency First-Past-the-Post System.
5. According to TR parliaments would have two classes of MPs who would be equal in every way save for the manner by which they were elected. One class would be the accountable Constituency MPs (CMPs) who would be elected by a simple majority on a constituency first-past-the-post basis, exactly as they are elected today in the UK. The other class, Party MPs (PMPs) would be elected by pooling all the votes cast for the unsuccessful candidates in all the constituencies and dividing them proportionally amongst all the Parties which fielded candidates in the same constituencies.

7) The advantages of TR are:

1. Government stability balanced with adequate representation. Stability is essential for governments to govern effectively and carry out long term planning. True representation is essential to translate the will of the people to supervise governments through parliament.
2. Built-in Legitimate Sovereign Opposition to counter the tyranny of the majority and guarantee gradual change, thus rendering society open and not closed to necessary adjustments as they arise.;
3. A voice for the losers. This devise declares the death of “Arithmetical Democracy” where the 51 per cent winner takes all.

8) Let us see now how TR can benefit Israel. Our tribal waves of immigration are not gelling and are not cohesive yet. The inhabitants of the borders and peripheries are abandoned. The gap between the haves and have-nots is widening. The Arab minorities are getting more radicalised by the day. The rich and the oligarchs are allied with the political establishments and the Media. The Seculars are in mortal conflict with the Religious. The Supreme Court has by default appropriated to itself legislative powers and Judges are asked to direct the Executive and even the military operations of the Army. Governments became unstable and their authority undermined. The Knesset, the voice of the people between elections is so weak and divided that it is no more taken seriously, in fact it is discredited.

9) TR is a systemic tool that can help alleviate if not solve some of these problems because the first thing it does is to strengthen the Knesset and give it the authority it needs to intervene effectively to solve these problems. As a direct result of TR this new authority will be derived from every citizen in every corner of the land.

10) Let us see how in practice it works on the ground: The introduction of TR will bring the Knesset nearer to the people through their locally chosen regional MKs. who will individually be held accountable. It strengthens its authority in the eyes of the public and makes it easier for it to back and sanction difficult decisions taken by a stable governments. It asserts the primacy of the Legislator in the eyes of the citizens over the recently overpowering Judiciary.

11) The cornerstone of TR is the single MK Constituency. In the case of Israel it is of paramount importance to draw during the process of election all the voters in that locality together and to push the candidates to assume central political positions away from extremism in order to attract all the voters. Multi member regions as advocated by some colleagues in the recent President’s Commission on Government would deepen the division of the local communities along immigrant, ethnical and religious lines. It replants the defects of the present PR system into the regions. It can bring about the Lebanonisation of Israel.

12) But the most important outcome of the introduction of TR Total Representation is to integrate and Israelise our minorities without infringing on their religious beliefs or ethnic aspirations. The process of canvassing under TR, especially but not exclusively, in mixed Jewish/Arab localities would help to interweave and enmesh them into Israel’s political and social institutions. It would prevent the emergence of an internal Hamas from amongst their extremists, which is a far more dangerous than external Hamas.

13) And in the same process TR can through its implementation bind together the “new Jewish tribes” of Israel into local rather than disparate immigrant communities thus hopefully slaying the ghosts of Ashkenazi / Mizrahi / Russian / Ethiopian etc. that the PR system galvanizes and reinforces.

14) And finally and most importantly TR stabilises the government, allows it to plan long term and gives it the authority to take painful decisions with regard to fixing the borders and normalising Israel’s relations with all its neighbours.

Aharon Nathan was a member of the President’s Commission on the Governance of Israel. He set up and headed the first Civil Administration in the Gaza Strip in 1956.

Aharon Nathan, 13th July 2008