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 My feeling is that we, on the Israeli side, out of frustration have stopped thinking realistically and have withdrawn into ourselves mentally.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

Representation in Democracy (Electoral Draft Law of 2nd April 2008)

The Electoral Draft Law in the Knesset

1. Following on from the President’s Commission’s Final Report, and after much deliberation and lobbying, on 2nd April 2008 four senior MKs from the three big parties in the Knesset tabled a Draft Law (“Draft”) which embodied the main principles of TR – with some modifications.

2. These four MKs were: Professor Menachem Ben-Sasson of Kadima, Chairman of the Law and Constitution Committee; Mr Ophir Pines Paz, an ex-minister and current Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee; Mr Eitan Cabel , another ex-minister and current Chairman of the Labour Party in the Knesset (both Labour); and Mr Gideon Saar, Chairman of the Likud Party in the Knesset. Together, these three parties have 60 out of the 120 members of the Knesset. Surprisingly the Electoral Law in Israel is not a Basic Law. However to secure the passage of changes in it, the votes of 61 MKs are needed although only a simple majority and not an absolute majority is necessary. So these three parties need the support of all their own members – by no means a foregone conclusion – and therefore they need the support of at least one other party. And of course it also needs to surmount the opposition of the partners of the ruling Coalition Government, currently mainly the Shas Party.

3. The most important improvement in the draft is the rejection of multi-member constituencies in favour of single-member ones. This is an improvement on the President’s Final Report and a leap forward for TR (Total Representation) Otherwise, the Draft Law follows the Final Report in offering a 60/60 mix of constituency CMKs and party PMKs. In this and a few other details it has somewhat deviated from the basic principles of TR. The following is a summary of these deviations. I will analyse them one by one, looking at the rationale behind them and at how to overcome them in order to confer the full benefits of TR on the new law.

Ratio of 60/60 Constituency/Party Membership of the Knesset
4. In this, the Draft follows the Report. On the face of it, it looks symmetrical and reasonable. The real motive behind this, however, is rather different – although of course it is not plainly expressed. Today, most of Israeli candidates and the order of their appearances in the Election Lists for the general election are determined by the leadership and/or by the central organs of each party. They are in fact appointed by them and not elected. And even where primaries are held by some parties to elect candidates these primaries are mostly manipulated and in fact corrupt and lead to the choosing of candidates who are beholden to the leadership and are unrepresentative of the supporters of those parties in the country at large. It is natural that MKs who have been selected in this way (and who are the same people that will have to vote the Draft law on its journey towards ratification) are afraid that most of them will lose their seats under a new election regime. In a matter of fact, their declared support for any change towards regional and therefore accountable seats in the Knesset is not derived from good will or sound judgement, but because of pressure from the public.
We know that turkeys do not vote for Christmas. So these people hope that the 60 regional CMK seats will be a sop to satisfy the public demand for regional reform, while giving enough space through the other 60 party seats for most of them to manoeuvre their way back to the exclusive club that the Knesset provides them with.

5. There is another compelling reason why the present MKs want to preserve at least 60 Party seats to safeguard their immediate future survival. The majority of the present MKs reside in Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas. Their natural fear is, of course, that regional candidates from outside this orbit will push them out and slim down their chances of being chosen, particularly if a 90/30 ratio is used. The current Draft Law feeds these fears because it stipulates that candidates need to be residents of their constituencies. But this condition is not necessary and may in fact cause many able potential candidates to shy away from putting their names forward and start disrupting their home life even before their hopeful, but not certain, election. And although some candidates – once elected – may choose to move to their new constituencies or to acquire secondary accommodation there to gain local popularity, this should not be a pre-election condition. Moreover, keeping this condition will psychologically create two types of MKs: one local complete with certified residency and the other national, which of course is not the intention behind the division of 60/60 or the 90/30. Dropping this onerous condition will help allay the fears of the current MKs – and help solve the problem of fixing the ratio between the two.

Counting the Votes
6. Although it is not completely clear from the Draft Law, the assumption is that votes for the candidates and their parties are counted only once, in the first instance to choose the CMKs. Once the CMKs are elected by the votes of the majorities in each constituency, all the remaining votes are aggregated and distributed amongst the parties for choosing their PMKs. Any idea, as some have suggested or the Draft may perhaps implied, of using the votes again in their entirety to choose the PMKs would be tantamount to counting the CMK votes twice. In the case of Israel, such double utilisation of votes could give a huge advantage to the Arab and Jewish Religious Haredi because of their concentration in some localities. It could turn out to be that these minority parties would be given two bites of the cherry-once to elect their CMKs and then using these votes again together with what remains to give them PMK seats. Once this idea is excluded, we are left with the simple TR method of sharing and dividing the same votes between the CMKs and the PMKs.

Order of Priority in Party Lists
7. Another pitfall that the Draft needs to rectify is the order of priority of party lists. The most efficient and fair method is that offered by TR. Before the general election, it is natural that each party wants to display its star candidates to attract votes through the canvassing process. Therefore, it needs to put their names at the top of its list to show the public who their prominent and eminent future MKs from amongst its candidates would be. However, once the results of the general election are declared for each constituency, and therefore each successful CMK is declared and named, the original list of each party should be re-shuffled and rearranged in accordance with the number of votes each candidate has scored. The rearrangement of priorities could be made by each party before allocating their share of PMKs. This would provide an incentive for the various candidates to fight for each vote during the election, as that could be crucial in their being prioritised as the chosen PMKs by their parties. However, this procedure desirable as evidently it is may be left for each party to decide for itself, although it might be equally advisable to embody it in the electoral law. Moreover this simple procedure dispenses with pre-election primaries.

8. Retaining, post-election, the order of the candidates on the pre-election List could create anomalies after the election. How?! Let us take an example. Three candidates – A, B and C – from three parties are competing in one constituency. A secured 48 per cent of the votes, B secured 47 per cent and C secured 5 per cent. A won a CMK seat. But if B is, say, numbered 55th in his Party’s List, he will not secure a PMK seat, while C who is, say, numbered 3rd in his Party’s List would probably secure a PMK seat. So the 47 percent candidate lost, and the 5 percent candidate won the right to sit in the next Knesset. A situation like this would reflect badly both on the chosen PMP and his/her party.

9. Another thing that could help the existing MKs to swallow the change to 90/30 is to increase the number of Knesset seats available. The Knesset’s present membership of 120 has remained static for 60 years despite a over 10 fold increase in population. With many MKs continuing in their positions for decades without being replaced, the membership has become stale, and this has contributed to the image of the Knesset as an ancient, exclusive club, closed to and remote from ordinary citizens. Increasing the membership to 160 would facilitate dividing them into a ratio of 120/40 or even 100/60, instead of the proposed 90/30. This move would also make the proposed law more palatable for the present MKs, as it would increase their chances to survive under the new regime. Linking this measure to the appeal of introducing the regional representation of TR would also make it more acceptable to a public that has recently grown dismissive and sceptical of anything connected with the Knesset.

To Secure the Party Leader
10. The order of priority of each party’s candidates list would be declared beforehand, putting the party leader at the top in a reserved slot to ensure his/her place in the Knesset, whatever happens. The reason for this is that in a First-Past-the-Post system, the opposition will throw all its weight behind its candidate in the constituency of the leader of its rival party, in order to defeat him/her and embarrass his/her party. The reserved top spot for the leader also helps avoid upsets and confusion in the aftermath of a general election if the leader fails to win his/her constituency seat which, though unlikely, is of course, possible. Some parties may likewise want to secure the places of their Secretary or Chairman, and their Election Operation Officer, as these two would need to devote their full time to serving the party during the election period and might not be able to attend adequately to canvassing in their respective constituencies. But again, this issue is the business of each party and may not necessarily need to be stipulated by the electoral law.

11. Once the Draft Law takes care of all the above points, the exact ratio of CMKs to PMKs becomes less crucial, and although a ratio of 90/30 is the optimum, a slightly higher proportion of PMKs might be more suitable for Israel’s population make up. However, a ratio of 60/60 will definitely gives the PMKs too much power, and will not serve the purpose of the desired electoral reform, as it will immediately drag the system back into a preponderance of the Proportional Representation element.

Blocking Threshold
12. What is left is the blocking threshold. The Draft suggests that each party has to gain at least 2 per cent of the total votes and to win at least one CMP seat before qualifying to enter the Knesset. These conditions are added to what is inherent in every electoral system. These are grossly unfair measures that affect the minorities as they deny representation to their small parties and groups. It amounts to blocking their way to obtaining support amongst the electorate and is tantamount to disenfranchising them. Such a blatant blocking mechanism increases resentment and nourishes extremism and conflict. And anyway even a 10 percent blocking threshold used in Turkey did not prevent the religious party from getting a majority in the end, and forming a government by entering the leading party and controlling it from within. Of course, having said all that, we should remember that every electoral system has an inherent blocking mechanism – and so has TR. Under a regime of 90/30, to gain one Knesset PMK seat, a party needs 1/30th of the total votes left for allocation to PMKs. This is four per cent of these votes and is even a much higher percentage of the total votes. The way TR is constructed, as explained in Part One, of this book is to obviate both the necessity of blocking thresholds post elections and the reasons for holding primaries before the general elections. And yet it is so simple to explain to the public and so simple to operate.

13. Whether the Draft Law will proceed and overcome all the stages of legislation to become the new electoral law is an open question – it cannot be taken for granted. But the genie is out of the bottle, and it is too big to be squeezed back in. Regional election is in the air and in the public domain. Any political party aspiring to lead in Israel will ignore its call at its peril. Some form of regional /constituency system will have to be introduced primarily to ensure direct accountability of individual MKs to their voters. This after all was the prime reason cited by the President’s Commission. There is no compelling reason why full TR should not be chosen as the model for this fundamental change in order to repair the fractured political structure of Israel and to strengthen the Knesset – it could ultimately help in turn to solve many of the social and security problems of the country.

Supplementary Measures and Regulations
14. The weakness of the political structure in Israel is not entirely due to Proportional Representation (PR). Holland is another country with pure PR, and yet its system functions properly, and has been functioning for centuries, without causing the kind of instability that Israel suffers from. The reason for this difference is that Israel’s population lacks the social cohesion and the long tradition of parliamentary democracy that underpins Dutch politics. The make-up of the Knesset reflects the national religious and cultural divisions of what Haim Ramon, the present Deputy Prime Minister, has described as Israel’s tribalism. And although TR can help enormously in bringing about cohesion and integration, it alone cannot bridge these wide social divisions overnight.

15. Therefore, to ensure stable government and efficient governance, the introduction of any new electoral system needs to be supplemented by structural changes and regulations relating to the internal working of the Knesset and the government. The most important of these changes centres on the cohesion of political factions in the Knesset, and the tenure of the Prime Minister and the manner of his/her appointment and dismissal. Only such supporting regulations can ensure that the Knesset completes its term and that the government will therefore last the full four years. These changes can be incorporated into the electoral law or instituted internally by the Knesset and the political parties. The following are few of these regulations: some are essential; others are optional.

Political Parties in the Knesset
16. Under TR, MKs are allocated seats in the Knesset as members of parties. It is logical therefore to register their allegiances to these parties in the new Knesset. As candidates in the General Election, most of them would anyway have declared their link or loyalty to one party or the other who sponsored them as its candidates in the regions. In general, these allegiances need not be 100 per cent binding on them as MKs. Not being delegates, but representatives of their voters, they should have the right to change their views and their votes in the Knesset according to changed circumstances and their conscience. However, for MKs whose party forms part of the government, the situation is different. Some measure is needed to avoid the slow disintegration of the government during the Knesset term, and to prevent changing party allegiances (in Israel called Kalanterism; in Britain is referred to as taking the Party Whip.)
So, I propose that every MK whose party forms part of the government is deemed to have declared allegiance to his party at the time of the vote of confidence in the new government of which that party forms part. Each MK has the choice at that stage to cast his/her vote in favour of forming that government or withhold it. Thereafter, except for free votes declared by their parties (e.g. on conscientious ground), MKs who vote against their government should be deemed to have resigned and would be replaced by the next in line on the party list or through a by-election. In Israel, this needs to be embodied in the parties’ respective constitutions, and together with other regulations specifically on financing parties, may need to be anchored in State Laws. The logic of this measure is obvious. As a Party/List MK (PMK), his/her position is derived from the Party which gave him a seat on its priority list. Therefore if he is voting against the party, it is logical that he should surrender back to the party his position by resigning. If he is an MK representing a Constituency (CMK), then naturally he should resign because he represented himself to his constituents in the general elections as a member of that party and pledged his allegiance by voting for it in the government. By revoking his pledge given free when the government is formed he should resign and offer himself if he so wishes for re-election in a by-election as an independent candidate. This is both decent and logical, but it needs apply only to the party or parties of the coalition and not to all MKs.

Appointment of the Prime Minister
17. At present, the business of forming a government after a general election is too long and tortuous. The initial role of the President is superfluous. Once the results of the general election are announced, the party leader with the highest number of MKs should automatically try to form a government. He should immediately set out along broad lines his party’s or his coalition’s programme and proceed to ask for a vote of confirmation in the Knesset. If he fails to present his government within, say, three weeks, only then the President should intervene and start a procedure to ask another acceptable MK to form a government. Under the new TR system, with a ratio of 90/30, the emerging first party after the general election is bound to have the support of close to half the Knesset. If not, it is still unlikely to need the partnership of more than one other party to form a stable coalition

18. The confirmation of the Prime Minister designate and his government should require a majority of 61 MKs out of 120: an overall, that is an absolute - not a simple – majority (i.e. a 51 per cent of the Knesset, ignoring abstentions or absentees) His dismissal should be effected by the same majority – but only on a specific motion of no confidence in the government. Such a vote would then signal the start of a procedure for the dissolution of the Knesset and the declaration of a new general election. The constructive dismissal of the Prime Minster, as is sometimes suggested, is problematic and creates the very instability in the system that we want to avoid even though it is used in other countries. There are good reasons why, for example in the UK, it is the Prime Minister who chooses the time of dissolution of Parliament during its maximum five years term. That is one of the reasons why the UK premier is more powerful throughout his term – right up until the last day – than the US President, who in the last months of his predetermined time in office is often looked at as a lame duck.

19. The PM should appoint an MK to be Deputy PM. This appointment also needs a parliamentary vote of 61 MKs. The same majority is required for a replacement should the PM decide to replace him/her. Thus with this backing of parliamentary authority, the Deputy can accede without an upheaval to the position of the Prime Minister in case of his death or incapacitation.

20. A constructive vote of no confidence is not practical, and indeed is not necessary, under the above proposition, simply because those MKs who had supported the government will have to resign once they voted against their government. This avoids electing a government and immediately afterwards exposing it to the danger of collapsing. This routine practice has gradually become unacceptable to the public in Israel.

Appointment of Ministers
21. The PM should appoint all ministers and their deputies and should have the power to dismiss and replace them. MKs thus appointed need confirmation by 61 votes, en bloc initially when the government is voted in, or individually if appointed later on. Ministers appointed by the PM from outside the Knesset should be subject, in addition, to a Knesset Committee Hearing followed by confirmation by 61 MKs.

22. The PM is to be free by Law to appoint no more than half of the ministers and deputy ministers from outside the Knesset. They can be dismissed and replaced by him as above. This is designed to bring into the government professionals with experience. In some countries this professionalism is provided by the corps of the civil service. Unless the outside ministers are restricted to no more than half the government, we will be creating a presidential system through the back door.

23. Each ministry must have either the Minister or his/her Deputy as an MK. In cases where a Minister is appointed from outside the Knesset and has no deputy, an MK is appointed by the Minister, with the approval of the Prime Minister, as Knesset Liaison Secretary to represent and answer for the Ministry in the Knesset. This ensures the supremacy of parliament without compromising the authority of the PM or the Ministers.

24. All the above keeps a balance between the Knesset and the government and renders irrelevant the very unusual so called “Norwegian Law” advocated by some in Israel whereby an appointed minister has to resign his seat in parliament and is replaced by a deputy, who in turn has to vacate the position once the minister leaves the ministerial post and returns to parliament. The Norwegian arrangement may suit the circumstances of some other countries but it would be cumbersome in the much wider political and cultural environment of Israel

25. Many ask how the party leaders are elected under the TR System, especially when primaries seem to lose their importance. This question is dealt with in Part One of this book. Basically, each leader of each party except the Prime Minister, is elected or re-elected in the middle of the Knesset term by the candidates of the party in the last election (not by the Party’s MKs, who will naturally not include all the candidates). All these candidates cast the actual votes each obtained in the preceding general election – these are added together in selecting their leader. These votes are those of the real supporters of the party in the last election, and not the votes of paid members who often are recruited for that purpose. The selection becomes clean, with no corrupt practices. The procedures for re-elections of party leaders should be declared in mid term but if no candidate challenges the incumbent leader the re-election is dispensed with as the incumbent becomes automatically re-confirmed.

26. The prime minister need not submit himself to re-selection because he won his mandate by coming top ahead of the other leaders, and thus fulfilled his role and his party’s manifesto, and is therefore entitled to continue his role as leader of his party. This exception also adds to the stability of the government and is normal in other progressive democracies.

Aharon Nathan, 8th July 2008

Representation in Democracy (The President’s Commission on Electoral Reform)

The President of Israel's Commission for Examining the Structure of Government and Governance in Israel

Background
1. On February 17th 2003, at the opening session of the 16th Knesset, the President of Israel, Mr. Moshe Katsav, stated: “I call for the establishment of a Public National Commission consisting of public figures and experts that will discuss and recommend reforms concerning the structure of government.” In this chapter, I try to give a bird’s eye view of the deliberations of this Commission and its final report. The deliberations covered almost every aspect of debates about electoral systems and related fields of governance. The records of the minutes and submissions have been preserved and could be invaluable for future students of this subject.

2. The Citizens’ Empowerment Centre in Israel (CECI), spearheaded the formation of this Commission, and on September 25th 2005, The President’s Commission for Examining the Government and Governance of Israel was established under the Chairmanship of Professor Menachem Megidor, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon delivering its mandate, President Moshe Katsav said:
· “I request that you analyse carefully the Israeli government structure, to examine the suitability of every alternative to the Israeli reality and the needs of the country, and to try to create a proposal that will assure increased power, stability, and effectiveness. I intend to submit these proposals to the Knesset and the cabinet.” The President went on to say: “Israeli democracy has, in my view, succeeded through the years to withstand the test of time, despite the many upheavals…the mounting elitism of the power structure can undermine the strength of the democracy more than security threats…
· Power instability can cause more extensive damage to the strength of the democracy. Despite it having withstood the trials of time, I think that power instability also prevents governments from properly fulfilling their tasks. If a recently elected government is immediately threatened by further elections, it is unable to fulfil its task properly…
· I am concerned with the decline of the status of the Knesset -- precisely because I appreciate that it is primary among power structures, and a sovereign authority. For that reason I am much concerned with and regret its negative public image.
· I am also concerned with the fact that the executive authority has almost unlimited power over the legislative branch. It is able to do whatever it wishes with the Knesset, while the Knesset, the legislative branch, has developed an intolerant dependency on the judicial branch. They apply for court ruling for every little thing while such decisions should have been reached in the Knesset itself without this insufferable dependency.
· I know there has been a lot of talk about changing the electoral system and I have my opinion on the subject though I will not voice it here. This issue must be examined versus the consideration and the consequences of such change. The national and state interests must be weighed. The question when, if at all the cultural, sectional and regional interests may be preferred over the national interests must be answered.
· I beseech you to analyse carefully the Israeli government structure to examine the suitability of every alternative to the Israeli reality and the needs of the country to try and create a proposal that will assure increased power stability and effectiveness and to propose a structure that would ensure meeting the challenges which confront the state of Israel in our generation.
· I intend to submit these proposals to the Knesset and the cabinet and for public discussion, and I hope that the Commission’s recommendations will gain the widest possible acceptance”

3. I have quoted the President’s statement at length, as it authoritatively encapsulated the weaknesses of Israel’s political structure that the Commission was given the task of grappling with. After months of deliberations, its final report was handed on 1st January 2007 to the President, who in turn presented it – as he had promised – to the Speaker of the Knesset and the Prime Minister. In the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, its findings, conclusions and recommendations were becoming more urgent and relevant.

4. To carry weight with the public, such a report had to take a clear-cut and unified approach on the issue of how to bring about an effective and representative Knesset and a stable government. Structural recommendations based on changes to the electoral system and changes in the Knesset and Government needed to be presented in a clear, straightforward package for the public to judge them. I offered the Commission my submission for the electoral reform part of the package. I stressed that I believed that no reform would endure and no system would be accepted by the electorate in Israel unless it was anchored and based on “Single Vote, Single Ballot, Single Constituency”. Explaining the case for TR-Total Representation to the members of the Commission, I put it to them that TR is simply the good old Westminster system which has been functioning successfully for hundreds of years in its native Britain – modified and adapted to the social and political needs of Israel. Its adoption by the Knesset would avoid forays into new, untested grounds which had given rise to the debacle of the direct election of the Prime Minister.

5. Unfortunately, instead of sticking to the guidance of its mandate for clear recommendations, the Commission cast its net so wide that it lost focus in the process. Much time was wasted on reviving the debate about a Presidential versus a Parliamentary System, especially amongst the academic members. This was largely caused by the way the sub-committees were divided. Instead of there being just one committee discussing electoral reform, responsibility for this basic issue was spread between three sub-committees. This was bound to result in divergent views that Commission Chairman Professor Megidor, a clear thinking physicist found hard to reconcile.

6. Whatever its value to students of political science and government, this long and hard-fought debate seemed to me to be irrelevant and unnecessary in the context of the Commission’s terms of reference. In the heat of the battle raging between the sub-committees, the protagonists forgot a fact that they should have understood: the two examples par excellence of the presidential and parliamentary systems – the USA and the UK respectively – both draw on the same theoretical background of John Locke, Montesquieu etc. The essence of both systems is representation of the people, and a government that is subject to checks and balances.

7. The Commission was also sidetracked into trying to find a system that would produce a strong leader, which is what they believed – rightly – the public was clamouring for. But why did they ignore the fact that the powers of the British Prime Minister actually exceed those of the US President? Israel’s Prime Minister lacks power because he/she lacks solid parliamentary backing. Professor Doron, despite his passion for a presidential system for Israel, was aware of the sterility of concentrating on the label rather than the content: he suggested a solution based on a strengthened parliamentary system based on the internal reform of the parties and consolidating their cohesion thus giving more stability to the Knesset and in turn the government. I believe that, irrespective of the recommendations of the Commission, the Doron Solution will be the one that both the public and the Knesset will eventually go for – but only after reform of the electoral system.

8. Another way in which the Commission became sidetracked was in debates on how to reach recommendations that would satisfy and be acceptable to politicians. This was further complicated by some members fighting for their own narrow political affiliation, instead of grappling with the whole spectrum of party political platforms. This was, of course, the wrong approach to the issues, because suddenly we found ourselves seeing things from the point of view of a 3,000-strong political establishment, rather than minding the interests of 3,000,000 voters. It is, after all, these last who will ultimately push for and force the Knesset to legislate for an electoral system that guarantees direct elections of individual members of the Knesset who can be directly held accountable to their constituents. And it was this element of accountability that the President stressed most in his brief. The ultimate outcome of this confusion resulted in the final report missing this cardinal ingredient in its recommendations.

9. From my perspective as a member of the Commission, I had to contend with yet another tug-of-war on electoral reform, between academic advocates who favoured Proportional Representation at all costs, and others who pushed for the regional or constituency principle. And the compositional mix of the membership did not help us converge. The blunt black-and-white views of army ex-generals and the legalistic argumentation of ex-senior judges clashed with the “on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other” style of the 33 senior professors who were members of the Commission. And all this debate was often conducted in a very theoretical fashion – with less emphasis on what was suitable for the specific conditions of Israel’s society and its population-mix.

10. In the end I managed to get the message across to my colleagues in the Commission that in choosing an electoral system, we should not only aim for the best in theory, but also aim for what was most suitable to answer the basic problems facing Israel today. These problems are: a fragmented Knesset, unstable coalitions, a failure to draw our Jewish tribes together and, above all, to integrate our minorities, Arabs and religious Haredi Jews into the mainstream of our political and social life. We have to contend with the combination of all four problems when reforming the PR system that has sharpened and sustained the divisions in the country. Electoral reform is a powerful systemic tool that can help social convergence in the long run. Such structural systemic change in Israel can only endure if it takes account of all these problems together.

11. For years, the PR system has not only done little to solve the socio-political problems of the country; it has actually helped to sharpen and perpetuate them. In 1948, Israel adopted its present system by default. The Pre-Mandate Jewish Agency needed it to ensure representation for the whole mosaic of ideologies and religious sectarianism that characterised the Jewish people inside and outside Israel. The system played havoc in the post-independence period, and ever since has continued to rot Israeli society and fray the fabric of its politics. The merits of Proportional Representation are not inconsiderable – but in practice it is a system that has been proven to create and sustain instability in government after government. A succession of opinion polls have produced the same answer: people say they want a strong leader. Maybe they yearn for the good old days when, with his towering personality, Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, provided such leadership. But, for all his sterling qualities as a great leader and despite his efforts to play the democratic game, Ben Gurion was and acted as a benevolent dictator in the circumstances of those days – and the country loved it! The world has changed since then, and Israel desperately needs to change too. Today, the PR system is actually weakening the internal cohesion of the country and preventing its government from governing in the national interest. Tinkering around the edges will only make things worse and create a breakdown of the people’s trust in their political institutions. For instance, those who aim at disenfranchising segments of the electorate in order to achieve stability by raising the blocking threshold percentage to five per cent or more, are playing with explosive fire in the segmented Israeli society. It is paradoxical that the very principle of representation in PR needs blocking thresholds which denies representation to the voters who are blocked out.

12. To ensure a stable governments and efficient governance, the introduction of any new electoral system needs to be supplemented by structural changes and regulations relating to the internal working of the Knesset and the government. These are also needed for another reason: to prevent the rejection of the parliamentary system by the people in favour of a narrow, restrictive presidential system. The most important of these changes centres on the cohesion of political factions in the Knesset, and the tenure of the Prime Minister – the manner of his/her appointment and dismissal and his right to appoint some Ministers from outside the Knesset (albeit subject to hearings and confirmation in parliament). However, this series of issues was dealt with by other sub-committees of the Commission; as a result, the crowded agenda of the Commission and its deliberations became even more disjointed, and it made it very difficult for the Chairman to concentrate on the core issue of electoral reform in isolation.

13. The whole purpose of the President’s Commission was to find an alternative to Proportional Representation. My presentation of TR as an alternative provoked many reactions in the Commission, some positive and supportive, others negative and hostile. Zeev Segal, a notable professor of Law at Tel Aviv University, told the Commission that TR represented new thinking because it took care of the losers, which was its innovative approach. Thus he hit on one of the essences of the concept of compensation in TR: i.e allowing the voices of voters who did not manage to win seats for their candidates still to be represented in the final outcome of the election (albeit with lesser weight) – thus bringing all voters by proxy inside the sovereign tent of parliament.

14. Prof Doron, on the centre-left, Mr Yoash Tsidon Chatto, on the centre-right, and Mr Jamal Majadle, a member of the Commission who provided the Israeli Arab perspective, never wavered in their support for TR and kept its caravan on the road throughout. On the other hand, Professor Naomi Chazan, the chairman of a sub-committee, led many members of the Commission in fighting tooth-and-nail for preserving the status quo of pure PR. Belonging to the Meretz Party, a splinter Labour group in the Knesset, it was obvious that her narrow interest in its independent survival took precedence over her better academic judgement. In the end, she lost the battle of ideas and – together with a few of her supporters in the Commission – refused to sign the final report.

15. Professor Kaniel of the Hebrew University sought a solution in some mathematical formula based on De Hondt. He could not be convinced that none of the Commission members, let alone the general public, could fathom its intricacies. Professor Brichta of Haifa University, on the other hand, produced a challenging but clear and readable alternative to TR. He claimed that TR did not accurately translate the results of the elections into seats in the Knesset. He said that Israel was a sectarian and divided society and the new system needed to reflect this pluralism. He further assumed that a reform that took the representation of small parties out of the Knesset could not recruit their present MKs to support TR and would therefore be doomed – or if it succeeded, it would drive them underground, on to the streets and squares outside. But where does Professor Brichta’s point lead him? He could not see that he was in fact negating the very purpose of setting up the Commission. Moreover instead of healing the division in search of unity his proposals sought to perpetuate them.

16. The whole purpose of the President’s Commission was to find an alternative to PR, not to find new tools to confirm its validity. How can the core PR principle of proportionality of votes be changed whilst being preserved? Advocates of adhering to proportionality of votes in order to convert them into seats seem to miss the whole point of correcting PR. What, then, is the use of modifying PR when all they are proposing is to gain on the swings what they are prepared to lose on the roundabouts? I believe that the reason behind their obstinacy is rigid theoretical thinking based on old theories which seek authority in antiquity. But innovations can only come about when the past is studied critically and respected, and used not to obstruct but rather to pave the way for new thinking based on new situations on the ground. With the final report leaning to a great degree to the principles of TR, Professor Brichta too ended up refusing to sign it.

17. It was obvious that Professor Megidor, the Commission Chairman, was torn between the two camps of the TR and PR systems. Shimon Shetreet, Professor of Law and a brilliant biblical scholar, mild in manner and conciliatory in tone, recommended a compromise composite recommendation. Fatigue set in, and the Chairman of the Commission, in his final report on electoral reform, accepted the compromise, which is basically a modified version of TR, but opting for multi-member instead of single-member constituencies. Thus he confirmed the main principle of TR: i.e. to elect the candidate and his/her party with one vote, using one ballot paper. Together with the majority of other members, I signed with alacrity, knowing full well that the next stage – sooner rather than later – would be to fight to change the multi-members constituencies to single-member ones.

18. It is incredible that it escaped those who helped the Chairman to write his conclusions that they missed the central requirement of the President’s brief and the Commission’s own self-imposed guidelines: i.e. to embody the principle of accountability of the MK to his/her constituents. This is what the Chairman stated in his preamble to his report:
The Commission examined several voting systems within the framework of the following principles:
The need to boost the accountability of elected representatives to voters.
The need to foster stability by encouraging the formation of larger political blocs.
The need to maintain a reasonable level of representation, especially for minority groups.

19. Indeed, Professor Gideon Doron asked, in a penetrating commentary published by the Citizens’ Empowerment Centre in Israel (CECI) in the wake of the publication of the Final Report: who in a multi-member constituency (as recommended by the Report) is accountable to his/her constituents in order to hold him/her accountable and therefore punishable in the next election? The answer to this question challenged those members of the Knesset who set out to implement the Commission’s recommendation. Senior MKs representing the three biggest parties – Kadima, Labour and Likud – tabled a Draft Law in the Knesset on 2nd April 2008. It replaced multi-member constituencies with single-member ones, and thus incorporated all the principles of TR. The next chapter is an attempt to correct in time the deficiencies of this Draft which chose a ratio of 60/60 instead of the 90/30 ratio of CMPs and PMPs recommended by TR.

20. The following is the official summary of the Final Report that the tabled draft adopted in parts:
The System of Knesset Elections
The Commission believes that the system of Knesset elections should be changed to encourage the formation of large political blocs and greater accountability to constituents; i.e., giving greater weight to personalities in the electoral process. At the same time, the Commission believes a reasonable degree of representation must be maintained.
To counterbalance these two requirements, the Commission recommends the following changes:
1. Half the number of MKs, (i.e. 60) will be elected from national lists, the current practice.
2. The other 60 MKs will be elected from 17 constituencies as per the (Ministry of the Interior) breakdown into districts and sub-districts; the number of representatives per constituency will vary according to voter population (in practical terms, this means two to five representatives per constituency….
3. To encourage party consolidation, voters will vote in a single ballot for both regional representatives and a national list (In other words, voters will not be able to split their ballots).
4. To correct somewhat the distortions of proportional representation resulting from regional divisions, there will be a compensatory mechanism to transfer party votes “lost” in regional elections to that party’s national list in order to strengthen it. (The proposed mechanism is described in detail in the full report below).
5. To some extent, voters will be able to determine the composition of the national and/or regional list/s by preferential votes (The mechanism of which is elaborated in the full report).
The election threshold will be raised to 2.5% of the valid ballots in national elections or to party victory in at least three separate constituencies in regional elections.

Aharon Nathan, 1st July 2008