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Members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, seemed to be taken by surprise when Deputy David Rotem (from Likud Beytenu, the main governing coalition), chairman of the law commission, got on stage to defend his proposal for a political reform. Even allies were caught off guard that May afternoon.
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The three main items of his amendment affect the institutional structure. The first extends from 45 to 100 days the time that the administration has to approve the national budget, extending the scope for the application of government measures without legislative seal.
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The second establishes a minimum of 61 signatures, from a total of 120 representatives, for a motion of mistrust against the Prime Minister to be voted on the parliament. In practice, it removes the power of the minority to discuss, even inside a parliamentary system, the administration’s continuation.
The third increases from 2% to 4% the barrier clause, i.e., the minimum number of votes that a party must have to fill parliamentary seats. The application of this rule would remove all Arab and left-wing parties from the Knesset, for example, because historically none of them reaches that number of votes. Even small right-winged parties would be affected.
The speeches and complaints from irate coreligionists have not changed Rotem’s proposal, supported by the pro-government parties. The reform was approved, at first reading, by 51-43 votes. To be validated, however, it will have to be endorsed by the committee chaired by the proponent himself and voted twice more in plenary. What Rotem seems to seek, after all, is to deepen stability mechanisms in a country cut by ethnic and social tensions. But many were frightened.
Reaction
“This reform is a mark of Cain on Likud’s forehead,” said the former president of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, himself a member of the ruling coalition, and who violated its discipline to vote against the measure. “This project represents the destruction of democracy. The minority will have no right of action and some society voices will be expelled from the Knesset. “
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“Reform is a mark of Cain on Likud’s forehead,” said the former president of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin
The toughest reaction, however, came from the opposition. “This proposal is brutal, hypocritical, dictatorial,” said the Labor Party leader, Shelly Yacimovich. “Is this a joke? If we had 61 deputies on our side, we would form our own government!”
The Meretz party, a Zionist left-wing party which could also be cut off after the reform, also reacted through their leader, deputy Zehava Gal-On: “The Netanyahu's office is killing Israeli democracy. “
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The communist Dov Khenin, of Jewish origin, one of four members elected to the Knesset by the Haddash front (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, led by Maki, the Israeli Communist Party) tries to give a more comprehensive explanation of the measures proposed by the majority of the Likud Beytenu coalition. “The Zionist right is frightened by the growth of social protests and the risk of a bigger Palestinian resistance inside Israel and in the occupied territories”, he analyzes. “Minorities need to lose institutional expression so that they don´t become the voices of popular and national struggles.”
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Shelly Yacimovich, Labor Party leader in the israeli parliament: “proposal is brutal, hypocritical, dictatorial”
The last poll in Tel Aviv in 2008 demonstrated that the strengthening of the alliance between the non-Zionist left and the dissident sections of official Judaism is possible. Khenin himself ran for mayor and won 34.3% of the votes, though he was defeated by Ron Huldai, who had 50.3% of the votes, and was supported by all right-wing and center parties. Even though this result does not affect Likud’s and its parties’ national hegemony, which won again in 2009 and 2013, the communist parliamentary did not lose optimism.
“We are living the contradictions of a State which was constituted as a democracy only for Jews, not for all citizens,” he says. “The nationalist escalade which is even discriminatory against Palestinians-Israelis is not a sign of strength, but an attempt to use the ethnic-national defense speech to circumvent social discontent among the Jewish workers.”
Palestinian issue
Khenin’s analysis also incorporates the policy’s effects for the occupied territories. The deputy – a defender of the two-state solution, one of Jewish majority and another ruled by the Palestinians, with Israel’s immediate withdrawal to pre-1967 borders – believes that the current situation can be classified as “colonialist”. The maintenance of this model, in his opinion, makes strong pressure on democracy.
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Dov Khenin, communist parliamentary: “The Zionist right is frightened by the growth of social protests”
“Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are entitled to vote, but not the West Bank Palestinians, who are living in an apartheid regime”, he accuses. “If there is no withdrawal of troops and settlements, and the delivery of the area to the Palestinian Authority, the political system will continue to be increasingly authoritarian, because almost half of the population, between the western shore of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, is composed by Palestinians”.
The government rejects this interpretation. The right-wing members of the parliament insist on arguing that their movements respond only to questions of security or administrative stability; they are not a segregation doctrine nor are they trying to gradually break the conception that the State of Israel should be a Jewish democracy.
What Khenin and others question, however, is whether this dual condition can survive without full recognition of the national minorities’ collective rights and without a definitive agreement leading to Palestinian statehood. “The threats are obvious, but we will defend every inch of our space inside the institutions,” says the deputy. “The right to Jewish self-determination cannot be converted into a toolbox against other people and against democracy itself,” he protests.
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli