Michal Shamir - The Elections in Israel 2006

The Elections in Israel

2006

Published in cooperation with the Israel Democracy Institute.

The Israel Democracy Institute is an independent, non-partisan body on the seam of academia and politics. The Institute plans policy and devises reforms for government and public administration agencies, and for the institutions of democracy.

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TranslatorDorothea Shefer-Vanson

Language Editor (English)Rachel Wind Wiesen

Language Editor (Hebrew)Iris Avner

The Elections in Israel

2006

Edited by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir

First published 2008 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2007039347

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The elections in Israel, 2006 / Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, editors.

p. cm.

Published in cooperation with the Israel Democracy Institute.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7658-0388-7 (alk. paper)

1. ElectionsIsraelHistory. 2. Israel. KnessetElections, 2006. 3. IsraelPolitics and government21st century. I. Arian, Asher. II. Shamir, Michal, 1951- III. The Israel Democracy Institute.

JQ1830.A95E435 2008

324.95694054dc22

2007039347

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0388-7 (hbk)

Contents

Asher Arian and Michal Shamir

Michal Shamir, Raphael Ventura, Asher Arian, and Orit Kedar

Paul R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich, Andr Blais, Daniel Lee, and Renan Levine

Shas Transformation to Likud with Kippa?
A Comparative Assessment of the Moderation of Religious Parties

Sultan Tepe and Roni Baum

Viacheslav Konstantinov

Michael Philippov

Elie Rekhess

Gideon Rahat

Jonathan Mendilow

Doron Navot

Media Coverage of the 2006 Campaign: The Needs and
Attitudes of the Public vis--vis the Functioning of the News Media

Gabriel Weimann, Yariv Tsfati, and Tamir Sheafer

Nir Atmor

Our sincere thanks to Edna Granit, Anat Bernstein, and Nadav Shtechman for their generous help in the production process, to Dorothea Shefer-Vanson for her translation, to Rachel Wind Wiesen for her editorial work, to Amnon Lahad, who provided the drawing of the Knesset building at the age of 11 in 1971, to Daphne Kanellopoulos for her work in producing the English version, to Adi Livny for constructing the index, to the scholars who agreed to review anonymously the articles submitted to this volume, and to Tel Aviv Universitys Alvin Z. Rubinstein Chair of Political Science for its financial support.

A. A.

M. S.

Asher Arian and Michal Shamir

Several dramatic events preceded the elections to the Seventeenth Knesset on March 28, 2006, beginning with the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005 and its attendant and unprecedented removal of Jewish settlements and settlers, followed by major shifts among and within the various political parties. Most dramatic was the split in Likud when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to form a new party, Kadima, leading to the breakup of the Likud party that Sharon had formed in 1973. Both Labor and Likud found themselves with new leadersAmir Peretz and Binyamin Netanyahuand with depleted ranks. Shinui, a party that had soared in 2003 under the leadership of Tommy Lapid, but whose second-tier activists soured on the leadership and ruptured it three years later, imploded before the elections. And Sharon, prime minister since 2001, succumbed to a stroke soon after he had formed Kadima and arranged for elections to be held at the end of March 2006. He was succeeded by his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

However, despite the preponderance of dramatic events, the Israeli electorate was not enthusiastic, and voted at the lowest rate ever in Knesset elections. There were indications that this would occur from polls taken prior to the elections, yet its actual occurrence firmly established that Israel joined the trend of declining electoral participation evidenced in other industrialized democracies.

The elections resulted in a clear winner, Kadima (see table 1). It obtained less votes than expected based on pre-election polls, but still outdistanced the other parties with its 29 seats in the Knesset, followed by Labor, its closest competitor with only 19 members of Knesset (MKs). Olmert formed a coalition government supported by 67 members of the 120-person Knesset with Labor (19), Shas (12), and the new Pensioners party (7), and presented it to the Knesset on May 4, 2006. With no party achieving a decisive majority, the overall fragmentation of the Knesset increased; it reached levels of party volatility not witnessed since the 1977 realignment. The legal threshold for representation in the Knesset elections was raised from 1.5 to 2 percent of the valid votes before these elections, and the smallest party to win representation was Balad with 2.3 percent of the vote. In all, 12 parties are represented in the Seventeenth Knesset.

Table 1
Results of the 2006 Knesset Electionsa