Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2003 (2. évfolyam)
2003 / 1. szám - KÖZEL-KELET - Gazdik Gyula: The evolution of the Israeli party system
The evolution of the Israeli party system turnaround and the new political configuration lost ground at subsequent elections. By gaining only 32 mandates in the May 1977 it had reached the political nadir and lost the elections. For the first time since the establishment of the Israeli state, the bloc went into opposition. A combination of a range of factors, including specific „dilemmas" with respect to the 1967 war; the criticisms targeted at Labour Party policy in connection with the successes scored by the Arabs at the onset of the 1973 conflict, and the rift in the ranks of the Mai leadership - all contributed to the defeat of the Peres- led Labour Party at the elections. The party has not been able to regain its parliamentary monopoly since. As illustrated in the Table, the mandates received by the Labour Party and respectively the various groups on the same list, fluctuated ostensibly more evenly from the beginning of the 1980s. As a consequence of the framework agreements reached during the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the diverse public reaction to a subsequent treaty between Israel and Egypt with respect to the return of the Sinai Peninsula, the opposition Labour Party considerably increased its voter support in 1981. Moreover - as a result of the internal split in party rank and file that emerged after the fifth Arab-Israeli conflict in Lebanon - the Maarakh list received more votes in the 1984 elections than the Likud, the power distribution in parliament, however, forced the Mai to concede to the creation of a national unity government by involving the right wing. Consequently, the federation with the Mapam disintegrated. The Labour coalition led by Yitzhak Rabin /1922—1995/ managed to oust the Likud in 1992, but has not been able to reach this proportion of mandates since. The party's decline gathered momentum: following the murder of Rabin, the party lost 10 mandates at the spring 1996 elections. Moreover, in the 1999 early elections, the One Israel /Israel Akhat/ - comprising the list of the Labour Party and two splinter parties, the Bridge /Gesher/ and Meimad, - the Labour Party set a negative record with 23 mandates. Whereas the Labour Party received most of the votes during the course of both elections, its candidate lost the premiership elections in favour of Benjamin Netanyahu /1949-/. Accordingly, the party was back in opposition once again. As a result of the victory of Ehud Barak /1942-/ in the elections three years later, the party returned power. However, when Barak was forced to resign mid-term, the Likud candidate Ariel Sharon /1928-/ won the early elections. Sharon nominated several Labour ministers for key posts in his national unity government. The number of parliamentary mandates mirrors the decline of the Labour Party's voter support during the past decade. This is partly due to the controversies which arose with respect to the party's political commitment to the Arab-Israeli peace process. These included the September 1993 joint Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles, the October 1994 peace treaty with Jordan, the September 1995 agreement on limited Palestinian autonomy and unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 - all 2003. tavasz 39
