The Decline of the Israeli Labor Party: A Preliminary Assessment

THE DECLINE OF THE ISRAELI LABOR PARTY: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT Amos Perlmutter JC or almost four decades the Labor movement, its parties and its institutions dominated the political, economic, and social life of the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine and, after its establishment in 1948, the state of Israel. The movement represented the quintessence of practical Zionism. Ideological and pragmatic, subtle and aggressive, reasonable but also militant, it unfailingly reflected the image of "beautiful and partitioned Israel." When faced with seemingly intractable problems (mainly in the international arena), it sought short-term, practical solutions. Its goals were limited by reality; never did it fling itself into the arms of radical and revisionist Zionism. Advocating the integration of Zionist nationalism and Socialist humanitarianism , the Labor movement became the demiurge of pioneer Zionism. Beginning with the agricultural collectives, it designed a unique and unparalleled social democratic system and established most, if not all, of the political, economic, and social institutions in Yishuv-Israel history. The movement was a success. Its founding fathers turned into the founders of the state. The pioneers, Socialist ideologues, and apparatchiks of the Yishuv later became Israel's political and military elite. From his small hometown of Plonsk, Poland, through the Segera collective experiment which he joined in Palestine in 1906, David Ben Gurion rose to leading positions in Histadrut and Mapai, became a Haganah chief, and was made prime minister and defense minister—all before the age of sixty. This was also true of his contemporaries and successors, Moshe Sharett, Pinchas Lavon, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Pinchas Sapir. Amos Perlmutter is a professor of political science at The American University in Washington, D.C, and editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies. His most recent book is Modern Authoritarianism, published by Yale University Press. Professor Perlmutter also teaches a course at SAIS. 67 68 SAIS REVIEW Few nationalists or political leaders in modern times have played so long and forceful a role in the creation of a social and political movement and in developing the framework of a modern state. They can be compared in this regard only to the Masaryk-Benes, Lenin-Stalin, Mao-Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Ghandi-Nehru generations. Their lives reflect a continuity that stretches from their ideological and political cradles to the pinnacle of political power and historical achievement. All were movement- and state-builders, and their legacy will withstand the vicissitudes of time. But everything comes to an end, sometime, someplace. And in Israel today we are witnessing the end of an era. The June 1981 Israeli elections represented a political, electoral, and cultural revolution. The election signaled the emergence of a new electorate and Begin's coalition government represents a new political alignment that has been building in strength for more than a decade and has gradually replaced the Socialist-Zionist center—the old progressive and nationalist alignment that dominated Israeli politics for so long. Revisionist Zionism in its Liberal-HerutGahal -Likud incarnation has emerged as the ascendant force. From the early days ofJewish self-rule in Palestine until the 1973 elections (when Labor's weakness first began to show), the Labor bloc was consistently stronger in Israeli politics than its two electoral counterparts, the center-right and religious blocs. Whereas the center-right bloc hovered at 20-25 percent of the vote between 1920 and 1959, ' the Labor bloc rose from 37 percent in 1920 to 59 percent in 1948, after which it remained comfortably above 50 percent for the next twenty years. While there was nothing especially conclusive about the 1973 elections, they were a portent. Labor lost five seats in the 120-seat Knesset that year and Likud gained nineteen—leaving the former still ahead with fifty-one seats, but the latter in a much stronger position with thirty-nine. Significantly, 1973 was also the year of the Yom Kippur war, an event referred to in Hebrew as Mehdal ("mishap") because of the Labor government's failure to preempt the Arab surprise-attack. The war was a watershed in Israeli history, and the strength of the Labor party has declined markedly since then, as the 1977 and 1981 election results demonstrate. In 1977 Labor collapsed...