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4. Israeli Courts and Cultural Adaptation
- State University of New York Press
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4. Israeli Courts and Cultural j\daptation Samuel Krislov Martin Edelman Courts, Politics and Culture in Israel (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1994), I @n the summer of 1994, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that two members of the Knesset, who had broken with the party they had been elected to represent, could not become cabinet ministers or deputies. This was an interpretation of a Basic Law: Knesset proviSion. (The subject matter of Basic-Laws is a sort of constitution in parts, enacted to fill the role of a document too difficult to agree upon as a single entity.) Those followers of the events who were informed enough to know that Israel nominally does not have judicial review-the po~'er to declare laws unconstitutional -might well be puzzled. One of the many virtues of Edelman's comprehensive, deft treatment in this short book is that he demystifies such issues. The Supreme Court treats the Basic Laws as higher 74 Israeli Courts and Cultural Adaptation 75 law. The sum of the Basic Laws is an almost comprehensive constitution leaving gaps and ambiguities mainly in the religious arena. Looking at realities, not labels, makes a difficult and complex system understandable. II For a small country, Israel attracts extraordinary attention. Not surprisingly, most of the work in English deals with aspects of society that are of most concern to outsidersnamely , the policy aspects of foreign relations, or the strategic position of the country in a geographically vital and resource-rich portion of the globe. Other outside concerns feed on this central interest. Social conditions-including absorption of waves of immigrants, the tensions between ethnic identities, and the religious divisiveness-are all, in significant measure, traced back to Israel's need for stability. The institutions most studied-the military, the political parties, the electorate, and the Knesset-are all vital to Israel's capacity to defend itself, and to effectively formulate foreign policy, especially in dealing with potential peace. These concerns have dominated less strategic issues, which are sometimes intriguing from an abstract point of view. Long ago, Judah Matras, an Israeli demographer, pointed out that Israel represented a remarkable transplant that, theoretically, could teach us much about social needs and constructed social roles. l One could compare, for example, the roles which immigrants had in their home countries with their new jobs in the Israeli economy, getting clues as to which roles were vital. However, no one has really attempted such a daunting task-including Matras himself. In the political sphere, the paucity of material on the prime minister's office is surprising, although this is, perhaps , for reasons of security. The scope of Michael Brecher's volume on foreign-policy decision making in Israel published in 1972, however, suggests that something else has really impeded such research.2 In fact, it is precisely in the area of defense and foreign-policy decision making that we have the best work on elite interaction, as Brecher's volume has been [18.233.223.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:06 GMT) 76 Society and Government supplemented by Yehuda Be:1. Meir's studies, based partly upon his own experience as deputy foreign minister.3 Israeli Cabinet affairs are among the most publicized in the world, but they are little analyzed. Perhaps this is because the cabinet is "a little Knesset" rather than a true executive-decision body. It is the so-called "inner cabinet" which each Prime Minister has constructed in accordance with his or her style that plays the normal role of cabinets. Local government has also been relatively neglected, perhaps because the national government has kept that level of governance on a short leash, thus, making its study seem trivial. This is changing. See Efraim Ben-Zadok's chapter in this volume, for example. Similarly, the paucity of systematic English material on law in Israel is, no doubt, part of its mundaneness, and its disconnectedness from strategic foreign affairs, which are matters of life and death for t1.e community. So, not surprisingly , a disproportionate amount of coverage of the legal order deals with Supreme Court cases on military law in the West Bank. Some wooden treatments on the Court system and stray articles of a routine sort dot the landscape. Pnina Lahav's writings are a clear exception.4 American scholars of law-when teaching or doing research in Israel-tend to devise yet another peace plan 10r the Middle East. Israeli law professors have multiple roles...