The Elections in Israel 1999

Introduction

Introduction Michal Shamir and Asher Arian The 1999 elections, held on May 17, 1999, featured two parallel races. One was for the office of the prime minister, and the second was for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). This was the second time that the rules for the simultaneous direct election of the prime minister and the selection of the Knesset based on a fixed-list proportional representation formula applied. The change in the electoral system was legislated before the 1992 elections, but was activated for the first time in 1996. The prime minister was elected under a winner-take-all system, with a second-round runoff between the two candidates with the most votes two weeks later if no candidate received a majority in the first round. The Knesset was elected as in the past, using a strict proportional representation list system with very few procedural or technical obstacles facing a group that chose to compete. The threshold for Knesset representation was 1.5 percent, in effect since 1992. In 1999 there were five candidates for prime minister a week before the election, and almost three dozen parties were running. But just before the deadline, three of the candidates for prime minister and two of the competing lists withdrew. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, elected in 1996, had been plagued with instability from the outset. The style of his rule, his inability to cooperate with other leaders of his Likud Party, such as Benny Begin and Dan Meridor, and the fragile majority he commanded in the Knesset, combined to weaken him. In addition to these, he lost support from parties of the right because of his begrudging acquiescence to pursue the path of peace outlined by the Oslo accords initiated by the slain Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu signed the Wye River Accord with Palestinian Authority Chairperson Yasser Arafat in October 1998 to the dismay of many in his right-wing coalition. 1 The opposition in the Knesset made a motion in December 1998 for early elections, originally scheduled for the end of 2000. According to the provisions of the law regulating the direct election of the prime minister, had Netanyahu been voted out of office by the Knesset, new elections for the prime minister and the Knesset would take place within sixty days. After initially opposing the move, Netanyahu finally decided to embrace the inevitable and to control the length of time available for the campaign. Netanyahu agreed to legislate early elections and the date finally agreed to was May 17, 1999, thus giving the parties and candidates six months to prepare for the showdown, rather than the two months that would have been the preference of those who drafted the legislation. Many shifts of affiliation occurred during the campaign period. One member of the Knesset, Eliezer Zandberg, actually changed his parliamentary affiliation five times, beginning with membership in the extreme right-wing Tzomet and ending up on the anticlericalist dovish Shinui list. The Center Party emerged, formed by leaders from various parties (see the chapter by Nathan Yanai, in this volume), and the Labor Party coalesced with two smaller parties to form One Israel (see the chapter by Gideon Doron, in this volume). The front-runners for the prime minister post were Netanyahu, and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. Netanyahu’s campaign used the slogan, A Strong Leader for the Future of Israel, signaling that only he could properly defend Jerusalem, and a variation on the Peace and Security slogan that brought him to power three years earlier. Netanyahu, engaged in political infighting, found himself unable to heat up the torpid campaign during the long election period. Ideological differences were muted as both candidates appealed to the center, most notably narrowed because the right-wing Netanyahu government had approved the Wye River Accord and had actually handed over some West Bank land to the Palestinian Authority. Most Israelis accepted the land-for-peace formula although differences remained regarding how much land would have to be given up. There was also a growing realization that a Palestinian state was inevitable. Ironclad ideological credos of the past were downplayed as the party dealigned because of the international political developments and the changes introduced to the electoral system (see the chapter by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, in this volume). Rather than dwell on the difficult issues of concessions in the West Bank, the future of Jerusalem, or how much of the Golan Heights should be...