The 2013 Israeli elections and historic recurrences

Abstract

The 2013 election campaign in Israel shows, at first glance, some unanticipated results and unexpected reactions of several political actors. Three events in particular can be noted: (1) the rise of a significant centrist middle-class party; (2) the association of the newly elected right-wing Prime Minister with his left-wing rivals; and (3) the revival of a national religious party after years of decline. A broad overview, however, reveals that from many perspectives numerous key elements of Israeli politics have remained broadly the same over the decades. Some unanticipated outcomes of the elections are to a substantial extent repetitions of past events, referred to in this paper as historic recurrences. In order to establish this claim about historic recurrence, each event is compared to past events with which several striking similarities are found. In order to explain the phenomenon of historic recurrence in Israeli politics, two sets of concepts are applied: the sociological terminology regarding reference group and collective identity, and rational choice theories about voter behaviour and the preferences of political actors.

Keywords::

• Israeli elections
• historic recurrence
• collective identity
• political change
• partisan politics

Notes

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^3. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram (New York: Ballantine Books, 1958), 168–83.

^4. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (New York: New York Review Books, 1977), 273–534.

^5. See Yediot Ahronoth, January 23, 2013.

^6. See Ma'ariv, January 23, 2013.

^7. See the political platform of Yesh Atid on the party's website: http://yeshatid.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/yeshatid_platform.pdf

^8. Ecclesiastes 1:9, King James Bible version.

^9. Abraham Diskin, The Last Days in Israel: Understanding the New Israeli Democracy (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 55–67.

^10. See the political platform of Shinui in the website archive of the IDI (Israel Democracy Institute): http://www.idi.org.il/media/393952/shinuy%209.pdf

^11. Jonathan Mendilow, Ideology,Party Change and Electoral Campaigns in Israel, 1965–2001 (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2003), 39–64; Rafael Medoff and Chaim Waxman, Historical Dictionary of Zionism (New York: Routledge, 2000), 61–3; Moshe Lissak, The Elites of the Jewish Community in Palestine [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, Israel: Am Oved, 1981), 162–7; Binyamin Neuberger, Government and Politics – the Parties in Israel [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Open University, 1997), 95–102; Yaniv Ben Uzi, “Let Us Live Here in This Country! The General Zionist Party, 1949–1952” [in Hebrew], Kathedra 127 (2008): 141–68.

^12. Asaf Carmel, “Journalist and Outspoken Former Justice Minister Yosef Lapid Dies Aged 77,” Ha'aretz, June 2, 2008.

^13. Samuel Willard Crompton, Ariel Sharon (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007), 48–55, 94–9.

^14. For a full review of the connection between the two parties during the 1980s and 1990s see Arye Dayan, The Story of Shas (Jerusalem: Keter, 1998). For accounts of the demographic and ideological closeness of the potential voters of the two parties see Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 1984 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 1988 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 1992 (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1995); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 1996 (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1999); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 1999 (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2002); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 2001 (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2002); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 2003 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2005); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 2006 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2008); Asher Arian and Michal Shamir, eds., The Elections in Israel – 2009 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2010).

^15. A basic coalition of 61 seats could be made by Likud–Israel Beitenu – 31 seats; Jewish Home – 12 seats; Shas – 11 seats; United Torah Judaism – seven seats.

^16. Neta Oren, The Israeli Ethos of Conflict 1967–2006 (Arlington, VA: George Mason University, 2009).

^17. Neot Sinai was a Herut-affiliated settlement in the north-eastern part of the Sinai Peninsula, and Begin's declaration was immediately equated to Ben Gurion's 1953 decision to make Sde Boker, in the desert, his retirement home and keeping his membership in that Kibbutz even when he returned to office.

^18. Elon Moreh was a settlement in Samaria that was evicted again and again on legal grounds ever since 1974. The struggle became a symbolic one and before certain concessions were made about the exact location of the settlement Begin gave this well-known declaration. See Begin's exact declaration concerning some of its impacts in Arnon Lamprom, ed., Chaim Herzog The Sixth President: Documentation, 1918–1997 (Jerusalem, Israel: State Archive, 2009), 348.

^19. Diskin, The Last Days in Israel, 55–67.

^20. Once Dayan accepted Begin's offer and joined his government, he was expelled from the Labour party. Two years later he resigned his post because of disagreements with Begin concerning the Palestinian issue. See Yael Dayan, My Father, His Daughter (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985), 174–85.

^21. Several newspapers crowned Naftali Bennett as the great surprise of the election campaign. See for example correspondent Harriet Sherwood, who referred to Bennett as ‘the surprise star’ in an interview with him in the Guardian, January 7, 2013; correspondent Ari Shavit, who called Bennett ‘the big surprise’ in an interview with him in Ha'aretz, December 28, 2012; Likud MK Danny Danon, who in an interview by Robert Tait calls the Jewish Home ‘the surprise package’ in the Telegraph, January 20, 2013.

^22. The Jewish Home, Habait Hayehudi, will be referred to henceforth as Mafdal, using the name of the historic party from which it originally emerged.

^23. The chronology of Mafdal electoral achievements: from 1957 to 1977 – 10–12 seats in each campaign; 1981 – six seats; 1984 – four seats; 1988 – five seats; 1992 – six seats; 1996 – nine seats; 1999 – five seats; 2003 – six seats; 2006 – three seats; 2009 – three seats; 2013 – 12 seats.

^24. Ayelet Shaked, a self-declared secularist who became the first secular MK of a religious party.

^25. The quotations are taken from the reports about his death and burial ceremonies in Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1999.

^26. Gerald Steinberg, “Take the Rabbis Out of Politics,” Jerusalem Post, July 3, 1998.

^27. For a full account of the entire process see Yehuda Ben Meir, The Rise and Fall of the Mafdal [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2008); Ofer Kenig, Farewell to Mafdal [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2008); Nadav Perry, “Naftali Bennett Brings New Start for Israel's National Religious Party,” Al-Monitor, January 20, 2013. Cited in: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/contents/articles/opinion/2013/05/a-new-beginning-for-the-national-religious-party.html#

^28. Pamela Johnston Conover and Stanley Feldman, “Group Identification, Values and the Nature of Political Beliefs,” American Politics Quarterly 12 (1984): 151–75; Ann B. Bettencourt and Deborah Hume, “The Cognitive Contents of Social Group Identity: Values, Emotions, and Relationships,” Journal of Social Psychology 29 (1999): 113–21; Patrick C.L. Heaven, “Group Identities and Human Values,” Journal of Social Psychology 139 (1999): 190–95.

^29. Geoffrey L. Cohen, “Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 5 (2003): 808–22.

^30. Michael S. Lewis-Beck, William G. Jacoby, Helmut Norpoth, and Herbert F. Weisberg, The American Voter Revisited (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008); Bernd Simon and Bert Klandermans, “Politicized Collective Identity: A Social Psychological Analysis,” American Psychologist 56 (2001): 319–31.

^31. Leonie Huddy, “From Group Identity to Political Cohesion and Commitment,” in Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack Levy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 511–43.

^32. Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburden Polity of Israel (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1989); Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel, Vol. 2: Change and Continuity in Mutual Intolerance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992); Sammy Smooha, “Class, Ethnic and National Cleavages and Democracy in Israel,” in Israeli Democracy under Stress, ed. Ehud Sprinzak and L. Diamond (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993).

^33. Yinon Cohen and Yitzhak Haberfeld, “Second-Generation Jewish Immigrants in Israel: Have the Ethnic Gaps in Schooling and Earnings Declined?,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998): 507–28.

^34. Majid Al-Haj and Eli Leshem, Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel – Ten Years Later: A Research Report (Haifa: University of Haifa, Center for Multiculturalism and Educational Research, 2000); Moshe Lissak and Eli Leshem, “The Russian Intelligentsia in Israel: Between Ghettoization and Integration,” Israel Affairs 2, no. 2 (2000): 20–36.

^35. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, “The Faces of Religiosity in Israel: Cleavages or Continuum?,” Israel Studies 6 (2008): 94–120; Daniel J. Elazar, “The 1981 Elections: Into the Second Generation of Statehood,” in Israel at the Polls, 1981, ed. Howard R. Penniman and Daniel J. Elazar (Washington, DC: Indiana University Press, 1986).

^36. Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).

^37. Daphna Canetti-Nisim, Eran Zaidise, and Ami Pedahzur, “Militant Attitudes among Israelis throughout the al-Aqsa Intifada,” Palestine–Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 11, no. 3/4 (2005): 104–11.

^38. Michal Shamir and Asher Arian, “Collective Identity and Electoral Competition in Israel,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (1999): 265–77.

^39. Baruch Kimmerling, The End of Ashkenazi Hegemony [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House Ltd, 2001).

^40. This argument was established by Downs. See Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). Arguments of rational choice theories have also been validated by studies based on work of the Manifesto Research Group that collected data about the dynamics of partisan political principles in 25 different countries over a period of 50 years. The time-span of the study was 1945–1998. The 25 countries are all Western democracies complemented with the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Turkey and Israel. The total number of parties covered in the dataset is 288, and it covers 364 different national elections. For a full account of the Manifesto Research Group's data collection see Ian Budge and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, “Finally! Comparative Over-Time Mapping of Party Policy Movement,” in Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments 1945–1998, eds. Ian Budge et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19–50.

^41. David Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition (New York: Wiley, 1976).

^42. Ian Budge, “A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Spatially,” British Journal of Political Science 24, no. 4 (1994): 443–67.

^43. Ian Budge and Judith Bara, “Manifesto-Based Research: A Critical Overview,” in Mapping Policy Preferences (see note 40), 51–73.

^44. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention. How Government Prioritizes Attention (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

^45. Bryan D. Jones, Tracy Sulkin, and Heather A. Larsen, “Policy Punctuations in American Political Institutions,” American Political Science Review, 97, 1 (2003): 151–69.

^46. Jones and Baumgartner, The Politics of Attention. How Government Prioritizes Attention.

^47. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Robert Hofferbert, and Ian Budge, Parties, Policies and Democracy (Oxford: Westview, 1994); Michael McDonald, Ian Budge, and Paul Pennings, “Choice versus Sensitivity: Party Reactions to Public Concerns,” European Journal of Political Research 43, no. 6 (2004): 845–68.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eyal Lewin

Eyal Lewin is assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science at Ariel University, and a research fellow at the Dan Shomron Kinneret Centre for Peace, Security and Society.