Kadima's Disingenuous Posturing

Yesterday’s Knesset vote on the so-called “Mofaz Law” marked a black day for Israeli democracy.

The law as passed allows any group of 7 members of Knesset to break away from their party and form an independent faction in the Knesset, or join another party. Until now, that could be done only if one-third of the faction’s members broke away. The new law makes it easier for members of larger Knesset factions to break away and further splinter the political structure of the Knesset. It is named for Kadima MK Shaul Mofaz, whom Prime Minister Netanyahu believes would be interested in leaving Kadima for the Likud with 6 other Kadima MKs, but not the 10 that would be needed to achieve one-third of the faction.

Israel’s form of parliamentary representation is very problematic to be sure. Members of Knesset are elected based on their placement on a national list of party members, and not based on the will of a particular constituency of voters. In effect, voters vote for a party, not for a particular representative, and the members of Knesset owe their allegiance to the party that places them high enough on the list to enter the Knesset, rather than to the voters who make up Israel’s population. The result is that there is no direct accountability of any member of Knesset to any definable group of voters, and the voters’ interests are thereby not the overriding factor in the MK’s decisions.

But the “Mofaz Law” weakens the democratic nature of Israel’s system even further. Now, a person can be elected on the slate of one party, and then break away from that party and its platform much more easily than he or she could beforehand. It is now much more likely that my vote will not necessarily result in my chosen platform being represented in the Knesset.

But let us take a step back. This vote took place on the fourth anniversary of the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Shomron. We must remember that the expulsion took place against the decided will of the majority of Israeli voters, and against the stated policies of the governing party at the time.

The 2003 election featured Likud leader Ariel Sharon against Labor leader Amram Mitzna. Mitzna’s stated policy was to expel the residents of these communities in a unilateral gesture in the hope that the Gaza Strip would magically become a peaceful society living in cooperation with Israel. Sharon countered that policy with the statement, “The destiny of Netzarim is the destiny of Tel Aviv.”

Sharon won a huge victory in the election, with double the number of seats that Mitzna was able to achieve. Within less than nine months, Sharon himself introduced Mitzna’s policy as his own and began plans to destroy the homes and communities of 10,000 Jews in Israel.

In May 2004, Sharon’s own Likud party members voted in a nation-wide party referendum to oppose the expulsion plan. That vote should have prevented the Likud party from supporting the plan, and it should have thereby killed the plan completely. But Sharon chose to ignore the wishes of his own voters. He relied on the fact that his members of Knesset did not have to worry about the wishes of the Likud voters, but were more concerned about their own position within the party. He also fired three of his cabinet ministers and accepted the resignations of two others. Three of these five ministers were from his own party. Their votes against the expulsion would have prevented it from taking place. But in order to save his own political future, Sharon completely did away with all form of democratic procedure and rammed his policy through the Knesset over the objections of his own party and his own cabinet.

Many of the members of the Likud rebelled against Sharon’s position, and though he did manage to pass and execute the expulsion of these Jewish communities from their homes, the rebel Likud MKs gained in strength. Three months after the expulsion, Sharon himself used the one-third rule to bring a significant number of Likud MKs who supported his policies out of the party, and formed an independent faction he named Kadima. Shaul Mofaz was one of those MKs who left with Sharon and is now in a position to mount a serious bid for Kadima’s leadership. Mofaz himself condemned the passage of the “Mofaz Law” and continues to insist that he has no desire to return to the Likud.

But what is most disingenuous about the entire sordid affair is the statement issued by the Kadima party following yesterday’s passage of the bill: “The Likud splinter law passed and with it the message that Netanyahu is a weak prime minister who needs to threaten his ministers in order to ensure his political survival.”

To be perfectly clear, the “Mofaz Law” is a bad idea. It further dilutes Israeli democratic representation and further distances the voter from the policies that govern this country.

But that having been said, my question to the Kadima party is why they think what Netanyahu did is so bad. After all, the Kadima party itself was created through exactly the same kind of moves they are accusing Netanyahu of. Only when Kadima did it, four years ago this week, the results were far more disastrous.