Guilain Denoeux and Jonathan Fox

Dr. Denoeux is an associate professor of government at Colby College.
He is pleased to acknowledge the support of Colby's Interdisciplinary
Grants Committee in making his research in Israel possible. Mr. Fox is a
commentator on Israeli affairs.

In the early morning hours of May 30,
1996, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres went to bed comforted by tele-
vision exit polls giving him a narrow
lead over his Likud challenger Binyamin
Netanyahu. When he awakened several
hours later, his lead had evaporated and
Netanyahu had become the projected
winner. The election may have been de-
cided by a mere 29,457 votes, but its im-
plications were enormous. Shocked ob-
servers everywhere witnessed not only the
upset in the race for prime minister, but
also nothing less than a revolution in the
race for the Knesset. Small parties repre-
senting religious Jews, Russian immigrants
and Israeli Arabs had gained considerable
ground at the expense of Labor and
Likud, and the Knesset was more frag-
mented than ever.

A few days earlier, as Israelis prepared
to vote, the elections were being described
as a defining moment in the history of the
Jewish state and the entire region. As the
first general elections in Israel since the
Rabin-Arafat handshake, they could be
seen as a referendum on the Israeli pub-
lic's faith in the Oslo formula. A victory
for Shimon Peres and his Labor party
would be interpreted as a popular en-
dorsement of this process. By contrast,
many analysts believed that electoral suc-
cess for Binyamin Netanyahu and his
Likud party would fatally undermine the
diplomatic breakthroughs achieved since
1993. As significant in the long run was
what the vote would reveal about under-
lying trends in Israeli politics. Would it
confirm or invalidate the proposition that
the previous elections, which had brought
to power a Labor-dominated alliance led
by Yitzhak Rabin, had also signaled the
emergence of a "Third Israeli Repub-
lic"? ¹ Finally, how would the new rules
under which these elections were to be
conducted play themselves out? Instead of
merely electing the Knesset, as they had
done in all previous general elections, Is-
raelis were for the first time to cast two
votes: one for a party in the Knesset and
another one for the premier. Introduced
with the intention of enhancing the inde-
pendence and authority of the prime
minister's office, the direct election of the
premier raised the prospect of interesting
post-election scenarios -- including the
possibility of a prime minister facing a
set dominated by a coalition of par-
ties inimical to his policies. The new
electoral rules were also expected to affect
the campaign itself, which would now
consist of two separate but interrelated
races: the traditional one among parties,
and a new one between two or more indi-
viduals.

The full significance of the recent Israeli
elections can only be understood if they
are seen in the context of the three main
phases through which Israeli politics has
passed. The first phase began with the
creation of the state in 1948 and lasted
until 1977. During that period, Mapai

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