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The Challenges of the 25th Knesset: Theirs and Ours

03/24/2023 04:56:33 PM

Mar24

by Rabbi Jonathan Biatch and Joanna Berke, Kesher Israel Committee chair

The 25th Knesset, elected November 1, 2022, consists of 120 representatives representing 12 political parties that all received at least 3.25% of the votes in the most recent election. In order to form a government, one political party must receive enough votes to give them one more than 50% of the Knesset (MKs). If that threshold is not met, party leaders can attempt to form coalitions representing a number of parties, if the parties and the MKs agree. (Such coalition agreements may be built on mutually beneficial ideological or practical lines; there is no norm and no legal requirement for any one party to pair with another.)

Because Likud, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, received a large number of votes in the last election and was able to convince Israel’s president that he could amass a coalition of at least 61 members, the president gave Netanyahu a “mandate” (permission with a three-week shelf life) to form a coalition government. And, indeed, he subsequently formed the current governing coalition consisting of 64 MKs representing right-wing, conservative, ultra-Orthodox, and settler-driven parties, each with their unique political and philosophical direction, each willing to provide mutual support to the other coalition partners.

Many observers report that the current government is the most politically conservative ever elected in Israel. Yet despite that government’s majority, their coalition is fragile, and they cannot afford to have even one Knesset member defect from the coalition. So, everyone must be appeased in some way.

There are at least five problematic areas where this coalition has raised the ire of liberal Israel:

  • Prioritizing Orthodox denominations by foreclosing the possibility of any egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall; forbidding non-Orthodox conversions; and amending the Law of Return to prohibit those with only one Jewish grandparent to qualify to enter Israel under the Law.
  • Eliminating outside speakers in public schools who, in the eyes of the new authority, would bring “inappropriate” materials, such as information about gender diversity and other LGBTQ matters; and eliminating the use of non-Orthodox resources for teaching about society, which is currently done by Reform and other liberal streams of Judaism.
  • Allowing the young Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men—not to mention young women—to return to studies and elect not to serve in the army or offer national service.
  • Imposing Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox curriculum materials in public schools.
  • Altering the status quo and loosening Jewish prayer restrictions on the Temple Mount, an area where exclusively Muslim worship is now permitted.

For these reasons and others, Israeli Jews have been motivated to protest in the streets since the beginning of this government.
 

May 5, 2024 27 Nisan 5784