User:TeslaK20/Israeli Politics

The Israeli parliament is called the Knesset; it sits in Jerusalem, is unicameral and has 120 members. The Israeli electoral system is based on a party-list proportional representation with the entire country forming a single electoral district. The threshold for an electoral list to enter the Knesset was originally two percent, but it was changed to 3.25 percent in a movement led by right-wing politician Avigdor Lieberman, of the "Yisrael Beiteinu" (Israel Our Home) party. This was in order to block the several smaller Arab parties from entering the Knesset, but they simply united into one mega-party. Meanwhile, because of the new change, Lieberman's own party almost failed to enter the Knesset.

The Israeli political system is a parliamentary one in which the support of a majority of Members of Knesset (MKs) is needed in order to form a government (except for a short-lived experiment in the 1990s when the Prime Minister was elected directly by the people). After the Knesset is elected the President of Israel gives the task of forming a government to the head of the parliamentary faction whom (s)he sees as most likely to get the support of a majority of MKs, which usually though not always is also the head of the single biggest vote getting bloc. If the person chosen by the President succeeds in this task (s)he becomes Prime Minister. The term of a Prime Minister is set in law as four years, although in reality almost no government has managed to survive an entire term due to intergovernmental conflicts. Presidents in turn are elected for a seven year term by the Knesset; other than their aforementioned role in the formation of government and their authority to grant pardons to prisoners, their function is largely ceremonial.

Under current Israeli law, in order to register a party for the parliamentary elections one must receive the support of 100 sponsors, although a new parliamentary list can bypass this requirement by running in the name of a registered party which no longer actually operates. The proportional allocation of seats and the low threshold for entering the Knesset allows many political parties to gain parliamentary representation. With so many political parties it's bloody well impossible for any one of them to get a majority by itself, so most Israeli governments have been coalitions, leading to intense power struggles between and within parties, palace revolts, and split-offs. This effectively proves the "two Jews, three opinions" theory.

Parties
Israel has a whopping array of political parties. Almost all are split-offs from larger parties (in the best Jewish tradition) and many of them don't get along with each other. The parties in the current Knesset are:


 * Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu, reactionary and expansionist, but made to be less economically conservative thanks to social justice protests)
 * Zionist Union, the largest opposition entity within the current Knesset, is composed of:
 * Labour (Isaac Herzog, centre-left/social democracy),
 * Hatnuah [The Movement] (Tzipi Livni, centrist)
 * Joint List (Aymen Odeh, Arab, left-wing, two-state solution), second largest opposition entity
 * Yesh Atid [There is a Future] (Yair Lapid, centrist, liberal, populist)
 * Kulanu [All of Us] (Moshe Kahlon, center-right), part of the ruling coalition
 * HaBayit HaYehudi [The Jewish Home] (Naftali Bennet, religious party, nationalist, far-right)
 * Shas (Aryeh Deri, religious right, fundamentalist)
 * Yisrael Beiteinu [Israel Our Home] (Avigdor Lieberman, secularist, Russian, ultra-nationalist, far-right)
 * Meretz (Zehava Gal-on, left-wing, liberal Zionism, Arab-Jewish integration)
 * United Torah Judaism (Ya'akov Litzman, right-wing, religious conservatism)

There are also several joke parties, which registered and actually received the Israeli equivalent of ballot access. Perhaps the most notable is the Economy Party, run by Danny and Benny Goldstein, whose campaign ad consists of a guy

Yair Lapid
Populist leader, his center-left party generally advocates for the secularization of Israel, a liberal economic policy, and a two-state solution. Unfortunately, his ambitions to become Prime Minister have led him to stray from his original course and suck up to the religious population. In many ways, he resembles an Israeli version of Donald Drumpf, considering both were once TV personalities, entered politics, did better than expected, are populists and flip-floppers, etc. Fortunately, when it comes to their actual platforms, Lapid is very different from Drumpf.

Naftali Bennet
Also known as Bennito Naftalini, he is the most powerful racist in the Knesset, openly calling the Palestinians "shrapnel in the behind". Bennet is a truly scary figure with his Islamophobia and theocratic intentions, and leads the Jewish Home party. Probably the most dangerous person to the future of Israel.

Uri Ariel
A member of the Jewish Home party. Known for his plan to transfer Israel's stray cats to another country, since his religious conviction prevent him from having them sterilized.

Oren Hazan
Probably the most widely derided MK, Oren Hazan is an idiot and a bully, known for harassing a fellow Knesset member for her disability, and randomly accusing other MKs of voting twice (an offense for which his own father, also a politician, was removed from the Knesset).