Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Israel’s electoral system is a pure party-list proportional representation one. There are no individual constituencies. Instead, each party presents a list of candidates and the electors vote for the party list, and not for a particular person on the list.
The parties gain seats in the 120-member parliament in direct proportion to the overall national vote they received. If a party gains ten percent of the vote, they will have 12 members in the Knesset.
Obviously, there are some advantages to such a process: no votes are “wasted,” assuming a party passes a threshold and wins at least two per cent of the overall vote total.
But the disadvantages are glaring. The result is a multi-party system based on coalition governments, as no party has ever won a majority of seats in a national election. Parties rise and fall, winning large numbers of seats in one election and then virtually disappearing in the next.
The Jan. 22 election followed this pattern. Two parties that didn’t even exist a few years ago emerged as major players this time around.
One of them is Yesh Atid (There is a Future), which took 19 seats and has become the second-largest party in the Knesset, after first-place Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing Likud-Yisrael Beitenu coalition, which lost 11 seats and ended up with only 31 – obviously very far from a majority.
Yesh Atid’s leader, Yair Lapid, is a media personality and the son of the late journalist and politician Yosef Lapid, who once led a similar party years ago. Founded last year, Yesh Atid is a centrist and secularist party.
The party’s stance regarding the issue of relations with the Palestinians is somewhat oblique, though it does support the so-called “two-state solution.” Domestically, Yesh Atid’s demands include better public education and more equitable economic policies.
The other big winner is a new right-wing party, Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) led by Naftali Bennett, with 12 seats. Formed in 2008, its program calls for eventual annexation of the West Bank and much of its support comes from the Jewish settlements there.
Three predominantly Israeli Arab parties also got a combined total of 11 seats.
The venerable Labour Party won a respectable 15 seats and its leader, Shelly Yachimovich, will probably become leader of the opposition. Kadima, which as recently as 2006 was the largest party in parliament with 29 seats, and led a coalition government, barely made the two percent threshold this time, with two seats. It is now the smallest party in the Knesset.
Most observers see Lapid as the chief power broker in the formation of the next governing coalition. His vote came predominantly from the Tel Aviv area, Israel’s biggest (and most liberal) city.
Should Netanyahu ask Lapid to join him in a broad coalition, it will move Israeli politics to the left of where it has been in recent years. (And it would also probably gain the support of two smaller left-centre groupings, Hatnuah and Meretz, which have 12 seats between them.)
On the other hand, the prime minister might lurch further to the political right, by asking Bennett to join a coalition government, with the hope that the religious parties and others provide it with parliamentary support.
The next few weeks will be a political juggling act for Netanyahu.
But he’s been through this before.
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Monday, January 28, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Algerian Hostage Drama Highlights Crisis in Sahel Region
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The Algerian hostage crisis is now over – though at great cost. At least 38 foreign workers were killed at the Tiguentourine natural gas complex in the Sahara Desert that was overrun by Islamic militants last week, before Algerian troops managed to retake the plant.
The mastermind behind the attack was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian with links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
This well-armed group originated with Algerian Islamists who fought against their government during the bloody civil conflict of the 1990s. At least 150,000 people were killed in that war.
The recent events in Algeria are connected to the situation in Mali, to its south, because al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is now active in Mali, as well as in neighbouring Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
Following a coup in Mali’s capital, Bamako, last year, Islamists took control of its vast Saharan north. They imposed a reign of terror and have destroyed priceless treasures in the fabled city of Timbuktu and other towns.
As well, the nomadic Tuaregs in Mali’s north – at first allied with the Islamists – want to create their own state, Azawad, which would comprise more than half of the country’s territory.
The French army is now engaged in a full-scale effort to regain northern Mali from these groups, who acquired large amounts of military hardware from Libya in the chaos that ensued after the collapse of the Gadhafi regime.
But Mali is just one of a number of fragile states across the vast semi-arid belt of Africa known as the Sahel region, which extends from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east. Most were part of the colonial holdings of France until the 1960s.
They are all extremely poor, and subject to recurring drought and famine – a perfect recipe for extremism.
In Mauritania, south of Algeria and west of Mali, President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz survived an apparent assassination attempt last October.
He came to power in a military coup in 2008 – the third since 2002. The military has been involved in nearly every government since the country became independent from France in 1960.
The country’s Arabized rulers have long discriminated against its Black African population – indeed, slavery was only abolished in the early 1980s. Human rights abuses are the norm.
East of Mali and also south of Algeria lies Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, where a Tuareg insurgency in the country’s north has been ongoing since 2007. Their Niger Movement for Justice demands a greater share of power.
In turn, President Mahamadou Issoufou, who came to power in 2011 after a coup ousted his predecessor in 2010, has turned the northern half of the country into a closed military zone under curfew and military law.
Chad, east of Niger and directly south of Libya, has long been plagued by various rebellions, coups, and attempts by Moammar Gadhafi to turn the country into a Libyan satellite.
The current leader, Idriss Déby, formed an insurgent group supported by Libya and Sudan, which started operations against the Chadian government in 1989. A year later, they marched into the capital, N'Djamena.
But newer armed groups, often operating from Sudan, continue operations in Chad, and have been thwarted only by the efforts of European Union and United Nations peacekeeping troops.
In 2009 eight rebel groups united to form a new rebel alliance, the Union of Resistance Forces. Without the military support of France, Chad would quickly collapse.
These are not simply failed, but “fake,” states, with no economic, ethnic or political cohesion. Any one of them could become the next Mali.
The Algerian hostage crisis is now over – though at great cost. At least 38 foreign workers were killed at the Tiguentourine natural gas complex in the Sahara Desert that was overrun by Islamic militants last week, before Algerian troops managed to retake the plant.
The mastermind behind the attack was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian with links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
This well-armed group originated with Algerian Islamists who fought against their government during the bloody civil conflict of the 1990s. At least 150,000 people were killed in that war.
The recent events in Algeria are connected to the situation in Mali, to its south, because al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is now active in Mali, as well as in neighbouring Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
Following a coup in Mali’s capital, Bamako, last year, Islamists took control of its vast Saharan north. They imposed a reign of terror and have destroyed priceless treasures in the fabled city of Timbuktu and other towns.
As well, the nomadic Tuaregs in Mali’s north – at first allied with the Islamists – want to create their own state, Azawad, which would comprise more than half of the country’s territory.
The French army is now engaged in a full-scale effort to regain northern Mali from these groups, who acquired large amounts of military hardware from Libya in the chaos that ensued after the collapse of the Gadhafi regime.
But Mali is just one of a number of fragile states across the vast semi-arid belt of Africa known as the Sahel region, which extends from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east. Most were part of the colonial holdings of France until the 1960s.
They are all extremely poor, and subject to recurring drought and famine – a perfect recipe for extremism.
In Mauritania, south of Algeria and west of Mali, President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz survived an apparent assassination attempt last October.
He came to power in a military coup in 2008 – the third since 2002. The military has been involved in nearly every government since the country became independent from France in 1960.
The country’s Arabized rulers have long discriminated against its Black African population – indeed, slavery was only abolished in the early 1980s. Human rights abuses are the norm.
East of Mali and also south of Algeria lies Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, where a Tuareg insurgency in the country’s north has been ongoing since 2007. Their Niger Movement for Justice demands a greater share of power.
In turn, President Mahamadou Issoufou, who came to power in 2011 after a coup ousted his predecessor in 2010, has turned the northern half of the country into a closed military zone under curfew and military law.
Chad, east of Niger and directly south of Libya, has long been plagued by various rebellions, coups, and attempts by Moammar Gadhafi to turn the country into a Libyan satellite.
The current leader, Idriss Déby, formed an insurgent group supported by Libya and Sudan, which started operations against the Chadian government in 1989. A year later, they marched into the capital, N'Djamena.
But newer armed groups, often operating from Sudan, continue operations in Chad, and have been thwarted only by the efforts of European Union and United Nations peacekeeping troops.
In 2009 eight rebel groups united to form a new rebel alliance, the Union of Resistance Forces. Without the military support of France, Chad would quickly collapse.
These are not simply failed, but “fake,” states, with no economic, ethnic or political cohesion. Any one of them could become the next Mali.
Monday, January 14, 2013
In Jordan, the Politics of Moderation Are Eroding
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
While much of the Middle East is in turmoil, with civil war in Syria, constitutional confusion in Egypt, continuing violence in Iraq, and near-anarchy in Libya, Jordan has remained a relative pro-Western oasis of tranquility. All has not been calm of late, though.
The monarchy that became modern Jordan was created after the First World War, when the British, who had been given control over Palestine by the League of Nations, carved out a state, Transjordan, on the East Bank of the Jordan River.
It was ruled by one of their Hashemite allies, Abdullah ibn Hussein. The Hashemites, who had been driven out of the Arabian Peninsula by the Saudis, claim to be direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
The British-sponsored emirate became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after 1948, when the Arab Legion, the country’s army, captured the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the first Arab-Israeli War. It lost the area in the 1967 conflict between the Arab states and Israel.
Abdullah’s grandson, King Hussein, ruled Jordan from 1952 to 1999. In 1994 he signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan also renounced all claims to the territories it had ruled west of the Jordan River before 1967; these are now under Israeli military control but governed mainly by the Palestinian Authority.
Although the current monarch, Abdullah II, and much of the political elite, are Bedouins, about half of Jordan’s 6.5 million people are Palestinian Arabs, many with close ties to their compatriots on the other side of the Jordan River.
The vast majority are of refugee origin, following the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel, and Palestinian attitudes toward Jordan have been ambivalent.
Although most Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship and many have integrated, Jordan still considers them refugees with a right of return to Palestine.
In January 2011, Jordanians protested economic hardship in demonstrations led by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. There has been growing dissatisfaction due to rising unemployment and corruption.
Last year, there was further unrest, when an increase in gas prices triggered more anger at the government. This past November, some even called for the overthrow of the king.
The hike in prices had been forced upon the country by the International Monetary Fund, which made them a condition for the Jordanian government to receive $2 billion in IMF aid.
In turn, the king dissolved parliament and appointed a new prime minister, Dr. Abdalla Ensour – the fourth incumbent since February 2011.
Parliamentary elections have been called for Jan. 23, and many Jordanians fear more economic austerity measures will be in store afterword.
The Islamic Action Front is boycotting the vote, in protest against an election law it sees as biased in favor of pro-government loyalists. Some analysts assert that it would probably gain power in any free and fair election.
While much of the Middle East is in turmoil, with civil war in Syria, constitutional confusion in Egypt, continuing violence in Iraq, and near-anarchy in Libya, Jordan has remained a relative pro-Western oasis of tranquility. All has not been calm of late, though.
The monarchy that became modern Jordan was created after the First World War, when the British, who had been given control over Palestine by the League of Nations, carved out a state, Transjordan, on the East Bank of the Jordan River.
It was ruled by one of their Hashemite allies, Abdullah ibn Hussein. The Hashemites, who had been driven out of the Arabian Peninsula by the Saudis, claim to be direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
The British-sponsored emirate became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after 1948, when the Arab Legion, the country’s army, captured the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the first Arab-Israeli War. It lost the area in the 1967 conflict between the Arab states and Israel.
Abdullah’s grandson, King Hussein, ruled Jordan from 1952 to 1999. In 1994 he signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan also renounced all claims to the territories it had ruled west of the Jordan River before 1967; these are now under Israeli military control but governed mainly by the Palestinian Authority.
Although the current monarch, Abdullah II, and much of the political elite, are Bedouins, about half of Jordan’s 6.5 million people are Palestinian Arabs, many with close ties to their compatriots on the other side of the Jordan River.
The vast majority are of refugee origin, following the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel, and Palestinian attitudes toward Jordan have been ambivalent.
Although most Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship and many have integrated, Jordan still considers them refugees with a right of return to Palestine.
In January 2011, Jordanians protested economic hardship in demonstrations led by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. There has been growing dissatisfaction due to rising unemployment and corruption.
Last year, there was further unrest, when an increase in gas prices triggered more anger at the government. This past November, some even called for the overthrow of the king.
The hike in prices had been forced upon the country by the International Monetary Fund, which made them a condition for the Jordanian government to receive $2 billion in IMF aid.
In turn, the king dissolved parliament and appointed a new prime minister, Dr. Abdalla Ensour – the fourth incumbent since February 2011.
Parliamentary elections have been called for Jan. 23, and many Jordanians fear more economic austerity measures will be in store afterword.
The Islamic Action Front is boycotting the vote, in protest against an election law it sees as biased in favor of pro-government loyalists. Some analysts assert that it would probably gain power in any free and fair election.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
European Disunion
Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, Nova Scotia] Chronicle Herald
But as a new year dawns, three regions on the continent may be moving towards independence.
It appears that referenda will take place in 2014 in both Catalonia, one of Spain’s most prosperous regions, and Scotland, which has been part of Great Britain for more than three centuries.
Catalonia has a long history of national self-awareness, dating back to the Middle Ages, and was only fully absorbed into Spain in the 18th century. When the Spanish monarchy was succeeded by the left-wing Spanish Republic in 1931, Catalonia became virtually self-governing.
However, its autonomy ended and Catalan nationalism was suppressed after the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, when the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco defeated the republic and re-imposed a centralized state in Spain. Catalan was even outlawed as a language to be learned in school.
After Franco’s death in 1975, a democratic political system was re-established, one more favourable to the aspirations of regions such as Catalonia. Since 1978, it has been termed an “autonomous community” within the Spanish kingdom, and the 2006 Statute of Autonomy passed by the Catalan parliament defines it as a nation.
But even this may not be enough. In the November 25 Catalan parliamentary election, four parties supporting a secession referendum gathered 59 per cent of the votes and gained 87 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament.
Artur Mas, president of the Catalan government, said that his Convergencia i Unio (Convergence and Unity) party -- at 50 seats, the largest group in the assembly -- will organize a plebiscite so that the 7.5 million Catalans can decide on their status for themselves. But Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, views any independence referendum as a violation of the country’s constitution.
On the other hand, an agreement setting out terms for a Scottish independence referendum for its 5.2 million people was signed on October 15 by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond. The vote will be held in the autumn of 2014.
Scotland was an independent nation for centuries, from the early Middle Ages to the Treaty of Union with England in 1707, when the parliaments of the two countries were combined at Westminster and a new state, Great Britain, was born.
Scotland retained many of its institutions, including separate educational and legal systems.
In recent decades, demands for Scottish home rule grew, culminating in the creation of a devolved Scottish parliament in 1999.
While this has given Scotland greater autonomy within the United Kingdom, the Scottish National Party, led by Salmond, wants a fully sovereign Scotland.
The party won 69 of 129 seats in the Scottish assembly in the May 2011 election, and Salmond called the “Edinburgh Agreement” that he negotiated with Cameron one that will lead to Scotland becoming “a prosperous and successful European country, reflecting Scottish values of fairness and opportunity, promoting equality and social cohesion.”
Belgium has virtually ceased being a state, with its two main regions, Flanders and Wallonia, increasingly going their separate ways.
The Belgian kingdom, established in 1830, has always been an uneasy union of Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons. For most of its history, the richer French in industrialized Wallonia ran the country and were disdainful of the poorer, rural Dutch.
Today, though, Flanders is significantly richer than Wallonia and its people are no longer second-class Belgians. But though the 6.3 million people in the Flanders region have achieved nearly total autonomy, both administrative and linguistic, many still resent the former hegemony of Wallonia.
In provincial elections held on October 14, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance), which advocates the eventual independence of Flanders, gained 104 of the 351 seats in the Flemish parliament and is now part of a Flemish coalition government. In fact, party leader Bart De Wever has made it the largest party in Belgium. The country is slowly dissolving.
If any of these entities do manage to acquire independence, they will seek membership in the European Union, and this may pose a problem for a supra-national body which already consists of 27 member states. In the end, though, there will be no choice other than to let them join.
Monday, January 07, 2013
Israel Then and Now
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
I hope soon be heading off on a trip to Israel, as part of an academic project (as well as visiting many of the famous sites, of course). It will be my first time there in almost 36 years. And it will follow an Israeli election being held this Jan. 22.
Between the ages of 22 and 32, I spent time in Israel on four occasions: in the summer of 1967, as a volunteer on Ma’agan, a kibbutz (collective farm) on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; in the summer of 1972, as a student on the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; in July 1976, attending a conference on Yiddish in Tel Aviv; and in June of 1977, along with a group of students, on Kibbutz Bror Cha’il, not far from Gaza and the Israeli town of Sderot.
That was still the “old Israel.” The Labour Party, in its various incarnations, had ruled the country continuously from its formation in 1948. During my stays in the country, it was governed by Levi Eshkol (1963-1969), Golda Meir (1969-1974), and Yitzhak Rabin (1974-1977).
But in May1977 Labour lost power to Menachem Begin’s Likud (a consolidation of right-wing movements) and Begin became prime minister during my last days in Israel. He would remain in power until 1983.
Israel is a very different place now, as I’ll no doubt discover soon enough. The political spectrum since that time has moved even further to the right, while the once-mighty Labour Party is now a shadow of its former self.
The political right, under leaders like Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, has dominated the state in recent decades. The political clout of various religious parties has also increased tremendously.
Not surprisingly, Likud’s current leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister since February 2009, is heading into the Jan. 22 election, in an alliance with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) Party, and polls suggest a convincing victory. The two are running on a joint ticket.
In February 2009, Likud won 27 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament) and Yisrael Beiteinu obtained 15. The two parties have led an unstable coalition government together, with support from other parties, until now.
Israel’s proportional representation system allows for a multitude of parties to contest elections, and the current one has an incredible 34 in the field, including the once-mighty Labour Party, now led by Shelly Yachimovich, which held only eight seats in the last Knesset.
Most of these parties will not even win a single seat.
Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu looks set to capture 35 seats. But Netanyahu’s main challenge comes from a party even further to his right, a coalition of nationalist/religious groups running as the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Party, which current polls suggest may win as many as 18 seats. Its leader, Naftali Bennett, is the 40-year-old son of American immigrants. He wants to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and is steadily chipping away at Netanyahu’s margin.
As well, there is talk among three centre and left-wing parties, including Labour, about forming an electoral bloc to challenge Netanyahu.
Following the election, Bennett’s party will probably join a Likud-led coalition, giving the right-wing bloc a majority in parliament.
How all this will affect Israeli relations with the United States, and the surrounding Arab world, remains to be seen.
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