Israeli Arab Knesset Members Protest Change in Electoral Law

On July 31, the Knesset approved the first reading of a bill to raise the electoral threshold in the general elections from 2% of the total votes cast to 4%. Several Knesset members argued vociferously that the change, instigated by the Yisrael Beitenu Party, was intended to harm the Arab parties and make them disappear from the Knesset. However, this reading of the law can be attributed to no small measure of populism.

The raising of the electoral threshold is part of a series of changes that have become known as the “Governability Law.” These changes also include limiting the number of ministers in the Cabinet to 19 and reducing the ability of the opposition to submit no-confidence motions. It is entirely possible that the very fact the law was introduced by Yisrael Beitenu is why there is a tendency to attribute the change to former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s efforts to reduce Arab representation in the Knesset.

Under the new rules, small parties with just three or four seats would not be able to get elected to the Knesset. If, during the last elections, the electoral threshold was 4%, the three Arab parties — Balad (three seats), Ra’am-Ta’al (four seats) and Hadash (four seats) — would not have entered the Knesset. But they are not the only parties that would have failed to pass the threshold. A similar fate would have awaited former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima Party, which only won two seats in the Knesset.

Meretz, the hot new trend among the Israeli left, would have vanished from the political map if the law had passed before the 2009 elections, when it won just three seats. In other words, these changes could also impact the Zionist parties, and the claim that only the Arab parties would be hurt is inaccurate. The bundle of bills known collectively as the Governability Law was intended — after all — to provide a response to the absence of government stability in Israel over the past few decades.