AHC: Have an Israeli PM from one of the religious parties

Towelie

Banned
The religious parties in Israel (Shas, UTJ, and even to an extent, HaBayit HaYehudi) are known to be able to represent their interests extremely well, mobilizing their entire constituencies to the polls and playing crucial parts in coalitions, with the ability to break them at will.

They have a noticeably outsized voice for their interests and as a result, this sometimes breeds resentment (see Yesh Atid or some of Netanyahu's leaked private comments).

Is there any way that someone from one of these parties could be Prime Minister one day? The UltraOrthodox have very high birthrates, so it is likely that their representation will continue to grow. But as for now, or any time since basically 1990, was it possible for someone like Aryeh Deri or Yaakov Litzman to be PM?

I think the best way for this to happen was if in 2006, Shas, NRP, National Union, and UTJ merged into a single bloc for an election and was able to get the highest amount of seats (forget the infighting for now, because it would be legendary), thereby giving it the right to name a PM of its choice. They'd probably be able to get Lieberman on board with some promises about his peace plan, and Gil with a guarantee of pensioners rights. Kadima and Labor along with the Arabs and Meretz would be horrified, of course, but Likud might if given control regarding defense be willing to jump on board.

Perhaps this is crazy, but I'd like to hear opinions on this, or maybe a prediction for the future if this should happen.

And the bigger question: if for some reason, one of these parties is in position to do this, would they even want to?
 

Towelie

Banned
It might be interesting to see if larger parties would merge if faced with the possibility of allowing Litzman or Deri the opportunity to form a government.
 
I'm not sure that one of the religious parties would want to head the government. As you point out, they're traditionally very focused parties - they want hand-outs, they want not to join the army, and they want things closed on Shabbat. If anyone talked about reforming their education system, they'd probably oppose that. Some also want control of Jewish religious sites in the West Bank (in particular in Hebron), but they're secondary.

Aside from that, they don't really care about larger policy, except as it influences one of the above factors. I think that most of them are canny enough to not want to have to have responsibility for economic or defense policy. Their traditional role suits most of them just fine, as they've basically been able to get everything they've wanted without having to do any particular amount of work for it. Once the head of Shas is PM, he's suddenly being held to account by all of Am Yisrael, possibly having to make compromises that will piss of his constituents, etc. Being kingmakers suits the religious parties much more than being kings.

Even in the 2006 example you give, they'd probably stick Lieberman or Bibi as Prime Minister, albeit one who knows where his bread is buttered.
 
The ultra-orthodox (Haredi) parties rarely are more than 20% of the Knesset. Currently the percentage of orthodox/religious MKs is about 22%, however not all of these are "ultra-orthodox". The reality is that while these parties have had a significant bloc in the Knesset, especially given the highly fractured nature of party politics and the low threshold for representation, cooperation with them whether from the left or right is more about giving concessions in terms of conversion, exemptions for Haredi from military service etc to get a majority rather than any ideological concurrence. Unless and until the Haredi parties actually get 51% of the seats in the Knesset I can't see this happening. The vast majority of the Israeli population, including many of those who are personally orthodox in practice, do not want to see these folks in charge.

As someone has mentioned, the infighting between these parties is pretty rough, and to get them to unite under one banner would be difficult.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The religious parties in Israel (Shas, UTJ, and even to an extent, HaBayit HaYehudi) are known to be able to represent their interests extremely well, mobilizing their entire constituencies to the polls and playing crucial parts in coalitions, with the ability to break them at will.

They have a noticeably outsized voice for their interests and as a result, this sometimes breeds resentment (see Yesh Atid or some of Netanyahu's leaked private comments).

Is there any way that someone from one of these parties could be Prime Minister one day? The UltraOrthodox have very high birthrates, so it is likely that their representation will continue to grow. But as for now, or any time since basically 1990, was it possible for someone like Aryeh Deri or Yaakov Litzman to be PM?

I think the best way for this to happen was if in 2006, Shas, NRP, National Union, and UTJ merged into a single bloc for an election and was able to get the highest amount of seats (forget the infighting for now, because it would be legendary), thereby giving it the right to name a PM of its choice. They'd probably be able to get Lieberman on board with some promises about his peace plan, and Gil with a guarantee of pensioners rights. Kadima and Labor along with the Arabs and Meretz would be horrified, of course, but Likud might if given control regarding defense be willing to jump on board.

Perhaps this is crazy, but I'd like to hear opinions on this, or maybe a prediction for the future if this should happen.

And the bigger question: if for some reason, one of these parties is in position to do this, would they even want to?
I extremely strongly doubt that they would actually want the PM job due to the extremely massive amount of responsibility which is involved.

Also, though, while extremely unlikely, the only way that this has even a remote chance of happening would be for the major Israeli parties to have such massive disagreements on who exactly the PM of Israel should be that they bring in a Haredi PM as a compromise option; of course, a unity government with alternating PMs is much more likely than this, so ...
 

Towelie

Banned
I'm not sure that one of the religious parties would want to head the government. As you point out, they're traditionally very focused parties - they want hand-outs, they want not to join the army, and they want things closed on Shabbat. If anyone talked about reforming their education system, they'd probably oppose that. Some also want control of Jewish religious sites in the West Bank (in particular in Hebron), but they're secondary.

Aside from that, they don't really care about larger policy, except as it influences one of the above factors. I think that most of them are canny enough to not want to have to have responsibility for economic or defense policy. Their traditional role suits most of them just fine, as they've basically been able to get everything they've wanted without having to do any particular amount of work for it. Once the head of Shas is PM, he's suddenly being held to account by all of Am Yisrael, possibly having to make compromises that will piss of his constituents, etc. Being kingmakers suits the religious parties much more than being kings.

Even in the 2006 example you give, they'd probably stick Lieberman or Bibi as Prime Minister, albeit one who knows where his bread is buttered.

I wonder if for some reason, a result like this would become possible (maybe solely due to demographic drift and fractures in other parties) and then with that in mind, the direct election of prime ministers returns. It was obviously a flawed system and that is why they scrapped it after only a few years, but the Prime Minister, despite not being Head of State but rather Head of Government, has to do a lot of things in foreign countries and has to handle a lot of executive diplomacy. Netanyahu to his credit has gone on a tear as of late in getting Israel trade deals that helped growth according to the pretty good 2016 Fiscal year GDP results, even going to places like Tanzania and Uganda as well as the traditional peripheral Muslim states. There are other elements to that that various leaders have succeeded or failed in, but the point is that being prime minister requires a wider outlook than that of the religious parties.

With a guy like Deri or Litzman in charge, and having to negotiate with the EU, or talk to the Diaspora community that really is important to state security, the results would be disastrous.

I'm pretty sure that as things stand right now, the party with the most seats gets asked to form a government, with one exception (2009), when it was clear that Kadima could not do so. If a religious bloc alliance could get the most seats, and do so fairly decisively, it would be strange not to have them form the government.
 
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