Next Step : The ‘Americanization’ of Israeli Politics : A fresh attempt at reform is under way. Key elements: a bill of rights and direct election of a prime minister.

“Israel as a political system doesn’t work, and sooner rather than later that will put us in greater danger than the threats of our enemies.”

Although controversial, that proposition, thrown down gauntlet-fashion by an Israeli politician four years ago, drew together an uncommon Israeli coalition of hawks and doves, of businessmen, academics and politicians, of members of Parliament whose parties were in power, out of power or had never been in power, all united by the goal of changing the country’s political structure.

“Everyone was able to see what we have doesn’t work,” said Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto, a former conservative member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, who made that 1988 call for political reform.

“Our system brings political paralysis. . . . But getting anything done about it was next to impossible. The big parties were caught in a deadlock with one another--reform had to be politically neutral and give neither an advantage--and the small parties had vested interests against any real change. And there was public apprehension that change would be for the worse, no matter how bad things were.”

While there were earlier reform efforts that barely got off the ground, the situation is demonstrably different now. The first elements of a thoroughgoing restructuring of the Israeli system of governance are already in place, and others, while still the subject of fierce debate, are advancing through the legislative process. Supporters say that a key difference now is that they are approaching political reform piecemeal rather than as a single package, slicing the problem up into doable phases.

“Rarely has a country undertaken such fundamental political change short of a war or economic collapse or some other catastrophe,” Prof. Ariel Rosen-Zvi, law dean at Tel Aviv University, said in an interview.

“And these structural changes will bring in other changes,” the professor added, “including the breakdown of the old parties and the start of new ones, a repositioning by everyone on the major issues and a rethink about the role of religion in Israel.”

Next month, members of the opposition Likud Party will vote in an open party election--a first for Israel--for a new leader to succeed former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. That leader will be the party’s candidate for the Israeli premiership in the next general election when voters--in another first--directly choose their prime minister.

“For the first time, the candidate for prime minister will get his mandate from the people, not through deals done in back rooms, under the table and behind others’ backs,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, whom opinion polls show as being well ahead in the contest for the Likud leadership. “For the first time, the electorate will decide who leads this country, who takes the responsibility, who has the authority.”

To these two elements--open party primaries and direct election of a prime minister--will likely be added other fundamental reforms in the Israeli political structure, analysts contend:

* A new electoral system in which half of the 120-member Knesset will be elected in constituencies and half will continue to be elected according to party list is expected to be enacted this year. Also, minor parties will be required to get a larger percentage of the vote to get Knesset seats.

* While details are still being debated, adoption is also expected this year of a bill of rights that would be added to the country’s so-called basic laws and would guarantee civil liberties and equality before the law of all people, including non-Jews and secular Jews.

* By late this year or early next, Israel’s Supreme Court will likely get authority to review the “constitutionality” of legislation and government acts to ensure that they conform to the country’s “basic laws,” particularly the proposed bill of rights.

Expected to number about 10, these additional “basic laws” are expected to serve as the constitution that Israel has found impossible to write in the nearly 45 years since it declared independence. The plan is that the laws will be brought together and “armored” so that any amendment would require a broad political consensus and overwhelming majority in the Knesset.

Dedi Zucker, chairman of the Knesset’s constitution and law committee, said he expected the bill of rights to be adopted this year, the Supreme Court legislation to be debated through most of 1993 before its enactment and the electoral reform to be passed in 1994.

“But I sincerely question whether we can carry out all these reforms at once,” Zucker said. “Might it be better to elect the next prime minister under the new system and wait until the following election to transform the Knesset? The bill of rights will be doing much to reshape our society, and the Supreme Court will be there to accelerate the process. Our aim is to bring greater democracy, but we have to understand the upheaval that the country will go through.”

The legislative debate over the bill of rights is already proving tumultuous, with religious parties objecting, saying that it promotes the secularization of Israeli society and jeopardizes decades of religious legislation.

Conservatives see in some reforms the end of Zionism--the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland to live as Jews--because democracy rather than Judaism would become the country’s declared political standard.

And some politicians object to the proposals still being drafted to grant the Supreme Court authority to overrule the Knesset as effectively ending the parliamentary system of government.

“Judges are ready to seize even more territory from the other branches of government,” Economics Minister Shimon Shetreet, a former law professor, complained last month. “More policy and more politics are being injected into the judicial process.”

The ferocity of the battle over the bill of rights stems from its assertion that, for the first time in modern Israel, the rights of the individual should be put ahead of those of the state, replacing the collectivism and nationalism that have prevailed here since before the state was founded.

“Ideologically, it’s a U-turn,” Zucker said.

But many of the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jews see it as a denial of Israel’s Jewish identity. Some Jews, they fear, will use it to affirm their right to a secular way of life, and these ultra-Orthodox citizens want, as the price of their support for the legislation, confirmation of all the religious legislation, ranging from laws on marriage and divorce to requirements for rabbinical ordination and kosher food, that has been adopted over the years.

“The biggest barrier to political reform is the refusal of the ultra-religious and their parties to yield the enormous powers they have,” Tsiddon said. “They want control from birth to death, even though two-thirds of the country does not agree with them.”

Tsiddon is highly critical of compromises made in the draft bill of rights because, at the demand of ultra-Orthodox groups, it does not affirm women’s equality and it effectively entrenches Orthodox Judaism as the state religion.

“I am Jewish but agnostic, and I would be penalized,” he said. “Giving authority to one religious sect discriminates against the others.”

It was largely these debates over the role of religion in the Jewish state, and the virtually constant state of war here, that made it impossible for Israel to honor the pledge it made in its 1948 declaration of independence to write a constitution.

The strategy now is to make the changes piecemeal.

“The first moves will let more and more people jump over the barriers of party officials and government bureaucracy to participate in decision-making,” Zucker said. “The next set of measures will entrench democracy so that all people enjoy equal rights. . . .

“These are things we have always wanted to do, should have done earlier but are at last undertaking. They will not so much change the face of Israel as ensure it remains humane and democratic.”

For its first 45 years, Israel in fact has had a political system that grew out of the complexities of Zionist politics over many decades and a concept of parliamentary democracy akin to that in Central Europe in the 1930s.

Leaders were chosen in smoky party caucuses in complex deals often based on “jobs for the boys.” Feuds, based sometimes on personalities and sometimes on decades-old ideological disputes, have had as much weight as the policies presented to voters in party platforms. And tiny parties, perhaps on the far right or well left of center, could hold the larger parties ransom--and frequently have.

“This is not a system for a modern democracy, for the 21st Century, for the challenges that Israel faces,” Netanyahu said. “I don’t want to say that it is undemocratic, but it is inherently unstable and promotes bickering, infighting and back-stabbing.

“We need a bill of rights, we need a constitutional framework, we need to give people a real say in their government, we need to give them good government.”

Yet, there are fears over the “Americanization” of Israeli politics in having direct election of party leaders and the prime minister.

“The rules of the game are being changed to the advantage of those who have money,” Ze’ev (Benny) Begin, the son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin and a Netanyahu rival for the Likud leadership, said in an interview. “In the name of ‘reform,’ elements of the American system are being borrowed, and I see that as a system in deep crisis itself.

“The prevalence of money is a very negative element in politics, and money will now figure in the contests for the party leadership, for the premiership, for the Knesset constituencies,” he said. “Moreover, the personification of election battles leads to shallow debates, superficial arguments and smear campaigns.”

As the country’s foremost American-style politician, the telegenic Netanyahu was considered the new face of Israeli politics, but he suddenly found himself the victim of a smear campaign after what he described as a “blackmail” attempt to force his withdrawal from the Likud campaign. Netanyahu accused supporters of a Likud rival of threatening to release videotapes of an extramarital love affair he had had last year. Police are now investigating.

“This is a price we are going to pay, unfortunately,” Tsiddon said. “But it is part of public accountability, of being responsible to the electorate, of being subject to scrutiny.”

Legislation for direct election of the prime minister, originally drafted by Tsiddon and then worked into a joint proposal by Knesset members from the Labor, Likud and Meretz parties, was the key move in the reforms.

The legislation not only makes the prime minister a popularly elected official but strengthens his powers by allowing him to choose his own Cabinet without first having to build a majority in Parliament; he obtains it later through a vote of confidence.

“We had, and still have, a situation in which the man who bore the responsibility had no authority because he was a captive of whichever party is threatening to pull out,” Tsiddon said. “Our prime minister has been unable to form his own team because all sorts of people, even some suspected of criminal activities, can be imposed on him by his coalition partners.

“From this has come a tremendous lag in decision-making and inherent instability. Sixty percent of a prime minister’s efforts and a Cabinet’s activities go to surviving rather than functioning. And it all happens in a very ugly way with all sorts of deals that disgust people.”

But, in the view of its authors, the legislation was badly compromised during its passage when the ultra-Orthodox forced acceptance of an amendment that would allow the Knesset to oust the prime minister by a simple majority in a vote of no confidence.

“We wanted to give the government more stability, but it will probably have less unless this flaw is fixed,” Rosen-Zvi said, urging that a majority of 70 or 80 be required for the 120-member Knesset to bring down the government. “So, there will still be this political and sometimes financial extortion by these small parties, which function by buying and selling principles and compromising other people’s rights. Even re-amending this legislation is difficult because Shas (a small, ultra-Orthodox party) has threatened to quit the present government over the issue.”

The direct election of the prime minister must come before the end of June, 1996, but could come sooner if Yitzhak Rabin, the current premier, calls early elections or loses a vote of confidence in the Knesset.

The proposed system for electing half of the Knesset in constituencies and half from party lists--a method similar to that in Germany--should at once make the Israeli Parliament more responsive to ordinary people not involved in party politics and raise the quality of those elected from the party lists, according to Tsiddon.

“The only real opposition comes from the ultra-religious, for it breaks their ability to control the government,” Tsiddon said. “And that means they won’t be able to hold up the prime minister for funds for their activities.”

Assuming all the reforms pass, proponents say the changes will, in the long run, bring Israel closer to a modern industrial society and thus weaken Israel’s nationalism.

Another result, Zucker predicted, will be “the decentralization of power, taking it away from the party bureaucracies and dispersing it among the electorate . . . and this will bring us closer to the Western model of government.”

Conservatives, such as Begin, give qualified or partial support in backing the open party elections, direct election of the prime minister and the election of half the Knesset in constituencies. But they are uncertain about the current draft of the bill of rights or giving the Supreme Court powers to review Knesset actions. They also want safeguards on measures already adopted.

“I am not a person who fears being branded a conservative if important values are at risk,” Begin said. “No one has proven that the new system is an improvement, and I see it as a very grave risk for our country.”

Even Zucker hesitates.

“I would like to say that these measures, in bringing more democracy, will mean better results,” he said. “But there are other variable, external elements, such as threats to the country, and internal aspects, such as precisely who is elected. Democracy is a gamble--you have to bet on the people.”