The new Israeli constitution

Abstract

Largely unnoticed in the midst of the turmoil surrounding the Oslo peace process, Israel has undergone a constitutional revolution. Israel is no longer among the tiny minority of the 185 UN member states (as of 1998, only nine)' functioning without a formal, integrated, written constitution. In 1995 the Israeli Supreme Court held that the 11 periodically enacted Basic Laws would function as the nation's constitution, and that the Court would exercise an American-style power of judicial review. The Supreme Court's action was the capstone of a process of major institutional changes. The original Israeli republic was dominated by its highly disciplined and centralized political parties. Beginning in 1992 internal primaries within Israel's larger parties fragmented power and reduced the parties' ability to function as the pivotal agents of policy formulation. Until 1996 Israel's government had functioned as a classic Westminster parliamentary system. With the national elections of that year, a directly elected Prime Minister was added to a Knesset (parliament) elected, as in the past, by a nationwide system of proportional representation. This created a hybrid presidentialparliamentary system with a novel configuration of powers. Fifty years after its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel is sufficiently different so as to warrant social scientists like Asher Arian talking about the emergence of a 'second republic'.2 The time is now ripe for assessing the functional viability of these constitutional changes for Israel.3