Israeli Cabinet Backs Plan To Change To U.S.-Style System of Government
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JERUSALEM — Does Israel need a strongman? Since the summertime war in Lebanon, Israel’s leadership has been in turmoil. The government, widely blamed for mismanaging the conflict, is fracturing. Corruption and sex scandals are shaking people’s faith in politicians.
Yesterday, the postwar angst pushed an idea with growing appeal onto the Cabinet’s agenda: Israel should scrap its parliamentary system — which tends to produce shaky coalition governments and quickly throw them out — in favor of American-style presidential rule.
The Cabinet voted 12 to 11 to endorse the reform proposal and send it to the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
But passage is far from certain, in part because the sponsor is a right-wing politician with growing popularity and leadership ambition. If Avigdor Lieberman were to benefit from his own reform, his critics say, he might turn Israel’s democratic free-for-all into an autocracy.
An immediate consequence of the Cabinet’s decision was to bring Mr. Lieberman and his Russian immigrant-based party, Israel Our Home, a step closer to joining the government. Prime Minister Olmert, elected in March, has been trying since the war ended August 14 to shore up his beleaguered coalition.
One of Mr. Lieberman’s conditions for joining was Cabinet backing for his bill, regardless of its fate in Parliament.
Mr. Olmert lobbied hard for approval, despite his misgivings. His centrist Kadima Party faces a possible revolt by its leftist coalition partner, the Labor Party; he needs a new ally to preserve his majority in Parliament and avoid elections that polls show he would lose.
Instability has been a hallmark of politics in Israel, which theoretically elects its leaders for four years but has changed governments 31 times in its 58-year history. Voters elect a Parliament, and the Parliament’s 120 members elect the prime minister and Cabinet from among their ranks. Governing coalitions with a parliamentary majority are formed after negotiations among many parties but fall apart with chronic ease, allowing parliament to force new elections.
