1988 Israeli Legislative Election

The consensus sustaining the National Unity Government weakened as Likud and Labor prepared for the 1988 election.[5] Their disagreements concerned participation in American-sponsored peace initiatives, the principle of land-for-peace, and the political future of the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and the Gaza Strip.[5] Although the two major parties shared responsibility for governing, they entered the election divided over central questions of diplomacy and territorial policy.[5]

The First Intifada, which began in 1987, formed a central part of the election’s political setting.[4] Within the unity government, the Likud bloc under Yitzhak Shamir favored efforts to quell the uprising through military means, while the Labor bloc, led by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, advocated political means.[7] Differences also extended to proposed talks: Likud opposed participation by individuals from East Jerusalem or outside the territories and insisted that elections in the territories be the sole subject, whereas Labor’s position was closer to the American and Egyptian position.[7]

Foreign policy became a central campaign issue, particularly the prospect of an international peace conference.[6] Peres favored participation in an international conference that would lead to direct negotiations, while Shamir and Likud argued that such a gathering could isolate Israel before the world.[6] Their disagreement concerned not only whether negotiations should occur, but also the international framework in which Israel would be asked to pursue them.[6]

The London Agreement provided a specific focus for this diplomatic divide.[4] Peres had met secretly in London with Jordan’s King Hussein and reached an understanding for a United Nations-sponsored international conference, with Jordan representing Palestinians from the West Bank and signing a peace treaty with Israel.[4] The proposed framework excluded participation by the Palestine Liberation Organization.[4] Shamir initially approved the agreement but opposed advancing it because he believed an international conference could expose Israel to unacceptable pressure, while Peres regarded Jordan as a potentially useful partner in addressing the Palestinian issue.[4]

Jordan’s announcement in July 1988 that it was disengaging from the West Bank added another development to the regional setting before the election.[4] The uprising was also accompanied by gradual economic deterioration: trade with Palestinians declined, workers from the West Bank increasingly stopped working in Israel without a realistic replacement workforce, unemployment rose, and uncertainty affected the Israeli economy.[4] These developments placed economic disruption alongside security and diplomacy in the circumstances surrounding the vote.[4]

The parties contesting the election included several lists seeking representation separately from established partners.[8] Mapam, a moderate left-of-center Labor Zionist party, stood independently for the first time in twenty years.[5] It advocated peace initiatives and territorial compromise while opposing permanent annexation of territories occupied in the June 1967 War.[5] Degel HaTorah also ran separately from Agudat Israel for the first time, representing the haredi Litvak constituency.[8] Tzomet, Moledet, Degel HaTorah, and the Arab Democratic Party were among the parties contesting their first election.[9]

Religious-party competition involved significant differences within religious communities rather than a single unified political constituency.[10] The National Religious Party represented a religious Zionist tradition, while the haredi parties included supporters critical of secular Zionism.[10] The National Religious Party’s electoral position was shaped by tensions involving territorial expansion, settlements, and religious policy.[10] Rivalries among Agudat Israel, Lubavitch supporters, Rabbi Eliezer Schach’s followers, and Shas contributed to the mobilization surrounding the campaign.[10]

Candidate selection brought several prominent figures into the campaign before polling day.[4] Likud selected a panel of 35 candidates before assigning list positions in rounds of seven.[4] Benjamin Netanyahu, then recently returned from serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, placed first in the panel vote, ahead of Moshe Katsav and Benny Begin.[4] Although prominent at the party gathering, Netanyahu could not vote because he was not a member of Likud’s central committee.[4]

Labor included several mayors on its Knesset list, a choice that produced good results, while Likud made comparatively few such additions.[11] Competition within the religious camp was especially intense, with seven religious parties seeking votes and ultra-Orthodox rabbis organizing followers who had previously opposed participation in Israeli elections.[3] Degel HaTorah emerged from the haredi split associated with Rabbi Eliezer Schach, while the Lubavitch movement backed Agudat Israel under Menachem Mendel Schneerson.[10] Religious campaigning also included personal appeals, among them Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s blessing for voters who supported Shas.[10]

The legal rules governing eligibility to contest the election were applied to Kach, the party led by Meir Kahane.[12] Amendments adopted on July 31, 1985, had enabled the Central Elections Committee to disqualify lists that incited racism or denied the state’s democratic character.[13] The election also marked the first application of the Basic Law amendment permitting disqualification of lists that denied Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people, denied its democratic character, or incited racism.[4]

On October 18, 1988, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Central Elections Committee’s decision to bar Kach from the Twelfth Knesset election.[12] The ruling relied on Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, which prohibited parties whose objectives included inciting or engaging in racism.[12] Kach argued that exclusion violated the equality principle in Section 4, but the court rejected its appeal.[12] The party advocated stripping non-Jews of citizenship, fully implementing Jewish law, and annexing all occupied territories; it had previously won a Knesset seat in 1984.[12]

The Progressive List for Peace was allowed to compete.[4] The Supreme Court upheld that decision by three votes to two, finding that conclusive evidence had not been presented that the list denied Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.[4] Moledet, a new right-wing party led by former Major General Rehavam Ze’evi, also contested the election and advocated what it termed “voluntary transfer” of the Arab population from Eretz Israel.[8]

A terrorist firebomb attack on a bus near Jericho shortly before the election killed a mother and her three children.[4][7] A soldier who attempted to rescue them was fatally injured.[4] The attack became part of subsequent discussion of the election’s narrow outcome and the direction of late voter movement.[4][7]

Voting took place on November 1 for all 120 seats in the Twelfth Knesset.[1][3] The electorate numbered 2,894,267.[8] Twenty-seven lists contested the election, of which 15 secured representation.[14] The detailed results recorded 2,283,123 valid votes, a 1 percent qualifying threshold of 22,831 votes, and 18,563 votes per seat.[2]

Likud finished first with 709,305 votes, or 31.1 percent, and 40 seats.[2] The Alignment received 685,363 votes, or 30.0 percent, and 39 seats.[2] Labor’s representation therefore fell by five seats from the 44 it had held after the 1984 election.[5] The result left the two major lists separated by only one seat and did not give either a government it could form without further coalition bargaining.[5][15]

Shas won 107,709 votes, or 4.7 percent, and six seats, making it the third-largest party.[2][10] Three lists each won five seats: Agudat Yisrael received 102,714 votes, or 4.5 percent; Ratz, the Citizens’ Rights Movement, received 97,513, or 4.3 percent; and the National Religious Party received 89,720, or 3.9 percent.[2] Hadash followed with 84,032 votes, or 3.7 percent, and four seats.[2]

Tehiya received 70,730 votes, or 3.1 percent, and three seats, while Mapam received 56,345 votes, or 2.5 percent, and also won three.[2] Four lists secured two seats apiece: Tsomet with 45,489 votes, or 2.0 percent; Moledet with 44,174, or 1.9 percent; Shinui with 39,538, or 1.7 percent; and Degel Hatorah with 34,279, or 1.5 percent.[2] The Progressive List for Peace won 33,279 votes, or 1.5 percent, and one seat, while the Arab Democratic Party received 27,012 votes, or 1.2 percent, and one seat.[2]

The religious parties collectively won 18 seats, five more than in the preceding Knesset.[3] Shas rose from four seats to six, and Agudat Israel rose from two to five.[4] The National Religious Party gained one seat, while Agudat Israel and Degel HaTorah together increased from two seats to seven.[3] The ultra-Orthodox parties collectively held 13 seats, compared with six in the previous election, and outnumbered the National Religious Party by more than two to one.[6][10]

The Citizens’ Rights Movement, Shinui, and Mapam—the three Zionist parties to the left of the Alignment—together won ten seats.[8] In one contemporary grouping of the results, Labor and those allied left-of-center lists held 49 seats, the Arab parties held six, Likud and the other right-wing parties held 47, and the religious parties held 18.[3] Labor and the Arab parties together thus held 55 seats, while the combined right-religious grouping held 65.[3][6]

The new Knesset contained 15 elected lists, the same number as its predecessor, while representation on the Likud and Alignment lists continued to decline.[8] The final results were released on November 4.[16] On November 14, President Chaim Herzog asked Shamir to attempt to form a government, and the Twelfth Knesset first met on November 21, twenty days after the election.[3][8]

Shamir’s one-seat advantage over the Alignment did not immediately produce a governing coalition.[15] Both major parties attempted to secure support from smaller parties before agreeing to another power-sharing arrangement.[17] The religious parties’ increased representation made them important participants in these negotiations, and the ultra-Orthodox parties initially recommended Shamir to President Herzog after seeking commitments from both major leaders.[4][6]

During the negotiations, endorsements from Shas and Agudat Israel, together with the right-wing nationalist parties and the National Religious Party, were described as potentially giving Shamir 63 supporters in the 120-member Knesset.[3] That support was linked to acceptance of religious demands, reportedly including a change to the legal definition of “Who is a Jew” that would affect non-Orthodox conversions.[3] At that stage, the government’s ultimate composition and policies remained unresolved.[3]

The eventual outcome was another National Unity Government, with Labor serving as the junior partner.[5] Although the parliamentary composition allowed the possibility of a narrower right-wing and religious-party government, Shamir preferred to continue governing with the Alignment.[8] The resulting unity government had the support of 95 Knesset members.[6] Unlike the preceding arrangement, it did not provide for rotation of the premiership between the leaders of the two largest parties.[6]

Shamir took close to two months to complete the process of government formation.[8] The government began on December 22, 1988, with Shamir as prime minister.[18] Peres became vice prime minister and finance minister, Moshe Arens became foreign minister, and Yitzhak Rabin continued as defense minister.[5][15] The new Knesset elected Likud’s Dov Shilansky as its speaker.[8]

The coalition thus preserved joint Likud–Labor government while changing the distribution of authority between its leaders.[5][15] Shamir retained the premiership without a future handover built into the agreement, while Peres moved from foreign affairs to finance.[5][15] Labor’s reduced representation and junior status distinguished the new arrangement from the preceding unity framework.[5]

The unity government served during the first fifteen months of the Twelfth Knesset.[19] It fell when a no-confidence motion passed on March 15, 1990, with Labor voting in favor and five of Shas’s six Knesset members absent.[19] Peres subsequently failed to establish a narrower government combining Labor and religious parties, in the episode known as the “dirty trick.”[6] Shamir then formed a narrower right-religious government.[6][19]

The government chronology records the end of the post-election Shamir government on June 11, 1990, when another government under Shamir began.[18] The election’s immediate outcome was therefore renewed cooperation between the two principal parties, but the parliamentary term also accommodated a later shift to the narrower coalition that the original seat distribution had made possible.[6][19]

The combination of a one-seat gap between the two largest parties and an expanded religious-party presence made the election important to discussion of coalition bargaining and electoral reform.[3][11] After the November negotiations, Shamir appeared to support far-reaching constitutional and electoral changes, including consideration of direct election of the head of government.[11] The reasoning was that changing the electoral system alone would not prevent minor parties from determining which major party could form a government.[11]

The result also illustrated the distinction between the largest individual party and the broader parliamentary groupings available for coalition building.[3] Likud led the Alignment by only one seat, but the right-wing and religious parties together held 65 seats, compared with the 55 held by Labor and the Arab parties together.[3][6] Nevertheless, the actual government included both major parties rather than translating that right-religious total directly into a narrow coalition.[6] Smaller parties gained representation as voters reduced their support for the larger parties after four years of Likud–Alignment cooperation.[4]

Religious-party success did not erase the differences among the parties that benefited.[10] Shas, Agudat Israel, and Degel HaTorah together held 13 seats, while the religious Zionist National Religious Party held five.[10] Their constituencies differed over Zionism, relations with the state, religious policy, settlements, and territorial questions.[10] The campaign reflected internal religious rivalries as well as competition with the major secular parties, and those rivalries helped mobilize participation.[10]

Contemporary electoral analysis linked the gains partly to intense competition among seven religious parties and to rabbinic mobilization of people who had previously opposed voting.[3] Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Eliezer Schach, and Ovadia Yoseph were identified as major organizers of the religious parties’ electoral success.[3] The separate candidacy of Degel HaTorah, the growth of Shas, and Agudat Israel’s improved result made the internal composition of religious representation as important as its overall increase.[3][10]

Voting patterns also showed differences among population groups.[3] Contemporary estimates placed Arab turnout at about 74 percent, compared with more than 80 percent among Jewish voters.[3] Rakah received more than 40 percent of the Arab vote, the Progressive List about 15 percent, and the Arab Democratic Party about 12 percent.[3] Labor retained substantial Arab support, but its estimated share declined from more than 23 percent in 1984 to about 16 percent in 1988.[3][11]

Early demographic readings suggested that nearly 75 percent of voters of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish origin supported parties outside the Labor bloc, while about 60 percent of Ashkenazi voters supported Labor.[3] These figures were presented as early electoral estimates rather than final counts of votes by ethnic origin.[3] They accompanied a result in which Labor lost seats, religious parties expanded, and neither of the two principal lists secured a decisive individual advantage.[3][5]

Campaign polling and public-opinion findings revealed that attitudes toward the uprising did not fall into a simple choice between force and negotiations.[3] Polls initially showed Labor leading Likud by 36 percent to 26 percent, before that lead disappeared.[3] A majority favored greater force against the uprising, yet nearly two-thirds thought it was time to talk to Palestinians.[3] A majority also supported negotiations with the PLO if it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.[3]

The most consequential interpretive dispute concerns the relationship between the uprising, the late terrorist attack near Jericho, and the final one-seat margin.[4][7] Some accounts linked the attack to a shift toward the right, and Peres maintained that it cost Labor voters; another interpretation held that the electoral trend was already evident before the attack.[4] The claim that the attack directly produced Likud’s narrow advantage therefore remains an interpretation of voter behavior rather than a demonstrated causal finding.[7]

Kach’s exclusion generated both a substantial legal dispute and competing interpretations of campaign dynamics.[3][12] The court resolved the party’s equality argument against it and upheld exclusion under the prohibition on racist electoral lists.[12] A contemporary poll cited by Smith placed Kach at nearly 4 percent before its exclusion, but this was a campaign estimate rather than an election result.[3] Contemporary analysis suggested that some voters angered by the exclusion turned to Moledet, Tsomet, or religious parties, interpreting the ban as an impetus to their success.[3]

The coalition negotiations also raised significant questions about religious pluralism because proposed changes to the definition of Jewish status could affect non-Orthodox conversions.[3] Those demands were part of bargaining over a prospective coalition rather than a settled description of the government’s eventual policy.[3] Together, the legal exclusion of Kach, the religious parties’ enhanced bargaining position, and the debate over how to respond to the uprising made the election consequential beyond the one-seat contest between Likud and the Alignment.[3][12]