KNESSET

Hebrew word meaning "assembly." A unicameral parliament, the Knesset is the legislative assembly of the State of Israel. Its name recalls the great legislative assembly of the epoch of the Second Temple, destroyed in 70 C.E. Created in January 1949, the Knesset met for the first time in Tel Aviv, then it was moved to Jerusalem. At the beginning it was supposed to be a constitutional assembly, but the religious parties opposed this, arguing that the Jewish people could have only one supreme law, that of the Torah. The powers of the Knesset were then established by the Basic Law of 1958, amended in 1986, and completed in 1992. Renewed every four years, the Knesset consists of 120 deputies, members chosen wholly on the basis of proportional representation, through a ballot list of candidates, which allows any minority to have at least one representative. To be represented, a party needs only 1.5 percent of the votes cast. The Basic Law, amended in 1992, established a new electoral system, effective for the elections of 29 May 1996. For the first time, Israelis chose, by separate ballots, both the future government leader (prime minister) and the MKs (Knesset members) who would represent them in the Knesset.

In June 1996, when the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister, having narrowly defeated the Labor Party's Shimon Peres, the composition of the Knesset was as follows: Labor Party: 34 seats; Likud-Tsomet-Gesher Bloc: 32 (Likud: 22, Gesher: 5, and Tsomet: 5); SHAS: 10; Meretz: 9; NRP: 9; Israel be Aliyah: 7; Hadash: 5; United Torah Judaism: 4; United Arab List: 4; Third Way: 4; Moledet: 2. The new electoral reform had produced an anomalous situation in which the left, which had won 53 seats, found itself in the opposition, while the right, which had only 43, but whose candidate for prime minister had been elected, was in power. In the 1999 elections, Netanyahu was soundly defeated by Labor's Ehud Barak (as head of the One Israel coalition), with Barak receiving 56 percent of the vote to Netanyahu's 44 percent. In the Knesset, 26 seats went to One Israel and 19 to Likud. Following Barak's defeat by Ariel Sharon in the prime ministerial election of 2001, Likud regained its prominence. In the 2003 Knesset elections (which abandoned the separate ballot for prime minister instituted in 1996), Likud received 29 percent of the vote (37 seats); the Labor-Meimad coalition received 14.5 percent (19 seats). The remaining seats were distributed as follows: Shinui: 15; SHAS: 11; National Unity: 7; Meretz: 6; National Religious Party: 6; Torah and Shabbat Judaism: 5; Hadash: 3; Am Ehad: 3; National Democratic Assembly: 3; Israel be Aliyah: 2; United Arab List: 2.

SEE ALSO Netanyahu, Benjamin;Torah.