National referendum - the cement that binds

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA Weekly Commentary
14 October '10

Many in the Israeli Left oppose legislation that would require holding a national referendum to approve future Palestinian-Israeli agreements on the grounds that such agreements couldn't pass if put to a national vote.

Read that again.

Yes.

That's right.

They don't think that the Israeli public, if provided the opportunity to vote directly on an agreement, would support it.

They then argue, along with a small minority from the Right, that Israel is a parliamentary democracy and that the citizens thus should only express their positions via their elected representatives rather via plebiscites.

Now if we were back in 1948 and the country had just been founded then one might accept this line of thinking.

But its 2010 now and the fact of the matter is that we have had a series of major agreements negotiated by prime ministers who accepted terms that they very clearly opposed when they ran for office. And the Knesset majorities that endorsed these agreements relied on parties that were elected on the basis of election platforms that contradicted these deals.

Was that democratic?

The argument that politicians who betray their mandates can be punished at the ballot box is hardly satisfactory given the permanent nature of the damage they have done.

There is a considerably more sophisticated - though more condescending - argument: That the Israeli public actually knows deep down in its collective heart that the Jewish State has to agree to "X", but that same public doesn't have the stomach to actively endorse "X". So citizens vote for candidates and parties that claim to oppose "X" knowing full well that their mandate will be defied.

But there is also a practical side to this issue that warrants consideration.

Without the promise of a national referendum there is a very large and significant segment of Israeli society in the dangerously frustrating position that they are not only aware that their will, as expressed via the elections, will be defied should an agreement be reached and that there is nothing, for all practical purposes, that they can do within the framework of the system to stop the betrayal.

The promise of a national referendum goes far beyond philosophical discussions of the meaning of democracy and its practical expression.

The promise of a national referendum would, in the event that an agreement is indeed reached, serve as the vital cement that keeps our social compact intact.

For with all the pain, it would be one thing for an agreement - no matter how distasteful it may be - to be signed after gaining approval in a national referendum, and quite another if the deal went through only because some politicians decided that they could get away with betraying their mandate.

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