Negotiations for a government coalition are always prolonged and difficult. Smaller parties will bargain their support for pieces of legislation in which they are particularly interested. (Because of this, religious parties, for example, can generally trade in their votes for another piece of religious coercion, obnoxious to the majority.)

In reality, all this works out not very differently from the American system. In the United States, however, the deals are usually made within one big party, or between the two. In Israel, they are made among several party secretariats. But party members in the Knesset are rigidly controlled by their leaders and it is a rare sight indeed to see a Knesset member vote against his party. Once the parties of the government coalition agree on a piece of legislation, the actual passage in parliament becomes a mere formality.

Even the political variety is more superficial than it seems. Of the eleven parliamentary groups elected in 1965, all but five deputies (four Communists and I) are Zionists. They are united on every important issue, divided only on questions of implementation. The differences between Menachem Begin, the right-wing Zionist Herut party leader and Meir Yaari, the left-wing Zionist Mapam leader are certainly smaller than those between a racist Democratic Senator from Alabama and a liberal Democratic senator from New York. Actually, all the Zionist parties could well fit into the U.S. Democratic Party, with some room to spare on both sides.

The party set-up changes frequently; parties split, unite, change names, set up blocks and alignments in the most bewildering manner. On the eve of the last elections, three parties split, four parties set up two "alignments" with different names. Since then, three parties have united into one, with a new name, the Israel Labor Party, and everyone else seems to be casting his eyes around for new blocs, even while new splits threaten his own party.

The maneuvering obscures the central fact of political

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