Jacob Christensen

Notes from the Outside of the Inside

From the Cabinet to the Police Station

without comments

Israel is a very fascinating country for political scientists – the multi-dimensional political life combined with a strictly proportional electoral system often makes Israeli politics really, really complicated. There’s the good ole’ economic cleavage, the different ethnic cleavages (between Jewish Israelis and between Jews and Arabs), religious cleavages (again: among Jews and between Jews and Arabs). And then there’s the … ahem … foreign policy thing and the … ahem … Palestinian thing.

The government which took office two days ago must count as one of the most ridiculously oversized cabinets in democratic countries – thirty full ministers, eight deputies – and, wait for it: despite having five ministers without portfolio, the government has no minister of health, so Prime Minister Netanyahu had to take on that job as well.

Now, as we all remember, the former government under Ehud Olmert had to resign due to corruption charges against the former prime minister, but it only took two days before the new Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had to spend seven hours helping Israeli police in the investigation of … a corruption case.

So, how long can we expect Netanyahu’s second term in office to be?

Well, at least Israeli police will run investigations against senior political figures. Israel is not Italy, after all.

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Written by Jacob Christensen

April 2nd, 2009 at 8:11 pm

Posted in Politics

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