Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Eli Yishai, leader of the Shas, a Sephardic and Haredi political party, arrives for consultations with President
Shimon Peres about forming a new coalition government after the 2009 elections. The president meets with
party heads after the votes are counted to get their views on who best can form a government. (Getty Im-
ages / Image Bank.)
wanted a harder line. The other is that the constant pressure to provide more funds for con-
stituents has led party leaders into corruption.
Shas served in the governments of the 1980s, replacing the NRP as the sole religious party in
the Likud and Labor coalitions. In 1993, Shas abstained from voting on the Oslo Accords, mak-
ing it possible to move the agreement through the Knesset. Shas fi nally left the government
coalition, not because it objected to the peace process, but because Aryeh Deri, the party's
leader, was caught up in a corruption scandal.
In 1996, Shas became the largest religious party in the Knesset, with ten seats. Shas's elec-
toral success was even greater in 1999, when it won seventeen seats. Although it has been un-
able to repeat that feat, it has won eleven or twelve seats in each election since, making it a
powerful voice in Israeli politics, and eclipsing its religious rivals.
Former Soviet Union (FSU) Immigrant Parties
When the massive wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union began in the early
1990s, the major political parties courted their votes. Likud was heading the government, and
immigrants associated it with bureaucracy and the diffi cult conditions they faced upon arrival.
As a group, they therefore voted for Labor, making exactly the opposite choice of the earlier,
Mizrahi immigrants.
This unwillingness to support Likud did not last, and the FSU voters helped elect Netan-
yahu (Likud) in 1996, returned to help elect Labor in 1999, supported Likud again in 2001 and
2003, and then helped elect Kadima in 2006. It should be stressed that this was not a bloc vote
