Why successive Israeli governments have feared a referendum on a 'peace treaty'
"I support and respect the process, because if we reach a diplomatic agreement, it can't pass with a happenstance majority [in the Knesset]," Netanyahu said at a Likud faction meeting.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, however, said that he is not a proponent of the idea, but would support it if the coalition does.
"A referendum is a way of running away from making decisions," he stated.
The issue of a referendum on a peace treaty rose earlier this week, as Economics and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett hopes to turn the existing law into a basic law, giving it constitutional status.
The current law, proposed by coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud Beytenu) requires a referendum on any treaty that includes giving up land under Israeli sovereignty. This means that a referendum would not be necessary to give the Palestinian Authority control over more of the West Bank, but would be required to authorize land swaps.
In addition, the Bayit Yehudi has yet to submit a bill on the topic and has not clarified whether making Levin's bill a basic law would suffice for the party, or if they would want to expand it.
...
"A referendum only gives the nation veto power. It doesn't let citizens overturn the Knesset's decision if it rejects a peace treaty," Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said.
Livni added that she believes the public will support a peace treaty, and if not, it can vote in a new government.
"I don't fear the public, but it's [the government's] job to make decisions," she stated.
Leader of the Opposition Shelly Yacimovich (Labor) pointed out that Israel is a representative democracy, and that every few years citizens vote for parties they support, which are supposed to make decisions.
"There is not a hint of democracy behind the idea of a referendum specifically about a diplomatic treaty," she said. "The opposite is true. The selectiveness [in referendum topics] speaks for itself."These are precisely the issues. With all that Israelis supposedly 'want' a 'two-state solution,' when you get specific, very few actually are willing to pay the price that 'everyone knows' we would pay - which is not enough to satisfy the 'Palestinians' anyway.
Saying that we could vote out the government if it made a peace deal Israelis didn't like is meaningless; it would be shutting the barn door after the cow has escaped.
And calling Israel's government representative is questionable at best and farcical at worst, given that you can only vote for a party into whose slate you have no input.
Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli democracy, referendum law, Shelly Yacimovich, two-state solution, Tzipi Livni
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:46 PM
5 Comments:
I would not want to be near Israel and Hashem's wrath in case the majority of Israel's Jews voted to give away our MORASHAH, which is AGAINST TORAH...
Let's put Shabbath on referendum then... Why not?
The whole Torah, even, considering that there is a GHEZERAH SHAVAH between Torah and Erets Israel...
I bet that the same people who consider normal having one on the Land would flip if there was one on their yeshiva's public funding...
I want to quote the Gaon of Vilna:
"...The sin of the spies...hovers over the Nation of Israel in every generation."... "How strong is the power of the Sitra Achra that it succeeds in hiding from the eyes of our holy fathers the dangers of the Klipoth; from the eyes of Avraham Avinu the Klipah of galut...and in the time of Moshiach, the Sitra Achra attacks the guardians of Torah with blinders"... "Many of the sinners of this great sin of 'They despised the cherished Land', and also many of the guardians of Torah, will not know or understand that they are caught in the sin of the Spies, that they have been sucked into the sin of the Spies by many false ideas and empty claims, and they cover their ideas with the already proven fallacy that the mitzvah of the settlement of Israel no longer applies in our day, an opinion which has already been disproven by the giants of the world, the Rishonim and the Acharonim"...
Today also, there are people ready to GIVE AWAY OUR HERITAGE to others, for a few pennies more, or for the patting in the back by some foreign power, and some even pervert and falsify the Torah to the point of saying that it would be allegedly allowed!!!
BESIDES... Why should Arabs, who are 20% of the electorate, and are anti-Zionists, decide if OUR land is given away to our enemies just as they did with Oslo, that, without the Arab votes in the Knesset would have NEVER passed??...
Here's how a Jew judges the matter:
"No Jew has the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel. No Jew has the authority to do so. No Jewish body has the authority to do so. Not even the entire Jewish People alive today has the right to yield any part of Israel.
It is the right of the Jewish People over the generations, a right that under no conditions can be cancelled. Even if Jews during a specific period proclaim they are relinquishing this right, they have
neither the power nor the authority to deny it to future generations. No concession of this type is binding or obligates the Jewish People.
Our right to the land - the entire land - exists as an eternal right, and we shall not yield this historic right until its full and complete redemption is realised."
-David Ben Gurion - at the Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1937
Someone here wrote nicely why not:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/6210
I had also written something to that effect:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/5019
Post a Comment
<< Home