Some say
referendums will
further undermine
Israeli government
authority.

quiring the direct election of the
prime minister. If referendums
are now added to the system,
they will hobble the executive
branch by providing a populist
means of overriding its deci-
sions.
Another objection is that ref-
erendums will enhance the
weight of specific population or
special-interest groups — which
is a euphemistic way of saying
that Israel Arab's citizens, who
compromise 12.3 percent of the
electorate but whose parties ac-
count for only 4.2 percent of the
Knesset seats, will have a
greater impact on the outcome
of a referendum than they do on
national legislation.
Indeed, this potential dis-
crepancy instantly revived the
argument that only a "Jewish
majority" should decide critical
issues in the Jewish state. That,
in turn, focused attention on
other problems posed by the use
of referendums in a country
that lacks a constitution and is
thus particularly vulnerable to
the "tyranny of the majority."
Who, for example, will be el-
igible to call a referendum? The
government or the Knesset
alone, or "The People" (pre-
sumably after collecting a re-
spectable number of
signatures)? And what system
of checks and balances will be
instituted to ensure that refer-
endums are not used to deprive
Israelis of their civil rights?

GOLAN page 58

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national elections have been so
close, for example, one corn-
mentator challenged the
"strange delusion" that "a ref-
erendum will yield any more de-
finitive results." And another
pointed out that after publicly
scolding the PLO's Yassir
Arafat for disavowing the un-
derstanding his negotiators had
reached in Cairo last month,
Mr. Rabin himself was now
proposing a mechanism for do-
ing precisely the same thing af-
ter drafting a treaty with Syria.
Equally interesting, howev-
er, were the arguments against
revising Israel's democratic sys-
tem for reasons that have noth-
ing to do with the Golan. Prime
among these is the forecast that
the introduction of referendums
will further undermine the abil-
ity to rule Israel's already un-
wieldy society.
The Knesset, this reasoning
goes, has been weakened by the
law (passed two years ago) re-

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