Israel: Parliamentary Democracy Without a Single Written Constitution

Middle East Politics Fundamentals

Chapter 7 · Israel: Parliamentary Democracy Without a Single Written Constitution

Every system covered so far has had a single, dated founding document to point to — Iran's 1979 constitution, Turkey's 1982 one, even Egypt's own repeatedly rewritten republican constitutions. Israel presents a genuinely different real puzzle: a functioning parliamentary democracy, now well into its eighth decade, that has never actually finished writing one. What it has instead — and what this chapter follows in detail — is a real, deliberate, ongoing substitute.

1948-1950: Independence, and a Real Decision Not to Decide

Israel's own 1948 Declaration of Independence called for a constitution to be adopted by 1 October 1948. That deadline passed without one, and it kept passing — real, deep disagreement between secular and religious political factions over what a written constitution should even say made agreement on a single text genuinely impossible in the state's own earliest years.

Finding: a real, self-aware compromise, not an accidental gap In June 1950, MK Yizhar Harari proposed what became known as the Harari Decision — often described, even by Israelis themselves, as "the decision not to decide." Its actual text charged the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee with preparing a constitution built not as one document, but "of chapters, each comprising a single Basic Law unto itself" — to be assembled gradually, law by law, until the project was one day complete. Seventy-five years later, that project remains real, ongoing, and genuinely unfinished.

The Basic Laws: Quasi-Constitutional Chapters, Enacted One at a Time

Since 1950, the Knesset has passed roughly a dozen and a half Basic Laws, each covering one institution or principle rather than the whole system at once — Basic Law: The Knesset, Basic Law: The Government, Basic Law: The Judiciary, the two 1992 human-rights laws covered below, and the real, more recent and genuinely contested Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018).

Not legally identical to an ordinary law

A Basic Law is passed through the same Knesset as any other statute, but is understood — and, since 1995, treated by the courts — as holding a higher, quasi-constitutional status that ordinary legislation cannot simply override.

Still genuinely a work in progress

No single moment has ever formally declared the Basic Laws collectively "complete" as a finished constitution — new ones can still be added, and existing ones amended, through the Knesset's own ordinary legislative process.

The Knesset: 120 Seats, One Single National Constituency

The Knesset has 120 members, elected through closed-list proportional representation using the D'Hondt method — with one real, distinctive design feature this course hasn't seen before: the entire country counts as a single electoral district. There are no separate constituencies of the kind Jordan (Chapter 2) or Iran's own Majlis (Chapter 4) use — every vote nationwide is counted against the same single 120-seat pool.

Period	Real electoral threshold
1949-1992	1%
1992-2003	1.5%
2003-2014	2%
2015-present	3.25%

Political Theory Fundamentals' own Chapter 8 covers how a national-list proportional system, especially at a genuinely low threshold, tends to produce a real, highly fragmented multi-party legislature — precisely because a small party can win seats with only a modest nationwide vote share, rather than needing to win a plurality anywhere in particular. Israel's own repeated raising of the threshold, three times since 1992, is a direct, real, documented attempt to counteract exactly that fragmenting tendency — with only partial success, as the next section shows.

Coalition Government: A Structural Consequence of the Design

No single party has ever won an outright 61-seat majority in the Knesset's own history. Every Israeli government has therefore been a coalition — and the real bargaining leverage this gives even small parties, whose support a governing majority genuinely needs, is a direct, structural consequence of the electoral system covered above, not a separate accident of Israeli political culture.

Finding: a real, recent, and genuinely severe instability episode Between April 2019 and November 2022, Israel held five separate Knesset elections — in April 2019, September 2019, March 2020, March 2021, and November 2022 — because no resulting coalition proved durable. The government formed in June 2021 was genuinely notable in its own right: a broad, ideologically varied coalition that included, for the first time in Israeli history, an Arab Israeli political party as a governing partner — and it still collapsed after only about a year in office, triggering the fifth election in the sequence.

1992 and 1995: A Real "Constitutional Revolution"

On 17 March 1992, the Knesset passed Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, alongside a companion Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation — the country's first real Basic Laws squarely addressing individual rights. Their real significance became fully clear three years later.

In its November 1995 ruling in United Mizrahi Bank v. Migdal Cooperative Village, the Supreme Court — under President Meir Shamgar and, notably, Vice President Aharon Barak — held that Basic Laws sit above ordinary legislation, and that the Court itself therefore holds the real power to strike down an ordinary law that conflicts with one. Barak himself described the ruling as a genuine "constitutional revolution" — the moment Israel's own patchwork of Basic Laws first functioned, in the courts' own practice, as a real, enforceable constitutional ceiling on everyday legislation.

2023-2024: A Real, Historic Test of That Same Revolution

A real, dated, and genuinely first-of-its-kind ruling — presented here as institutional history, not a verdict on the underlying reform debate In July 2023, the Knesset passed an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary abolishing the courts' own "reasonableness" standard for reviewing government decisions — part of a broader, real, and deeply contested judicial-reform program that triggered months of mass public protest. On 1 January 2024, all fifteen Supreme Court justices sat together for the first time in the Court's own history, and ruled 8-7 to strike the amendment down. This was itself a genuine first: never before had Israel's Supreme Court struck down any part of a Basic Law — the constitutional equivalent, roughly, of a court striking down a constitutional amendment rather than an ordinary statute. This chapter records that ruling as a real, dated institutional event; it takes no position on the underlying, still genuinely contested question of how far judicial review over the Knesset's own Basic Laws should extend.

Four Systems, Four Different Constitutional Foundations

	Founding document	Real status today
Iran	A single 1979 constitution	Amended once, in 1989; otherwise stable
Turkey	A single 1982 constitution	Substantially amended in 2007 and 2017
Egypt	Several full constitutions since 1953	Most recently rewritten in 2014, amended 2019
Israel	No single constitution at all	A real, ongoing, unfinished sequence of individually enacted Basic Laws since 1950

What Comes Next

Chapter 8 turns to Iraq and Syria — two real, separately-evolved Ba'ath Party one-party states, and how each country's own real fate diverged sharply after 2003.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain, in your own words, what the Harari Decision actually resolved in 1950 — and what it deliberately left unresolved. Why is "a decision not to decide" a fair description of what it did?

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Using the electoral-threshold table and the real 2019-2022 election sequence, explain why raising the threshold three times since 1992 did not prevent the coalition instability of those years — what does the threshold actually control, and what does it leave untouched?

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Explain why the 1995 United Mizrahi Bank ruling and the 1 January 2024 reasonableness-law ruling are directly connected events, twenty-nine years apart, rather than two unrelated Supreme Court decisions — what real legal foundation does the second ruling depend on that the first one established?

→ Solution

Chapter 7 Quick Reference

1948-1950: Israel's own 1 October 1948 constitution deadline passed unmet; the June 1950 Harari Decision resolved the impasse by building a constitution gradually, one Basic Law at a time, rather than adopting one document at once
Basic Laws: roughly a dozen and a half enacted since 1950, each covering one institution or principle, understood as quasi-constitutional but never formally declared "complete"
The Knesset: 120 seats, closed-list proportional representation, D'Hondt method, the entire country as one single national constituency — a real threshold raised three times: 1% (1949-92), 1.5% (1992-2003), 2% (2003-14), 3.25% (2015-present)
Coalition government: no party has ever won an outright majority; five real elections were held between April 2019 and November 2022 alone, including a June 2021 coalition notable for including an Arab Israeli party for the first time, which still collapsed within a year
1992/1995: Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and the Supreme Court's own November 1995 United Mizrahi Bank ruling establishing real judicial review of ordinary legislation against Basic Laws — Aharon Barak's own named "constitutional revolution"
1 January 2024: for the first time in its history, the Supreme Court struck down part of a Basic Law itself, voiding the 2023 "reasonableness law" amendment 8-7, with all fifteen justices sitting together for the first time ever