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The pink-shirted man in the advert holds two pairs of white underpants, one in each hand, and talks about his friend.

"Every day he changes his dirty underwear... This is the way also he votes in elections - when there is a dirty government, he replaces it with a clean one.

"And when the second government is more dirty than the first, we swap them back."

With this sales pitch, Haisraelim, a new, single issue party has entered the political fray ahead of Israel's 10 February elections, pushing for a change in the electoral system.

The activists behind it, gathered around a wooden table in an upmarket apartment north of Tel Aviv, say they are tired of bickering, scandal-prone politicians and governments too unstable to take decisive action.

While rockets from Gaza and potential nuclear bombs from Iran are looming large in the minds of Israeli voters, the party's leader, political science Professor Gideon Doron, says the voting system itself is a "threat to Israel's existence".

"We can't make peace and we can barely make war," he says, as he fields phone calls about election billboards.

The country has a diverse electorate - combining immigrants from all over the world, hawks and doves, religious and secular viewpoints as well as traditional right and left wings - and an unusual political system.


Under Israel's very pure form of proportional representation, voters choose a party, rather than a candidate.

Seats in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset, are allocated in line with the percentage of the vote each party wins.

The parties decide, usually through internal ballots, who will be on their lists for the Knesset, meaning voters do not directly choose many of the people that represent them.

A whole host of small and medium-sized parties representing Israel's diverse mix of interest groups - currently allowed a seat if they get just 2% of the vote - mean no single party has ever held a majority in the Knesset.

Instead, fractious coalitions are typically formed through wheeling and dealing, with smaller parties effectively holding larger ones hostage.

For example, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert found himself trying to negotiate a final status agreement with the Palestinians while reliant on the religious party and powerful kingmaker Shas.

Shas is opposed to even discussing the division of Jerusalem, a key issue in any peace deal.

All too often, the coalition breaks up and fresh polls are called, which analysts say forces politicians fearful for their political survival to adopt short-term agendas.

"We cannot make decisions and we cannot plan for the future on major, major things," says Professor Doron.

'The same people'

Turn-out at the polls is dropping, as voters are becoming increasingly frustrated.

Shay Bar, 30, a former shop owner currently planning a career break in Australia, struggles to remember the last time he voted.


"We have elections every one or two years," he says, "but it's the same people all over again."

"Whoever wins will fall victim to the whims of smaller parties," says Abe, a retired pharmaceuticals specialist who gives only his first name.

He is scathing about politicians he says are "totally unqualified, you vote for the leader, but the average voter has no control over who is on the list".

And Lily Steier, 71, a retired school counsellor, says there are too many small parties because the major parties do not pay enough attention to minority interests.

"Now we have the greens, and the pensioners, and now even the disabled - it's not democracy, it's very primitive."

Haisraelim - "the Israelis" - wants 60 MKs to be directly elected by regional constituencies, as in the British first-past-the-post system, and the rest chosen using the current method.

It argues that the system would be more stable as the power of smaller parties would be reduced, plus direct accountability to voters of regionally elected MKs would raise the quality of politicians in office.

'Change blocked'

The system is the same as a bill proposed by four MKs from the three biggest parties in the outgoing Knesset - one from Mr Olmert's Kadima party, two from Labour and one from the Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu, slated as the next prime minister.

The Kadima MK, Menachem Ben Sasson, the head of the Knesset Chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, say he is convinced at least 90 MKs would have supported the bill.

But the move fell victim to the very system it was trying to change. Shas opposed it, fearing its own influence would be reduced.

Under its coalition agreement with Kadima, the religious party was able to veto changes to the "basic law" that outlines the system of government.

Haisraelim activists meet in home in Herzeliya
Haisraelim brings together activists from both left and right

Mr Ben Sasson sees Haisraelim's exploits as a waste of votes that could otherwise go to "serious parties".

But he believes electoral change is still on the agenda, despite more pressing concerns: "If we didn't have war, and the economic crisis, it would be the major issue," he says.

The Labour Party backs a switch to a partly constituency-based system.

And Kadima's new leader, Tzipi Livni, wants to raise the number of votes needed to bring down a government from 61 to 80 - ahead of consultations on further changes.

Likud too says it backs some kind of reform, although it gives no details.

But it it highly debatable whether Haisraelim will get beyond what party activist Paz Dror, 34, a well known Israeli internet entrepreneur, says is their primary aim - to stimulate debate.

"A journey must have a beginning, and this is the beginning."

Israel suffered 13 deaths in the Gaza war. But we won't know the full extent of the wound the nation has suffered until February 10, when elections are held. If current polls are to be believed, an extremist right-wing party stands to make historic gains. That outcome will demonstrate just how deep the psychic wound from the conflict truly runs; just how far the latest violence has radicalized the Israeli public; and just how big a problem all this will be for Israel's long-term security.

The party in question is Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu (or "Israel is our Home") Party. Lieberman has been a figure on the Israeli far right for years, but the Gaza war has given his party an unprecedented boost. According to the most recent opinion polls published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Yisrael Beiteinu stands to win 15 or 16 seats in the next Knesset, which puts them even with the Labor Party. For a party of the extreme right to surpass Labor--the founding party of the state, the party of Ben Gurion, Golda, and Rabin--would mark a historic shift. Clearly, in the current mood of national anger and frustration, even formerly moderate voters are open to extreme ideas--and Lieberman has plenty of those. Under the catchy slogan "No citizenship without loyalty" (it rhymes in Hebrew), Yisrael Beiteinu is pushing for a new law requiring all citizens to swear an "oath of loyalty" to the state. Israeli-Arab citizens or others who refuse could have their citizenship stripped from them.

In order to sell that idea, Lieberman has focused much of his campaign inciting public anger against Israel's Arab minority. He accuses Israeli-Arab lawmakers of harboring Hamas sympathies, and has called for the parties to be banned from running in the election. His campaign ads show Israeli-Arab students demonstrating against the Gaza war as a narrator ominously intones, "We won't forget that, during the Gaza conflict, there were those among us who stood with Hamas." As for the Gaza operation itself, Lieberman has denounced the cease-fire as a sell-out of the military. His preferred strategy is total war against the Gazan population: "We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II." The message is clearly finding its audience. Of particular concern is evidence suggesting Lieberman's appeal is growing among young voters. While not a scientific barometer, high school straw polls show Yisrael Beiteinu trouncing the mainstream parties. And reporters visiting the party's central headquarters speak of it buzzing with young volunteers--a fun-house mirror image of the young voters who helped propel Barack Obama to victory in the United States.

Like all nations, Israel has always had its extremists. But never have these ideas been so widely embraced by an outraged mainstream. Nor is the public's anger confined to the fringes. Shaul Mofaz, a former IDF chief of staff and a leading member of the centrist Kadima Party, is pledging to assassinate Hamas leaders. Ehud Barak of the Labor Party is evoking Vladimir Putin, claiming that he will kill terrorists "when they are on the toilet." But all this scrambling to the right plays directly into Lieberman's hands. Yisrael Beiteinu's steady rise in the polls shows that voters are concluding there's no reason to settle for a watered-down version of radical nationalism when they can get the real thing.



For Israel, this unprecedented shift to the right is not just a moral danger--it is also a serious strategic problem. Israel's national security depends on its position as a democracy and a member in good standing of the international community. As a sovereign democracy, Israel has the freedom of action to respond to terrorist threats, to maintain its military, and to be an undeclared nuclear power. Israel's business connections with the rest of the world are fundamental to its economy. All of that will be threatened should Lieberman and his extremist supporters succeed in advancing their agenda.

Israel has always had its harsh critics in the U.N. and E.U. But, even at its worst, that criticism has been contained within well-defined limits. In Europe and the United States, calls to sanction, boycott, or prosecute Israeli leaders as war criminals have been almost the exclusive province of the extreme left. That won't hold if Israel crosses an anti-democratic tipping point. If Israel ever actually began enforcing a loyalty oath or stripping Arab citizens of their citizenship or property rights, the road to real international isolation of the sort experienced by South Africa in the 1980s or Serbia in the 1990s could be shockingly short. And an Israel isolated from the international community would be deeply vulnerable.

To be sure, Lieberman is not about to become prime minister. A government even under the right-wing Likud Party is highly unlikely to implement the most extreme of Lieberman's proposals. Moreover, Israel's Supreme Court stands as a last line of defense against blatantly discriminatory policies. Indeed, the court has already acted to prevent an Yisrael Beiteinu-led effort to ban two Israeli-Arab parties from running in the current elections. But, if Yisrael Beiteinu performs as well as the polls suggest it will, then it stands a good chance of sitting in the next government. And, with 15 or 16 seats, it would have a relatively strong voice there. Lieberman would hold a prominent ministerial post, along with at least two or three of his colleagues. As a bloc, they would be able to influence the direction of policymaking for the coming years. At a minimum, this would further alienate Israel's Arab citizens and complicate any peace efforts. It would certainly provide endless fodder to Israel's harshest critics around the world.

Given the extent of the danger, Israel's true friends in the United States and around the world must apply themselves to the task of helping the political center hold. That does not mean directly interfering in Israel's domestic politics. But it does mean encouraging the Obama administration and others to communicate to the Israeli public the costs involved in breaking with democratic norms. Unlike most other countries, Israelis don't applaud their leaders for taking on the United States. Israelis understand how vital their "special relationship" with America is to national security. If the Israeli public is made to understand that embrace of Lieberman's radical ideas threatens the U.S.-Israel bond, it will nudge voters back toward the center. And ensuring that Israel's center can continue to hold will be vital--to the peace process and to Israel's long-term position in the international community.

Arik Ben-Zvi is a managing director at The Glover Park Group and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.