ABSTRACT
The current Israeli electoral system has been set following the establishment of the state in Basic Law: the Knesset (1958), but the debate over the system has continued ever since (Yaakobi 2008). While only few changes were actually made to the system, the most extensive of which was the direct election reform in the 1990s, some serious attempts took place prior to the last two elections. The Yesh Atid party, established in 2013 before the elections for the nineteenth Knesset, has made its motto to change the electoral system as one of the most important reforms it intended on promoting. Along with the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which included the need for an electoral and governmental reform in its platform, the leaders of both parties, Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman, have pushed for a reform during the nineteenth Knesset. Alongside suggestions related to limiting the number of ministers in government and changing the method of overthrowing the government by motions, the electoral threshold (i.e., the percentage of votes a party must win in order to receive parliamentary seats) was the main component of the electoral system on which the coalition parties were focused.
