Unlike many other nations, but like Britain and New Zealand, Israel has an uncodified Constitution, which isn't written down in a single document. Initially, having one was planned and a Constituent Assembly was elected to draft one in 1949; however, Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion opted against having one, both to appease his religious coalition partners (who were opposed to a "secular" supreme law instead of the Torah) and to not constrain his own authority.

As an alternative, a series of Basic Laws was written, each of them dealing with a different aspect of government and the people's rights, and these would all be consolidated into a final Constitution sometime in the unspecified future. These basic laws, together with the Declaration of Independence, form the Israeli small-c constitution.

A side effect of this odd situation is that, technically, the capital-c Constitution is still a work in progress – while the parts dealing with government organizations are 90 percent finished, the Bill of Rights is very barebones and embryonic. This also means that the Basic laws are ridiculously easy to amend, since every Knesset is a Constituent Assembly that changes how the future Constitution will look like at the starting point, instead of a "regular" Parliament that only retrospectively amends the Constitution it works under.

However, unlike Britain and New Zealand, laws made by the Knesset are still subject to judicial review (in other words, the Supreme Court can strike down unconstitutional laws). This power doesn't come from the Basic Laws, but from the 1995 United Mizrahi Bank Ltd. v. Migdal Cooperative Village ruling, that essentially stated that ordinary laws are subject to the small-c constitution even though there's no capital-c Constitution yet^note The Constitution doesn't explicitly spell out that laws are subject to judicial review in the United States either – Marbury v. Madison, anyone?. However, the first time the Israeli Supreme Court ever struck down a law as unconstitutional was in the 1969 Aaron A. Bergman v. Minister of Finance and State Comptroller ruling^note Though the Bergman case is a bit muddy, since the law struck down was found to violate one of the few clauses of the Basic law that does require a supermajority to amend without being passed by that supermajority itself.

The basic laws passed so far are:

• Basic Law: The Knesset (1958)
• Basic Law: Israel Lands (1960)
• Basic Law: The President of the State (1964)
• Basic Law: The State Economy (1975)
• Basic Law: The Military (1976)
• Basic Law: Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel (1980)
• Basic Law: The Judiciary (1984)
• Basic Law: The State Comptroller (1988)
• Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992): The first half of the Israeli Bill of Rights.
• Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation (1994^note a previous version was passed in 1992): The second half of the Israeli Bill of Rights, which protects "the right to engage in any occupation, profession, or trade". The 1994 version had a Notwithstanding clause added simply to ensure laws banning pork imports won't be unconstitutional.
• Basic Law: The Government (2001^note previous versions were passed in 1968 and 1992)
• Basic Law: Referendum (2014): It doesn't regulate referendums generally, but only says that Israeli territories^note Israel within the Green Line plus East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but not the West Bank or the Gaza Strip can't be ceded to another country unless the cession is approved either in a referendum or by a 2/3rds majority in the Knesset.^note Annexing new territories into Israel proper isn't subject to these supermajorities – so for all intents and purposes, any peace agreement with the Palestinians – which nine times out of ten involves mutual land swaps and/or dividing Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine – would require a referendum, while Israel would keep having a carte blanche to annex West Bank settlement blocs.
• Basic Law: Israel, the Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018): Controversially declared that only Jews have the right to national self-determination in Israel, alienating not only the Palestinian citizens of Israel (who obviously often identify with the Palestinian side of the Arab-Israeli conflict) but also the Druze (a heavily-integrated model minority who consider themselves parties to a "covenant of blood" with the Jewish majority). What many people don't know that it's a verbatim copy of a draft Constitution written by a far-right NGO.

The President is the ceremonial figurehead head of state, chosen by the Knesset for seven years. Presidential powers are limited, even by the standards of parliamentary systems. All they amount to in practice is:

• The President can pardon criminals on their own (as opposed to exercising their pardon powers only when the Government orders to, like certain other Westminster system heads of state one could mention). There is one exception to this: the assassin of a Prime Minister of Israel cannot be pardoned or have a sentence commuted. Hence Yigal Amir (the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin) will not ever leave prison.
• The President hosts the coalition negotiations for forming the government.
• If the Prime Minister has lost their majority in the Knesset, they may request a dissolution of the Knesset, which the President could refuse to grant.^note This power has never been used, as all dissolutions have happened either by the Knesset dissolving itself or the budget not being passed in time.

The unicameral legislature, the Knesset^note Named after the Great Assembly of Biblical times, that has little else in common with the modern Knesset apart from the number of members, has 120 members, all elected by a system of nationwide, closed-list proportional representation.^note As the main page for Israel says, this was taken from the political system of The Netherlands. This means voters cast their ballots for parties rather than individual candidates, and each party's share of the national popular vote determines its share of seats in the Knesset. The threshold to get in the Knesset is 3.75 percent. These seats are filled by candidates named in a list selected beforehand by the party they're assigned to^note The methods each party uses to prepare its list vary widely, and range from "primaries among the party members" (Labor) to "handpicked by an unelected council of Rabbis" (Shas and UTJ)..

Elections are supposed to happen every four years on the Jewish month of Cheshvan, which maps up to late October-early November in the Gregorian. Because this rule applies by calendar years, this means a Knesset's term can run up to five years - if it's elected on a December or a January^note the closest Knesset to reach the absolute maximum was the 19th, elected on January 2013 for a term that was supposed to end on October 2017, but it was eventually dissolved on 2015..

For a bill to become law, it must pass by a simple majority in three readings.

The bill, having been drawn up by a government Minister or backbencher MK^note bills presented by ministers get to this stage straight away, but bills presented by non-government MKs have to pass a preliminary vote, after which they'll be scrutinized by a committee before getting here. Confused yet?, is presented to the Knesset for a vote, which is called the first reading, where the Knesset can debate the bill but only accept or reject it as a whole. If it passes the first reading, it goes to a committee to get scrutinized and analyzed, and potentially reworded^note the committee has a very wide authority to reword bills, up to the point of merging several bills that all deal with the same thing into one.

After passing the committee, the bill goes back before the Knesset floor for a second reading, where the Knesset goes through debating and voting on it. This time, the bill can be potentially reworded - first, MKs and Ministers submit their proposed rewordings, and the Knesset votes on accepting or rejecting each. After all of these votes are taken, the Knesset votes on each section of the bill separately. Once the second reading is finished, the Knesset immediately moves to the third and final reading, where it can only vote on accepting or rejecting the bill as a package deal without debate.

Once the bill is passed, it becomes law automatically; although the President has to sign bills passed by the Knesset, he has no veto power, and refusal to sign does nothing.

As mentioned previously, the Israeli system of government takes most of its influences from the Westminster style of government. The government comprises a Prime Minister who leads a cabinet of ministers appointed by the Knesset; as of time of writing the current government has 33 ministers with titles linked to distinct ministries, plus at various times several ministers without portfolio and one (largely ceremonial) vice prime minister. Instead of the head of state being the nominal holder of executive power as in Britain, the Basic Laws explicitly vest executive power in the government, which is to say, whichever coalition can get the most Knesset members to agree on their choice for Prime Minister. (From 1996 to 2003, direct popular elections for the PM were held instead, but coalition-forming proved difficult, hence their abolition.) A Prime Minister can dissolve the Knesset (with the President’s approval) if he or she were to receive a vote of no confidence from the Knesset. Unlike in Britain, but like in Australia and New Zealand, the PM has to be a member of the Knesset in order to be eligible for appointment.

There are secular courts and religious courts. The religious courts are a holdover from the Ottoman "millet" system, where each religious community has its own religious courts. This means that there is no secular marriage in Israel, and by extension no interfaith or same-sex marriage, since all the religious authorities are conservative.

Supreme Court justices are appointed by the president, but the pool of names is selected by the Judicial Selection Committee, a 9-member board of 3 Supreme Court justices (including the president of the court), the Minister of Justice, one other minister, two Knesset members, and two members of the Israel Bar Association.

In 2023, the far-right government proposed reforming the judiciary, leading to massive protests across the political spectrum. In 2024, the aforementioned judicial reform was struck down by Israel's Supreme Court.

The State Comptroller is effectively the Ombudsman of the government. He is in charge of handling public complaints, anti-corruption and audits within the administrative state, and by necessity is largely shielded from day-to-day political activities and business interests.

There are several types of populated places in Israel: Cities, towns, villages, community settlements, moshavim, and kibbutzim.

In the aftermath of World War I and Red October, two strains of Zionism were developing to fruition across both Europe and the Southern Levant: The left-leaning, working-class Labor Zionist movement, which predominantly favored a socialistic state grounded in bottom-up organizing from agrarian collectives known as kibbutzim (though there were some more orthodox adherents to Marxism in the mix), and the right-leaning, middle-class Revisionist Zionist movement, which envisioned a nationalistic state grounded in British-influenced conservatism and guaranteeing legal equality for Arab minorities by force rather than pacifism. As time went on, the movements’ main political leaders emerged as David Ben-Gurion, a moderate Labor Zionist who ran the Yishuv union that was evolving into a quasi-state, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Revionist Zionists. As 1930 rolled around, the two factions gained more prominence and the rifts between them widened, culminating in the Zionist Congress of 1931 rejecting the Revisionists’ plan for full Jewish conquest of the Southern Levant and the Zabotinsky-influenced Irgun paramilitary group splitting from the main Jewish paramilitary group Haganah that same year. Coinciding with the rise to prominence of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States and both social democrats and openly antisemitic fascists in Europe, the Labor Zionists dominated the World Zionist Organization through the 1930s, and Ben-Gurion oversaw much of the Jewish resettlement effort in the Southern Levant. By the start of World War II, even though he had disagreed with Jabotinsky on whether Haganah should retaliate against Arab attacks on Jewish communities (Jabotinsky was in favor and Ben-Gurion was not), Ben-Gurion had begun to question whether peaceful coexistence with the Arabs in the Southern Levant was possible. He endorsed recruiting Jewish residents for the British war effort. Years later, Jabotinsky having died in 1940 and the British refusing to establish a Jewish state, Irgun began attacking British government outposts, with Ben-Gurion’s tacit approval and Haganah not doing anything to intervene. However, the Labor Zionists maintained their political dominance, such that Ben-Gurion would be the one to approve the United Nations’ partition plan creating a Jewish state (the Arabs disapproved), to oversee Plan Dalet in which the Haganah imposed forced migration on Arab communities in the future Jewish state, to consolidate Irgun and Haganah into the Israel Defense Forces, and to declare Israel’s independence on 14 May 1948.

Ben-Gurion led Israel through the war with the Arab states soon after, and after helping organize the 1949 Knesset elections, his Mapai party, along with the more leftist Mapam party and their allies, won the majority of seats. Thus began Ben-Gurion’s overseeing of an era of nation-building, which included airlifts to bring Jews to Israel from the danger of pogroms in Arab states, occasional violent reprisals against Palestinian Arab militants, strong rural development to empower the kibbutzim, establishment of new towns, cities, and large water infrastructure projects, as well as the creation of the Clalit healthcare system that was modeled on Britain’s NHS but run by the Hisradut labor union federation. Ben-Gurion cultivated friendly ties between Israel and both Harry Truman’s United States and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, though these ties were strained when their leaders’ successors pressured Israel to stop the IDF’s risky attempt to take the Suez Canal in 1956.

As for the various right-wing opposition parties, a former leader of the Irgun commandos, Menachem Begin, merged most of them into the Gahal party in 1961.

Eventually, Ben-Gurion retired from the premiership in 1963 and left Mapai to form his own party Rafi. That party merged with Mapai and an allied party in 1968, to form the Labor Party. The next year, riding on the popularity of the Six-Day War, Ben-Gurion’s former foreign minister Golda Meir led Labor and allies to their largest Knesset majority yet, the core of which got 56 of 120 seats, the most any one party or party alliance has ever achieved. In 1973, with another election looming, Begin transformed the opposition into the Likud party and was able to narrow the Labor-led coalition to 51 seats.

In 1977, the right wing, led by Begin’s Likud party, won a plurality of seats for the first time. Part of its success was due to the demographic shift from an Ashkenazi majority to a slight Mizrahi majority among the Jewish population. The largely Ashkenazi left wing had failed to court the Mizrahi vote, both due to discrimination and cultural differences. Many Mizrahim were more religious and/or conservative, and less likely to support reconciliation with Arabs due to their experiences with Arab persecution in the countries they fled. Other factors include the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, poor economic planning, and government corruption, which had led to Meir’s resignation as PM in 1974 and replacement with war hero Yitzhak Rabin.

The next twenty years resulted in a period of changing hands between dominant coalitions. Even though Likud under Begin had reached peace with Egypt in 1978, Labor became more dovish than Likud on security issues, eventually favoring peace with the Palestinian Arabs. The inconclusive 1984 election results led to a rotation agreement, the world’s first, with Shimon Peres of Labor serving two years as PM and Yitzhak Shamir of Likud serving the next two, within a national unity government.

The 1988 election results led to Shamir continuing his premiership with the national unity government, though the latter dissolved in 1990 when Labor attempted a “dirty trick” (named such by Rabin) to form a government with ultra-Orthodox parties. This came amid a time when the two major parties increasingly relied on smaller nationalist and religious parties to maintain their coalitions. The era saw the emergence of Shas (a Haredi interests party), Yisrael BaAliyah (a post-Soviet Russian immigrant interests party), joint lists of Arab Israeli candidates, and similar groups. The two major parties agreed to try holding a direct popular vote for Prime Minister beginning in 1996, to forestall these smaller parties. They also saw some consensus toward privatization and deregulation of industries and finance, including the replacement of the healthcare system with a more market socialist system based on competition between four big insurance cooperatives. All this came amid the backdrop of the First Intifada, an uprising of Palestinian Arab militants. By 1992, Labor under Yitzhak Rabin won control of the Knesset, and began separate peace talks with Jordan and with the PLO the next year that yielded the Oslo Accords, though right-wing extremism surged at that time, resulting in Rabin’s assassination in 1995.

In 1996, ticket splitting was widespread, with voters electing a more famous candidate for PM but a smaller party’s candidate for MK. While Labor retained control of the Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu, riding on a wave of right-wing nationalist rhetoric amid attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, narrowly became Prime Minister, overseeing increased settlement of Jews in the West Bank and fiscally conservative policies that unleashed growth in the financial, urban housing, and tech sectors. However, ongoing difficulties in negotiations with the PLO, in the South Lebanon occupation, and in passing a budget tanked Netanyahu’s reputation. In 1999, Labor’s Ehud Barak won the premiership when Netanyahu grew unpopular. The coalition proved fragile, however, ending in 2001. The direct elections for PM were abolished. Barak was succeeded by former general, Likud’s Ariel Sharon, who unlike Netanyahu, was more open to national unity with Labor, and was willing to risk his own standing within Likud to end the Second Intifada and advance the Oslo peace process by withdrawing the IDF from Gaza. Sharon also cultivated friendly ties with China, India, Russia, and the United States, though grew distant from France. Eventually, in 2005, Sharon was succeeded in the office by Ehud Olmert of the new centrist Kadima party, though Olmert was mired in corruption scandals years later.

Aside from Kadima, other parties that gained prominence during this period included Meretz (a left-wing descendant of Mapam), and Religious Zionism (a far-right, pro-West Bank settlement party).

In 2008, Tzipi Livni, a Kadima MK widely seen as Olmert’s most qualified successor for the premiership, was nearly appointed, but difficult negotiations failed to produce a coalition. She instead became leader of the opposition to PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. While Livni formed her own centrist party Hatnua and allied with Labor from 2015 to 2019, Netanyahu oversaw increased Jewish settlement of the West Bank, continuation of his economically liberal policies, and frequent coalitions with right-wing and religious parties, as his opposition remained somewhat strong electorally. His government oversaw major reforms to the Basic Law that more explicitly defined Israel as a Jewish state, and forced the various Arab sectoral parties to pull an Enemy Mine and merge into the Joint List.

In 2019, the far-right Yamina alliance (including the Religious Zionists) tried and failed to seize Netanyahu’s perch atop the Knesset’s right wing, while the Blue and White alliance of centrist parties (led by former general Benny Gantz and journalist Yair Lapid) nearly bested Netanyahu’s coalition. Since then, the Israeli party system has been marked by instability–in 2021, with Netanyahu facing corruption charges, far-rightist Naftali Bennett took over for about a year, followed by Lapid per a new rotation agreement. However, in late 2022, Netanyahu led Likud and allies to narrow victory once again, pledging ambitious reforms to the judiciary which critics have characterized as a power grab.

After the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, Netanyahu formed a national unity government he dubbed a “war cabinet”. However, infighting led to the dissolution of the cabinet in June 2024. With the left (Labor and Meretz have merged into the Democrats) and center (Lapid’s and Gantz’s parties still dominant here) defiant but still firmly in opposition, Netanyahu continues to rely on support from far-right and religious parties.

The Mainstream parties don't represent any particular sectoral interest and fit in (mostly)^note Christian Democracy doesn't exactly fit in a country where Jews form 75% of the population neatly in the Standard European Political Landscape. From (roughly) right to left, these are:

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• Otzma Yehudit^note Jewish Power (עָוצְמָה יְהוּדִית) (Far-right, 6 MKs)
  Current leader: Itamar Ben-Gvir
  Election symbol:

• Religious Zionist Party (הציונות הדתית) (Far-right, 7 MKs)
  Current leader: Bezalel Smotrich
  Election symbol: ט

• Likud (הליכוד) (Center-right, 30 MKs.)
  Current leader: Benjamin Netanyahu.
  Election symbol: מחל^note חל טעם in 1973

• Yisrael Beiteinu (יִשְׂרָאֵל בֵּיתֵנוּ) (Center-right, 6 MKs)
  Current leader: Avigdor Lieberman
  Election symbol: ל‎

• National Unity Party (המחנה הממלכתי) (Center-right, 12 MKs)^note Coalition between Blue and White Israel Resilience Party and New Hope
  Current leader: Benny Gantz
  Election symbol: כן‎

• Yesh Atid (יֵשׁ עָתִיד) (Centrist, secularist, 24 MKs)
  Current leader: Yair Lapid
  Election symbol: פה‎

• The Democrats (הדמוקרטים) (Left, social democratic, 4 MKs)
  Current leader: Yair Golan
  Election symbol: ‎

Haredi Sector

• United Torah Judaism (יהדות התורה) (Religious conservatism, 7 MKs)
  Current leader: Moshe Gafni
  Election symbol: ג‎

• Shas (ש״ס) (Religious conservatism, Sephardi interests, 11 MKs)
  Current leader: Aryeh Deri
  Election symbol: שס‎

Arab Sector

• United Arab List (Islamist, 5 MKs)
  Current leader: Mansour Abbas
  Election symbol: עם‎

• Balad (בל"ד) (Social democratic, 0 MKs)
  Current leader: Sami Abu Shehadeh
  Election symbol: ד‎

• Hadash-Ta'al (Communist, Arab secularist, 5 MKs)
  Current leader: Ayman Odeh
  Election symbol: ום‎

• Ale Yarok

A single-issue party whose platform was legalizing marijuana, led by comedian Gil Kopatsch. They're still around, but last ran on a joint list with the Islamic Family. Their heyday was in the 2000s, where they got some national attention, but this has now evaporated.

• Gil

Later renamed Dor, this was the pensioners' interest party. Some wags dubbed it the "Geezer Party." They weren't laughing quite so loudly when Gil won 7 seats in the Knesset in the 2006 snap election. Unfortunately factionalism broke the party apart and they were out by 2009.

• Labor Party (הָעֲבוֹדָה)

The last in a long line of left-wing parties that led the Yishuv, and later Israel, until 1977, the Labor Party used to be one of the two major players in the 80s and 90s, alongside the Likud. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, it suffered a long decline, shrinking from being able to compete Head-to-Head with Kadima and Likud in 2009 to barely matching Meretz in size in 2019. Eventually, after a failed merger attempt in the 2022 elections, it merged with Meretz in 2024 to form the Democrats, right after electing retired general Yair Golan to the party leadership.

• Mapam (מפ"ם‎)

Means 'United Workers' Party'. Founded in 1948 as a socialist Zionist party with a communist streak, supporting the Soviet Union. Mapam actually was a merger of two parties, Hashomer Hatzair, who supported Jews and Palestinians sharing the state of Israel, and Labor Unity's second edition, who were strict Zionists and supportive of greater Israel. The former provided Mapam's kibbutz base, the latter provided its short-lived title as the party of Israel's military elite. Mapam was the initially Israel's second largest party. Inevitably, its two sides repeatedly butted heads until a scandal involving its Czechoslovak envoy being executed caused Labor Unity to leave in 1955, eventually merging with Mapai to form Labor. The rest of Mapam fell out of love with the Soviets and became democratic socialists, entering a long-lasting alliance with Labor called the 'Alignment', where Mapam disappeared from much of the public sphere. It left the Alignment after the 1984 elections, when Labor and Likud formed a national unity government. The party fought one last solo election in 1988, where it became rivals with Ratz due to the two having very similar platforms (although Mapam was more focused on economic issues). Mapam's long time out of the sun meant that outside the kibbutzim, it was a non-factor to most voters, and when it won three seats instead of two, the media treated it as a big surprise. Nevertheless, Mapam's precarious situation meant it had to merge with its rival Ratz and Shinui to form Meretz, who inherited much more of Ratz's public image and messaging than Mapam's. However, the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement is still going strong, despite its political party long having been lost in a series of mergers.

• Meretz (מֶרֶצ)

Founded in 1992 as a merger of Ratz, Mapam (Democratic Socialists), and Shinui (Liberal Secularists), Meretz was the leftmost party in Israel that supported it being a Jewish state in some form. Its parliamentarians and supporters had a reputation for being GranolaGirls, SoapboxSadies and BourgeoisBohemians (especially in the 1990s, as its leaders were nearing retirement). Its traditional color was green and it included a heavy environmentalist streak, much to the chagrin of the actual Green Party. It was Public Enemy #1 for the religious parties in the 1990s, until Shinui left and took that title from them. Meretz also benefitted from Arab support, and was the first party to bring an Arab woman, Hussniya Jabara, as a representative. In the 2022 election, after trying - and failing - to run on a joint list with Labor, Meretz narrowly missed the threshold in their solo run, which not only booted it out of the Knesset and turned a 60-60 tie into a 64-56 right-wing majority, but also saddling them with debt in the form of state party funding they now had to pay back. Finally, in 2024, they merged with Labor to form the Democrats.

• Ratz (רצ)

Founded in 1973 as the Movement for Civil Rights (it later tagged "and Peace" to its title). Ratz is actually its nickname derived from its election symbol. It was founded by Shulamit Aloni, who served a term as part of Labor but wasn't put on the party list for re-election, twice. Ratz was to the left of Labour while supporting a Jewish state, and it was often the most progressive party, campaigning for womens' rights, secularism and anti-corruption, as well as decriminalising homosexuality. Its final solo election in 1988 saw it getting 5 seats, by which time it had a reputation as a BourgeoisBohemian party, as wealthy progressives turned out for Ratz in large numbers, but also one of SoapboxSadies as the party became a natural home for younger peace activists. The 1988 election campaign also made use of Muppet lookalikes. In order to stop left-wing votes from going under the threshold, it merged with its former rival Mapam and Shinui to form Meretz, who pretty much inherited Ratz's reputation as BourgeoisBohemians and SoapboxSadies.