In the Israeli political system, mid-sized and small parties can wield disproportionate power through their ability to walk out of a governing coalition and thereby topple the prime minister, or simply work their will by threatening to walk out. Previous efforts to reduce the clout of smaller parties have failed or backfired. Although the current system doesn’t create the governmental instability often ascribed to it, extortion by junior coalition partners is a real problem, to which Emmanuel Navon suggests a solution:

Israel’s political system suffers less from instability than from a lack of accountability. Members of Knesset (MKs) are not answerable to voters. In parties (such as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid or Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu) where candidates are selected by the chairman, MKs are only answerable to their boss. In parties that hold primaries (such as Likud and Labor), MKs are answerable to interest groups and to shady deal-makers who determine the results of primary elections. On election day, voters select a party but not their representatives.

In countries where voters chose their parliamentary representatives via electoral districts, such accountability exists. . . . [But] district elections are not a realistic option in Israel: most MKs oppose them and Israel is probably too complicated geographically, demographically, and politically to design electoral districts.

There is another way, however, to make MKs answerable to their voters: by enabling voters to influence the composition of the list they vote for on election day. Instead of just voting for a party, voters can select the candidates they want to promote on the party’s list before casting their ballot. This system, which exists in some twenty democracies around the world, would partially free candidates from the corruption and byzantine deal-making that characterize Israel’s current primaries. Admittedly, this “open-primaries” system tends to give an advantage to famous candidates, but the Internet and social media offer affordable and effective self-promotion tools.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.