Look to Lincoln and de Gaulle

Israel's next prime minister will face critical tasks demanding unique leadership qualities. The fateful overall mission of the next head of government will be to reshape some of the state's basic domestic characteristics that are today headed down a dangerous track. This is also essential for the meeting of external challenges, including advancing a new peace and security paradigm, which should be based in part on the Arab peace plan.

Most critical is the need to assure effective democratic majority rule. David Ben-Gurion laid the foundations for it, as evinced by his actions in the Altalena affair, when he ordered the newly founded Israel Defense Forces to open fire on a ship carrying weapons for a pre-state Jewish militia refusing to accept the new government's authority. But the continued nurturing of this principle was neglected, with the result being that the rule of law is undermined by diverse groups of "true believers," who create facts on the ground, resist law enforcement and threaten to revolt if democratic decisions that contradict their ideology are enforced. Thus, Israel has become, on many fateful issues, a blocked society in which the majority is often bound by a determined minority.

It is also essential that we rebuild our education system, which today can only be described as shameful. One would expect a Jewish state to serve as a global example of a knowledge-based society, but the opposite is the case. This not only flouts basic Jewish values, but also, in the long term, undermines our national security and competitiveness. The crux of the matter is neither the number of students in a class, teachers' salaries, autonomy of principals, nor issues of privatization or the like, but, rather, goes much deeper. What's needed is a quantum shift toward turning Israel into a society in which knowledge and learning are central values. Minimum first steps include requiring all teachers to have at least a master's degree, doubling the amount of homework students receive, increasing learning via computers and the Internet, and requiring out-of-work teachers receiving unemployment benefits to undergo professional retraining. Resistance on the part of conservative teachers and of others harboring political agendas of their own cannot be permitted to hinder necessary changes.

Relations with the Arab minority, too, are on a slippery slope. Although studies indicate that the integration of most minorities into society is increasing, it's still not sufficient. And a radical part of them, over-represented in the Knesset and supported by a more general and justified feeling of discrimination, can easily ignite a fire that would be hard to extinguish. Both democratic values and fire prevention require radical changes in Israel's policies vis-a-vis its Arab citizens. The first condition for such changes is equality of both rights and obligations. Once their legitimate needs have been satisfied, it will be essential to strictly enforce building codes in the Arab municipalities, too, and to prohibit illegal expressions of protest. Visits to enemy states and expressions of support for them should be outlawed, as should be the case with demagogic moves that would deny Arab parties the right to participate in Knesset elections and all other manifestations of hate acts.

It may be difficult to reduce income disparities given the ongoing economic crisis, however morally unjustified and socially damaging those gaps are. But a basic standard of living has to be assured for all, with the exception of those able but unwilling to accept all work offered to them. Prevention of hunger, assuring adequate child care and caring for the very needy are moral and societal imperatives to be given top priority.

To make all of the above possible, reforms toward a presidential system are necessary, to allow for adequate capacities to govern.

All these tasks require a leadership with a profound understanding of what is needed, and an iron will to carry it out, in the face of vested interests, political apparatchiks, much ignorance, out-of-date thinking and even fanaticism. To be better prepared for the difficult tasks awaiting him, the next prime minister would do well to study the moral and real-political lessons of Abraham Lincoln and Charles de Gaulle. Both men ensured that the will of the majority would prevail while mobilizing wide support for painful and controversial measures. They broke illegitimate resistance with force when necessary, were astute politicians, reformed statehood and regimes, and laid the bases for their countries' thriving futures. These are qualities no less required by Israel's next prime minister.

Israel-Prize winner Yehezkel Dror is professor emeritus of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He served as senior adviser to Israeli prime ministers and as founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.