Religious parties in Israel.
The religious parties aim to establish a Jewish State governed by the Jewish religious code, the Halacha. Some parties do not recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel and are thereby making a concession towards their ideology by participating to the democratic electoral proceeding. They explain it by the necessity to access to political power to create a religious State. All of them consider the pursuit of the Jewish colonization on the territory of Great Israel as legitimate ( « Eretz Israel ») and are opposed to the creation of a Palestinian State, except Shass and to a certain degree Deguel Hatorah.
Some parties are ethnically distinguished between Sephardi and Ashkenazi. The distinction between belonging to a Zionist party or not exists but does not have any consequence.
The most important religious parties:.
Mafdal, National Religious party (NRP).
Leader: Yitzhak Lévy.
The National Religious Party succeeds in 1956 to the former Mizrahi (acronym of Merkaz Ruhani or « Spiritual Center ») and represents a nationalist or modern orthodox nationalist religion. It is a mixed party, with Ashkenazi and Sephardic and it is the most important religious party. Since its creation, it has been the partner of all government coalitions and traditionally occupied the Ministry of the Interior and Religion, which has been taken over by the oriental orthodox Shas since 1992. The party heads most of the religious legislations of Israel. It had its best results during the 1977 elections (12 seats), but lost most of its influence among the Sephardic with the creation of the Tami and Shas parties. Thanks to the Goush Emounim wing ( « rock of faith »), the Mafdal became the colonist's party and is therefore radically opposed to the idea of a Palestinian State.
Shas.
Leader: Arié Deri.
The Shas ( « Sephardic Torah Guardians ») was founded in 1984 as a Sephardic scission of the Israeli Agoudat.