Precisely. Some might accuse me of fascism, but at some point, national interest needs to supersede multiculturalism, otherwise societal progress will most likely remain an elusive goal.

“To put it in other words: do we prefer that some groups wouldn’t be represented, in order to get more stability?”

It depends on what doesn’t get represented. When you have as many parties running as Israel does, many of them overlap to massive degrees. In Canada, we have had three major national parties (and one Quebec independence party) for years. The recent addition of the Green Party has already split the votes with a very marginally different platform, so that the government is not representative of the people. Granted, Israel’s politics are more complicated, but there is simply no need for so many parties.
Say you had:
Religious Ashkenazi
Religious Mizrakhi
Right wing secular
Centrist
Centre-left
Far left
Arab party

Maybe I’m missing a part or two, but really, does Israel need 20 parties? The main problem is not even on the edges, but the fact that Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud, Labor, Kadima, and Meretz could easily just be three parties instead of five. I’m not talking about majority governments, but coalitions that could be built with 2 or 3 parties in a number of ways would greatly reduce the ability to blackmail in order to get into cabinet as well as make governments more stable.

Neither are nationalist or religious, but both are willing to use the parties which are to build coalitions while being careful to not commit to any serious policy changes beyond some lip-service speeches and carefully worded, open-ended agreements that mean little or nothing. They are status quo seekers, and will avoid the agendas of both the concessionist left and the expansionist right in order to maintain power and keep order.

Ironically, Kadima has become an ideological party, refusing to compromise on their key principle of making unilateral concessions to the arabs, and completing the bizarre, contradictory legacy of Ariel Sharon from the hardline, “Bulldozer” general who championed Yesha, to the concessionist dove who in his final years was determined to kill the dream of Greater Israel and create the leftwing political party of Kadima in order to advance that mission.

It is my contention that the fallout of this merger of Likud/Labor will result in the solidification of Kadima as the party most representing Israel’s mainstream left, perhaps even expanding further left into some less militant humanist and post-Zionist circles, while Labor transforms into the party of the pragmatic center-left, more reluctantly making concessions than Kadima, but more willingly than Likud.

as for livni , i have to disagree alex it was stupidly naive by livni – , look netanyahu is much less right wing on the issue of peace then many in likud- he’s already talking about 25 economic peace projects on the west bank and when he was last in power he did sign the wye river accords.

When Peretz got the job there were several supportive op-eds countering the more predictable sceptical ones, suggesting that having a civilan DM showed greater political maturity. Unfortunately, Peretz was found seriously wanting during the 2nd Lebanon War and the national sigh of relief that greeted “Israel’s-most-decorated-soldier” Barak’s entry into the Defense Ministry shows that the public feel more secure with a military man at the helm.

On the flip side, Moshe Arens is widely regarded as being one of the more effective DMs in recent times and he had no military background to speak of.

Personally I’d have been interested to see Dan Meridor in the position, a “civilian” but the author of a criminally ignored policy paper on Israel’s long-term defense doctrine.