Elections for the second Knesset were held in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

on 30 July 1951. Voter turnout was 75.1%.

Dieter Nohlen Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An ex ...

, Florian Grotz & Christof Hartmann (2001) ''Elections in Asia: A data handbook, Volume I'', p123

Results

Aftermath

The second Knesset was highly unstable, with four separate governments, two different

Prime Ministers A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but rat ...

and several defections; Rostam Bastuni, Avraham Berman and

Moshe Sneh Moshe Sneh (; 6 January 1909 – 1 March 1972) was a Haganah commander and an Israeli politician. One of the founders of Mapam, he later joined the Israeli Communist Party (Maki). Biography Mosze Klaynboym (later Sneh) attended high scho ...

left Mapam and set up the Left Faction. Bastuni later returned to Mapam whilst Berman and Sneh joined Maki. Hannah Lamdan and David Livschitz also left Mapam, establishing the Faction independent of Ahdut HaAvoda before joining Mapai. Four other members left Mapam to found Ahdut HaAvoda – Poale Zion, but the move was not recognised by the Knesset speaker. During the Knesset term, Sephardim and Oriental Communities joined the General Zionists. As with the first Knesset, the speaker was Yosef Sprinzak.

Third government

The second Knesset started with

David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...

forming the third government of Israel (the first Knesset had two governments) on 8 October 1951. His Mapai party formed a coalition with Mizrachi, Hapoel HaMizrachi, Agudat Yisrael, Agudat Yisrael Workers and the three Israeli Arab parties, the Democratic List for Israeli Arabs, Progress and Work and Agriculture and Development. Like the first Knesset, there were 15 ministers. The government resigned on 19 December 1952 due to a dispute with the religious parties over

religious education In secular usage, religious education is the teaching of a particular religion (although in the United Kingdom the term ''religious instruction'' would refer to the teaching of a particular religion, with ''religious education'' referring to t ...

Fourth government

Ben-Gurion formed the fourth government on 24 December 1952, dropping the

ultra-orthodox Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are ...

parties (Agudat Yisrael and Agudat Yisrael Workers) and replacing them with the General Zionists and the Progressive Party. The new government had 16 ministers. Ben-Gurion resigned on 6 December 1953 as he wished to settle in the

Negev The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

of Sde Boker.

Fifth government

Moshe Sharett Moshe Sharett (; born Moshe Chertok (); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in th ...

formed the fifth government on 26 January 1954 with the same coalition partners and ministers. Sharett resigned on 29 June 1955, when the General Zionists refused to abstain from voting on a

motion of no-confidence In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an obse ...

brought by Herut and Maki over the government's position on the trial of Malchiel Gruenwald, who had accused Rudolf Kastner of collaborating with the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

Sixth government

Sharett formed the sixth government on 29 June 1955, eliminating the General Zionists and the Progressive Party from the coalition and reducing the number of ministers to 12. The new government did not last long, as a general election was called for 26 July 1955.

References

External links

Historical overview of the Second Knesset
Knesset website

Knesset website

Knesset website {{Israeli elections 1951 elections in Israel Legislative election Legislative elections in Israel July 1951 in Asia

David Ben-Gurion Menachem Begin