How are the seats in the Israeli parliament distributed? Israel uses a proportional representation system to elect political parties in its parliament, called the Knesset. The Israeli parliament has 120 seats, which are allocated to that party in direct proportion to the number of votes each party receives. Voters vote for a party, not individual candidates. Each party presents a ranked list of its candidates and according to the final number of seats they won, they are assigned mandates in the Knesset. One party never won enough of the 120 seats to win a majority; This means that every government is a coalition consisting of at least two parties. This gives the smaller parties a lot of power to form or reject a coalition government.