The Ben Gurion Battle

...IN 1963, unable to form the government he desired, Ben Gurion charged Eshkol, known to be a flexible negotiator, with the task of forming a coalition...

...Before Sharett's ouster Ben Gurion had overcome opposition to his plans within Mapai by the very persistence of his arguments...

...It is this maddening system Ben Gurion is determined to reform along British or American lines...

...But he does not trust them...

...In 1952, he was partly successful in uniting the country's various school systems...

...But that is not the heart of the conflict, which revolves around issues of basic political philosophy and will continue to be hard-fought...

...Even before the state was officially proclaimed, as the British evacuated their forces from the predominantly Jewish areas, he established a regular army and abolished the four separate or ideological armies which up to then had fought side by side against the Arab invasion...

...The exceptions-and they are important-are Ben Gurion's young men, who received their training in the Army and in the government itself: Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff during the Sinai campaign...

...In substance, Ben Gurion thinks and plans in the manner of statesmen like Churchill and de Gaulle...

...Tension between Ben Gurion and the Old Guard of Mapai has been mounting for years...

...Yet Israel has undergone vast economic, demographic and social change, since its birth almost 18 years ago...

...The state of precarious balance between the various parties also has given each one a limited interest in the fortunes of the other parties...

...Most important of the Ben Gurion proposals was replacement of the present extreme form of proportional representation (PR) with regional elections like those in most Western democracies...

...Indeed, the present situation-reminiscent of Kerensky's Russia, Italy before Mussolini, and the Weimar Republicserves to point up the very purposes of Ben Gurion's active campaign against Eshkol, namely, electoral and constitutional reform...

...But in style he is more like Khrushchev...

...Since no party can achieve a clear Parliamentary majority under PR, each one exerts pressure in the political free-for-all for its own special interests...

...it took Eshkol 70 days...

...Ben Gurion has been chuckling, for example, at the sight of Eshkol purging from the party all but the unquestionably faithful...

...That summer as he and his staff were getting ready for the Sinai campaign, his differences with Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett became irreconcilable and he demanded Central Committee authorization to ask for Sharett's resignation...

...He feels it has become corrupted by power, that it has lost its vision, its flexibility and its usefulness as an instrument for building the state...

...The trend of modern Israel is unmistakable: away from the Russion pattern, toward the Western system...

...And the public, as often happens even in a society born of a revolution, is timid and conservative...

...And through his belaboring of the Lavon Affair, he wished to assert the importance of two constitutional principles: the separation of the powers of the judiciary and executive, and the supremacy of the national government over all civilian organizations, even those like the giant Histadrut (Labor Federation) which antedate the state and have claimed autonomous privileges...

...It was forged by idealistic pioneers, most of them from small Yiddish-speaking communities where Orthodox tradition was confronted with modern revolutionary movements...

...Teddy Kollek, and others...

...He probably hopes that now as in the past, his adversaries in Mapai and the Leftof-Mapai Ahdut Ha-avodah (Unity of Labor), with which Eshkol has concluded an "alignment," will be driven by the dynamics of the controversy into more and more rigid opposition to his reforms...

...But the popular Sharett, aided by uneasiness at what was the first attempt to crack the previously invincible committee rule, managed to force a real battle...

...And these groups, with their growing vested interests, continue as competing forces even where the ideologies that gave birth to them have evaporated...

...Shimon Peres, architect of the French-Israel alliance and now General Secretary of the Rafi party...

...WESTERNIZING ISRAEL'S ELECTORAL SYSTEM The Ben Gurion Battle By M Z. Frank Jerusalem Shortly before Charles de Gaulle was re-elected last December in France, Levi Eshkol won a decisive victory at the polls in Israel against former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion...

...Young Israeli intellectuals are amazed to discover that in the 1960s Israel is governed by the same political party, in coalition with the same partners, and with the same ratio among the parties in the Knesset as in 1949 following the first general elections...

...And if few Israelis were ready to vote Ben Gurion and his new party...

...To many Israelis, rule by Central Committee and PR have become emotionally inseparable from the heroic saga of the creation of the state itself...

...The foreign press has tended to depict this in personal terms: the great old leader unwilling to give up the reins of power...

...The ferment in political thinking represented by Ben Gurion's proposed reforms seems to bear out Walter Lippmann's theory that it takes a country 15 to 20 years after a great historical change to find new forms and leaders appropriate to it...

...Mapai and Ahdut Haavodah together did, in fact, obtain a fraction over 50 per cent in the last Histadrut elections, but the price was steep: Mapai made a commitment not to bring the question of electoral reform before the Knesset for four years, while Ahdut Ha-avodah would not commit themselves to accepting decisions of a majority of both parties meeting jointly...

...As part of the campaign to head off this move, Pinhas Lavon, the Secretary General of Histadrut who had been Minister of Defense in 1954, at the time of Israel's "security mishap" in Cairo, revived the forgotten controversy surrounding the "Lavon affair...

...He would undoubtedly win over many more people if his style was as Westernized as his thinking...

...In going against this tradition, Ben Gurion-himself a child of Eastern Europe and of the Russian revolutionary movements-is considered by some to be a turncoat...

...the concept of "the party" as the supreme expression of the social ideal -above even the state...

...Since Zionism is essentially a volunteer movement, every ideological grouping had to be given leeway to build the Homeland according to its own blueprint-socialist, nonsocialist, religious, atheistic, etc...

...It was during these same years that Ben Gurion succeeded in transferring control over the Labor Exchange from the Histadrut to the Ministry of Labor...

...It took de Gaulle two hours to set up his Cabinet...

...In internal struggles, it has always been his strategy to drive his foes into a tight corner where they eventually discredit themselves...

...All political parties in Israel today represent villages, banks, housing developments and other economic projects that they own...

...The only one of Ben Gurion's Young Turks still holding power in the country (many were assigned to diplomatic posts), is Teddy Kollek, now Mayor of Jerusalem, and the Old Guard had nothing to do with his election...

...Some of his colleagues were quietly plotting to ease him out just as he was preparing for a final split with them...

...There are, of course, many reasons why the party bosses and many Israelis not directly involved in the party machines prefer the existing system to that of regional elections...

...Consequently, each of the many political parties that emerged in the country established autonomous economic units and institutions within the general jurisdiction of the World Zionist Organization...

...Among his younger aides, nearly all of whom have been subjected from childhood to Western influences, there are some more lucid and articulate, less garrulous and pugnacious than Ben Gurion...

...Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that over a million newcomers from the Moslem countries distribute their votes among the party tickets almost exactly as the 600,000 Europeans did in 1949...

...Under the PR system, the central committee in each party names the candidates for the legislature with no room left for local initiative or citizen participation...

...Yet the ice has been broken, and for the first time since Mapai gained hegemony at the World Zionist Congress three decades ago, there is an active and vigorous opposition of extremely able men and women with brilliant records of achievement...

...Even those who supported Ben Gurion in 1956 (including Golda Meir, who agreed to take Sharett's post) had doubts, as later became apparent...

...Nationalization of the Sick Fund threatened the sovereign status of the Histadrut, out of whose top ranks have come almost all of Israel's important government leaders: Ben Gurion, Sharett, Eliezer Kaplan (Israel's first Minister of Finance), Eshkol, Golda Meir, and many others...

...He prefers to exacerbate conflict and put the issues into sharp focus...

...Many who share Ben Gurion's views do not trust him or his aides, and many believe the changes he advocates can be effected without splitting Mapai...

...but not least among these is its Russian source...

...It is not unlikely that some day Ben Gurion's enemies will introduce the very reforms he now advocates...

...The latest victim was Dov Joseph, the very able Minister of Justice whom Eshkol dropped after leading him on to expect a reappointment...

...A few years later, after several elections failed to give one party a clear majority, Ben Gurion decided it was time to put an end to political horse-trading...

...To assure a majority for electoral reform and to move still further away from doctrinaire 19th century Socialism, Mapai needed the support of the moderate free-enterprise Liberals...

...Furthermore, the Old Guard hates these young "technocrats" whom the former Prime Minister elevated to important positions over their heads...

...The political structure which has persisted throughout is essentially a synthesis of Central European and Russian elements...

...For the 70 days' haggling over portfolios and platforms has produced a generally mediocre Cabinet representing several mutually exclusive ideologies...

...The public is bewildered and timid, afraid of a change...

...In 1949, he told the late Anne O'Hare McCormack of the New York Times that he personally would prefer the regional system but did not think he could convince the people...

...Rafi, into power, few are happy now that Eshkol won...

...This dichotomy makes for a great deal of confusion...

...M. Z. Frank, a veteran observer of Zionist affairs, is now in Israel...

...Ben Gurion's new party has no money and no jobs to hand out...

...Whether Ben Gurion's new party can master this trend is less certain...

...The interlocking Establishment of the government, the Histadrut, the Jewish Agency (which disposes of funds collected abroad, mainly among newcomers), and the municipalities controls thousands of jobs and millions of dollars...

...Whether explicitly or implicitly, the price also included Ben Gurion's head...

...Twenty years of British rule did little to modify the organizational patterns of Jewish life in Palestine, and the PR system adopted by the Zionist pioneers has reached extremes unique among modern democracies...

...From the Russians, the East European pioneers who today still comprise Israel's ruling elite, acquired the organizational pattern of government by "central committee...

...He was willing to offer Sharett the Education portfolio, but Sharett rebuffed him...

...The result was a fight in the Central Committee and Ben Gurion won, getting 60 per cent of the vote to Sharett's 40 per cent...

...The system of proportional representation, for example, evolved from the constitution of the World Zionist Organization, framed by Theodore Herzl and Max Nordau, both German-speaking Jews born in Budapest...

...Finally, the East European tradition has been strengthened by concern that an electoral reform may swamp the Knesset with primitive "Orientals" from the Moslem countries...

...As a long-range strategist, Ben Gurion does not want a patched-up peace of any sort...

...and the notion that correct ideology is more important than the ability of the man who is to put policy into practice...

...Throughout his long career in the Zionist movement, he has attempted to unify under a strong executive the various groups that contributed to the establishment of the state...

...By arousing, old hostilities and divisions, Lavon successfully stymied Ben Gurion's plan...

...But these men, who include some of Israel's most promising talents, have still to prove themselves with the public...

...But its chances of doing so are probably not as slight as the statistics of its recent defeat at the polls would seem to indicate...

...Ben Gurion's desire to bring order to Israel's overlapping organizations and chaotic multiparty system, it should be noted, is not a sudden passion of his old age...

...He, who more than any other man living or dead, created Mapai (Israel's dominant Labor Party), has gradually lost faith in it...

...Much of the fury with which Ben Gurion's old associates have turned on him may be explained by his continued breaches of these principles-particularly the sacrosanct rule of party central committees...

...These committees prevail over the leader no matter how popular he may be, and claim an almost unlimited mandate in interpreting the attitudes of the rank and file...

...When the Provisional Council of State first took up the question of Israel's electoral system, one member-not of Ben Gurion's partyproposed regional balloting...

...Eshkol began negotiations with the Liberals, but doomed them by making a deal with Ahdut Haavodah for a Labor "alignment," designed to set up a unified Labor party...

...No doubt Eshkol-or whoever influenced him-was motivated by the desire to' ensure Mapai's retaining its long-held majority in the Histadrut...

...Determined to go on pressing for reform Ben Gurion recognizes that he has a difficult fight on his hands...

...In 1960, he began advocating nationalization of the Histadrut's Sick Fund, a move which would cause the Labor Federation to lose many thousands of members who had joined it not out of ideological conviction but to secure health insurance...

...Ben Gurion's attempts at electoral reform, like his advocacy of a Western-style executive, have also run directly against the wishes of Mapai's Old Guard...

...He then persuaded the Mapai convention to adopt a plank calling for electoral reform...

...Everyone voted against the proposal except Ben Gurion, who abstained...

...It was in 1956 that Ben Gurion first openly encroached on the sacrosanct rule by central committee...

...But if his former associates speak of him in tones reminiscent of party-line Communists discussing Trotsky, Ben Gurion himself has been no more gracious in his polemics against his opponents than Trotsky was...