Golda Meir's Balancing Act

...Last year it transformed itself into the United Labor party by reabsorbing Ran—the faction that split off four years earlier under David Ben-Gurion and General Moshe Dayan—and merging with Achdut Ha-Avodah, which broke away decades ago...

...It may have to deal with the question of accepting less than ideal terms of settlement in exchange for more extensive withdrawal from Arab lands than seems safe to the cautious...

...Intense bargaining of the kind described here highlights two important facets of Israel's political life...

...the Communists rose from 3.7 to 4 per cent...

...and the ethnic, Arab and independent vote was down to 5.8 from a 7.1 per cent average...

...It is seen by many observers as a major reason why non-Labor groups have been unable to coalesce into an opposition that can serve as an alternative to Labor...

...Most Cabinets have also included members of the Leftist Mapam party, which in the October 28 general elections ran with United Labor on a Labor Alignment ticket for the first time...

...Of the labor groups, the dominant force was, and still remains, the middle-of-the-road, Social-Democratic Mapai...

...Immediately after the elections, Mrs...

...But the Ministry of Education had already been assigned to Yigal Allon—one of the main contenders to succeed Mrs...

...The impact of this fact goes far beyond simple coalition mathematics...

...A government that includes both the Right-wing nationalists of Gahal (who want to hold on to as much territory as possible) and the Leftists of Mapam (who for ideological reasons dislike the idea of occupation) may find it difficult to make any basic decision...

...A change can take place, therefore, only if a group in the labor camp is ready to join forces with the other camp...

...All was contingent upon Dayan—and he decided for the merger...

...Such a government may be ideal in the face of an onslaught from without, as was the case in late May 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War...

...Meir declared that she wanted to keep the old broad coalition— but the price asked by other parties had gone up...

...Indeed, it was less than the 3.5 per cent given to the two Labor-affiliated Arab parties...

...This is clear from Rafi's return to the Labor fold this year, even though the majority of its rank and file wanted to remain independent...

...Whatever shifts of practical significance do occur in elections happen within each group...

...Analyzing the Arab returns shows that the ncp made some advances in Nazareth and a few other urban areas, but was rejected by the rural population...

...Still, the elders of Mapam were sufficiently alarmed to at first follow the lead of some of the younger activists who voiced opposition to their party's joining a government that included the strengthened bourgeois-nationalist Gahal...

...COALITION AND CONSENSUS Golda Meir's Balancing Act BY S. PETERS Tel Aviv On December 15, the final day of an extended deadline, Prime Minister Golda Meir succeeded in presenting her new Cabinet to Israel's Knesset...

...Second, it indicates the great lengths to which Mrs...

...But this time the Mapai-affiliated kibbutzim voted only 91 per cent for the Labor Alignment, the remaining 9 per cent shifting mostly more to the Right, a large proportion going to the State party...

...Separating the parties into five categories—labor, center-bourgeois, religious...

...Yet because the electorate knows that there is almost no chance for the divided opposition to form a real alternative, it is fearful that once the Labor party or Alignment is given a clear-cut majority it will never be dislodged again...

...All this leads to a vicious circle in Israel's political life...

...Though Labor never went in for such slim majorities—and, moreover, disliked S. Peters, a previous contributor to these pages, is a freelance writer currently based in the Middle East...

...Perpetuating "national unity" could become— and some critics say it is already becoming—an end in itself rather than an instrument of policy...

...Indeed, in extreme circumstances, demonstrating and exercising national unity can be crucial...

...And many Arabs, of course, cast their ballots for the nonethnic political parties...

...She did not argue much, but simply announced that two Cabinet portfolios were being left open for Mapam...

...Mrs...

...The main opposition group, Ga-hal, is an alliance of the Rightist, nationalist Herut party and the bourgeois General Zionists...

...And that seems to be out of the question...

...Whatever the case, there is obviously little room for indecision in Mrs...

...I belong to the Labor movement," he stated repeatedly...

...Meir's ready agreement to these terms (Gahal finally ended up with four portfolios and two min-isters-without portfolio) created an unexpected crisis: Mapam, true to its doctrinaire Marxist philosophy, protested that such a high representation for Gahal gave intolerably "large influence to the bourgeois-nationalist elements," and therefore refused to join the coalition...

...It won four seats, half as many as Rafi had before the merger...

...It was generally predicted that the Israel Communist party (icp), consisting almost entirely of Jewish cadres and Jewish rank and file, would disappear, while the New Communist party (ncp), echoing nearly unconditionally the voices of anti-Israeli Arab nationalism, would sweep the Arab-populated areas...

...But the Supreme Court in effect ruled against her when she tried to compel the semiautonomous Broadcasting Authority to act accordingly...

...The government, they note, may have to take drastic and vital decisions—and take them fast...

...Next, she agreed that the National Religious party appoint a Deputy Minister of Education to be in charge of the religious-oriented schools...

...An overly balanced, broad-based coalition, it is feared, might gravitate toward inertia...

...True, the ncp showed a bigger gain: 2.8 per cent against the 2.3 per cent they had received before...

...Sure enough, applied dialectics soon helped the Leftist group solve its problem: It would join the government but share responsibilities only for security and foreign policy matters, not social and economic matters...

...A few days before the outbreak of the Six Day War in June 1967, Gahal joined the Cabinet too, thus creating the Government of National Union, with 105 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset...

...Ever since the Jewish state's re-emergence in 1948, the country's different labor parties have jointly received roughly 47-51 per cent of the votes in the quadrennial parliamentary elections...

...But he rejected the idea of "crossing over...

...At the last moment, therefore, many potential Labor voters become frightened and opt for one of the smaller parties, giving them disproportionate bargaining power to extract concessions from the majority...

...Another small but telling development was the appearance of cracks in the monolithic voting pattern of the kibbutzim...

...Although even in the current situation, many insist...

...The collective settlements are established along strictly ideological lines that are organizationally identical with one political party or another...

...As far as the bargaining positions among the government partners are concerned, three things occurred in the recent October elections : The Labor Alignment lost six of its 62 seats, Gahal added four to its 22, and the National Religious party added one to its 11 seats...

...Several reliable public opinion polls indicated that on its own, Ran would elect between 17-20 Knesset members, while Labor offered the group only nine "safe" seats on the joint list...

...A majority of the public hates the recurring spectacle of the smaller parties blackmailing Labor into concessions far in excess of their parliamentary weight as a price for joining the government coalition...

...The country's two Communist parties surprised observers on the scene...

...Meir's new Cabinet of Israel is merely to hold fast...

...In the case of labor, which on the whole lost seats, the State party —formed only a few weeks before election day by Ran diehards who opposed their party's return to Mrs...

...Israeli intia-tive and political inventiveness might be the best defense against the gradual erosion of support among friends in the West...

...She easily gave in to its demand that the state-run television should not be allowed to operate on the Sabbath...

...The religious groups have averaged 14.1 per cent and this year received 14.7...

...And when the chips were down, he chose to return to the Labor party...

...Apparently, even in the cities, existing nationalist sentiments do not always translate into such anti-Israeli expressions as a vote for the ncp...

...This, of course, could be prevented in any election by giving Labor an extra 3-4 per cent of the vote so that it can govern without junior partners...

...Meir displayed less skill, however, in dealing with the National Religious party...

...This would indeed be tragic, particularly if a glimmer of peace appeared that required some bold initiative to seize its elusive rays...

...There are political commentators here who are not entirely happy with the idea that Israel will again be governed by a broad national coalition...

...Gahal, for example, had only two ministers-without-portfolio in the outgoing Cabinet who merely acted as representatives of their party in the Government of National Union...

...Nevertheless, the fact that party groupings show great stability in maintaining joint strength does not mean that the shifts among individual parties within the blocs are insignificant...

...Multi party coalitions are inevitable in Israel because the electorate continues to demonstrate a practically unshakable determination to maintain its basic divisions...

...On the other hand, given the more likely continuation of the present deadlock, it may be that inertia is not quite so dangerous as the critics feel...

...And so on...

...But this was a long way from an Arab landslide...

...Labor's traditional partners in government coalitions have been the small Liberal party and the larger National Religious party, strongest (and least extreme) of the three religious political organizations represented in the Knesset...

...the center received 26.1 per cent, an increase of one percentage point over its 25.1 norm...

...In this instance the black sheep voted mostly for one of several small Leftist lists, none of which collected enough ballots to send even one representative to the Knesset...

...Discounting the Communists (who are not potential partners), the combined non-Labor vote is smaller than Labor's total...

...now they demanded six portfolios, in proportion to their increased parliamentary strength...

...In elections they usually vote accordingly...

...Communist and minorities —and averaging their results in the nation's seven general elections, one finds the swing has never varied more than about 2 per cent...

...First, the splintering of the party spectrum into 14 groups of widely varying size makes coalition government both inevitable and inherently incapable of carrying out a clear-cut domestic or foreign policy...

...Meir's rule—did very well...

...Meir (or any other premier-designate, for that matter) is ready to go to put together a broad national coalition and thereby spread the responsibility for governing the country in these critical times...

...Although it differs little from the last, reflecting a remarkable political stability that is often obscured by the fierce infighting among Israel's parties, Mrs...

...He argued that better than one-third of his power and responsibilities would be mortgaged, as it were, and put under a deputy whose primary loyalty obviously would be to his party, not to the minister in charge...

...Meir had to bring all of her considerable persuasive talents to bear before agreement was reached on an expanded 24-member coalition government...

...But now, these commentator's argue, the critical problems confronting Israel are different...

...The Prime Minister responded with masterly savoir-faire...

...Meir reacted by threatening to relinquish her mandate if Allon persisted in his refusal, creating a Cabinet crisis even before confirmation...

...In Mapam-affiliated kibbutzim 5 per cent strayed away, an especially shocking fact to party leaders because of their settlements' more dogmatic character...

...It is worth noting, for example, that among the center-bourgeois, which as a whole gained slightly in October, the smaller parties were noticeably weaker, while the large Gahal gained more than the average for the group...

...Mrs...

...The Defense Minister probably did not doubt that, were he so inclined, by working himself to the leadership of the opposition groups, he could emerge in time as the effective alternative to whomever Labor picked to succeed Mrs...

...Meir when she retires—and he refused to accept the portfolio under these conditions...

...This has been enough to assure that the Prime Minister and the most important Cabinet portfolios would be drawn from labor's ranks, but not quite sufficient for a workable majority in the Knesset—making it necessary to gain additional support...

...Whereas previously Labor could muster a de facto majority (particularly with support of the four votes of the two Arab parties affiliated with the Alignment), it now found itself four votes short...

...Thus, the average labor vote is 49.9 per cent, and its October 1969 tally was 49.3...

...Further, Labor's rule would no longer be restrained by the necessity to heed the wishes of junior partners...

...being dependent on Arab votes— still, the theoretical possibility bolstered its strength in regard to would-be partners...

...Or it may be faced with deciding whether to reject proposals that might put an immediate end to the toll in lives along the Suez Canal, but in the long run could endanger Israel's security...

...When the count was in, though, it turned out that the icp, a supporter of the government's refusal to retreat from occupied territories without a peace settlement and outspoken critic of Moscow's hostility toward Israel, actually made a slight gain: 1.2 per cent of the vote, compared to 1.1 per cent in previous elections...