Begin's Search

...This group was organized after the Yom Kippur War to demand the purging from public life of officials responsible for Israel's being caught unprepared...

...He says he can and will present incentives that would make peace attractive for the Arabs...

...Security agents have been posted outside his modest ground floor apartment here, his emissaries are traveling to the United States, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has made arrangements with him to discuss the orderly transfer of power...

...This kind of political extortion by small parties is precisely what the DMC seeks to prevent through reform of the electoral system...

...The NRP, winner of 12 seats and an adherent of the proposition that there is room for a Jewish state alone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, is solidly behind Likud...

...Yadin's organization wants Knesset members to be chosen directly in constituent regions, instead of by the present method of proportional representation with the whole country treated as one large electoral district...

...Until now, with the Histadrut and the government run by the same party, policies were coordinated and disagreements adjudicated internally...

...Confronted by such an impasse, the parties could decide to dissolve the Knesset and hold new elections...

...Furthermore, he affirmed that the outgoing Labor government's acceptance of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 would bind him...

...it does not imply a willingness to move out of the West Bank of the Jordan or the Gaza Strip...

...Dayan, who bore much of the moral stigma as minister of defense at the time and has never fully succeeded in escaping the shadow of 1973, was a major target...

...Whether such confrontations are to become a regular diet here will be decided on June 21, election day for Histadrut institutions...

...Nevertheless, the courtly former underground leader—who steered his Likud party to a Parliamentary election victory last May 17 that saw it take 43 seats, 11 more than its main rival, the Labor Alignment?by no means has the job sewed up...

...The Council of Torah Sages promptly yanked Rabbi Levin from his post, holding that the revised procedure once more meant compulsory military service for women...

...To one faction in the DMC, led by Professor Amnon Rubenstein of Tel Aviv University, Dayan is anathema...

...Erlich reckoned that these favors were costing the government $100 million annually...

...Meanwhile, trade union leaders have been aroused by Erlich's statements advocating "controlled unemployment" to copibat inflation and by his invitation to Professor Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate from the University of Chicago...

...Begin promised that his party's pledge to apply Israeli law in the West Bank—a euphemism for annexation—would not be carried out so long as peace negotiations with the Arabs were a possibility...

...Begin proposed a broad coalition to include everybody except the Communists immediately following his victory...

...Moreover, Begin has a mid-July deadline to meet: Under Israeli law, he must put together a government capable of winning a vote of confidence in the 120-member Knesset six weeks from the day (June 7) President Ephraim Katzir gave him the mandate to a form a cabinet...

...To get Levin into his Cabinet, Ben Gurion had to make several religious concessions, including one concerning women in the military...

...But it was clumsily handled, with potential partners left to hear the news over the radio like ordinary citizens, and they quickly vented their displeasure...

...Yosef Burg of the NRP...

...But his search for coalition partners among Professor Yigae...

...Like the NRP, the Agudat Israel parties are Orthodox, except more so...

...It cried deception, declaring it had been assured no cabinet posts would be filled before the coalition's program was agreed to, yet was presented with a fait accompli...

...The DMC is insisting that Parliament enact its proposals and institute them within two years by dissolving itself...

...This body, consisting of 11 rabbis, seven of them septuagenerians, guides the community in political as well as spiritual matters...

...The law was amended, requiring those refusing service to satisfy examination boards that this would truly violate their convictions...

...By the same token, he expects the Arabs to listen to his claim to the entire region be tween the Jordan and the Mediterranean...

...Should he fail, the President will spend a week consulting delegations from all elected parties and then call upon someone else to try...

...Some 15 years ago, AIW leader Benjamin Mintz joined the government as Minister of Posts without the approval of the venerable rabbis...

...The NRP...

...The only thing certain here at the time this article went to press on June 8, however, were Begin's problems...

...He regards demands for an Israeli pull-out from all occupied territories as "insolent," but does not dispute the Arabs' rights to present them as their bargaining position and is prepared to listen...

...Among the most important of these are a satisfactory resolution of the old problem of women in the Armed Forces, tighter Sabbath restrictions, the outlawing of Christian missionary activities in Jewish communities, and nonrecognition of conversions presided over by nonorthodox rabbis...

...Accordingly, Jewish rule and the sanctity of the biblical homeland are for them separate issues, and they fear Likud's hard line will lead the country into another war...

...Since then the Council's ban had been strictly observed...

...Unfortunately, their terms are mutually exclusive and their concerns are widely divergent...

...Never again did the Sages allow their followers to enter a cabinet...

...Only in the period immediately following independence did the Council authorize participation in a coalition...

...So it's only logical one of our people should be foreign minister...

...The Likud chief has offered to meet Arab leaders face to face and without prior conditions, too...

...indeed, they function in a different world...

...In any case, Begin appears to have mollified Yadin—if not to have given up on Dayan—and coalition discussions have resumed on policy matters...

...As a Ha'aretz writer has observed, organized labor could prevent a Likud government even from moving the tea server in the prime minister's office from floor to floor...

...This means he is ready to attend a Geneva conference and discuss withdrawals from occupied lands...

...His second choice would no doubt be Shimon Peres, who headed the Labor Alignment list of candidates in May...

...The organization has enormous leverage not only as a trade union agglomeration but as the operator of a vast industrial empire...

...In May, Samuel Flatto-Sharon, a free-spending financier fighting a French extradition request for fraud, received enough votes to take two seats and acquire Parliamentary immunity...

...The hero of the '67 war frowned upon Labor's expressed readiness to surrender territory to Jordan for peace, yet could not agree to Likud's call for annexation of the West Bank...

...Its young men are omnipresent in the Armed Forces and have played a significant role in the settlement of outlying areas...

...A tense relationship is expected if the Histadrut and the country are led by rival groups...

...Yadin cancelled a scheduled negotiating session and the party announced it was halting discussions pending a rescinding of the appointment...

...In addition, the ultra-Orthodox do not recognize the Israeli rabin-ical establishment...

...A ranking member of Agudat Israel has said the parties will negotiate with Likud only if its talks with the DMC break down...

...In reality, his prospects are poor...

...In theory, Peres could muster a slim Parliamentary majority consisting of Labor's traditional allies, the NRP and the Independent Liberals, plus the DMC...

...They wanted us in the coalition mainly to soften the harsh international image Begin has created," he said...

...At the moment Labor has an absolute majority, having polled 59 per cent of the vote in the 1973 elections to Likud's 22 per cent...

...Assuming Peres was unsuccessful by the end of his 42 days...

...In that circumstance, he explained, Begin would desperately need the five Agudat Israel votes and there would be a better chance of securing concessions that would persuade the Council to approve government par-ticiation...

...The two parties are in agreement about the need for a freer economy, and some indication of what this could mean has come from Likud's Simha Erlich, reportedly slated for the post of finance minister...

...More difficult for Begin to resolve has been the fact that the voters gave him his mandate on a platform pledging to retain permanent control of the ancestral Jewish homeland, yet simultaneously brought into office a Knesset whose majority is willing to cede territory to Jordan in the framework of a full-fledged peace treaty...

...As with the Prime Ministership itself, anything could happen...

...He got off to a bad start by plucking Moshe Dayan from the crushed Labor party to be his foreign minister and right-hand man...

...That leaves it four short of the minimum number of Knesset votes needed to govern...

...The Labor party could have a more decisive effect on stemming the conservative economic tide than its Parliamentary representation suggests, if it retains control of the Histadrut (Israel's General Federation of Labor...

...But disappointment may have played a stronger role than disenchantment in the DMC reaction to Dayan's announced selection...

...He's such an extreme proponent of free enterprise," one union official quipped, "that even Nixon couldn't stomach him...

...Likud favors a less sweeping reform, and is prepared to wait four years before doing anything...

...A DMC deputy has acknowledged that the party was chagrined mostly because it coveted the foreign ministry portfolio for one of its own members...

...Hounded and cursed and abused by extremists in their synagogues, he died in office shortly thereafter...

...They opposed the creation of a Jewish state, arguing that to foster redemption by mundane means without waiting for the Messiah was an act of heresy...

...By contrast, the AI people are black-cafraned, long-bearded types, and they have an anti-Zionist history...

...Labor's reply, Moshe Brilliant, a past contributor, is a member oj the Tel Aviv bureau of the New York Times voiced by Peres at a party centra...

...The NRP has served almost uninterruptedly in every Labor government since 1948, and is part of the mainstream of modern Israeli life...

...Ya-din's Democratic Movement for Change (DMC), the National Religious party (NRP), and the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel (AI) and Agudat Israel Workers (AIW) has been a difficult one...

...Begin would of course prefer to have both groups...

...headed by a new, young leadership that is as hardline as they come on the future of the ancestral territories, is unlikely to turn on Begin...

...The NRP, threatened with elimination as a political force if this occurs, is firmly opposed to the plan...

...Rabbi Itcha Meir Levin was minister of welfare in the Provisional Government of 1948 and in the first elected government under David Ben Gurion the next year...

...After struggling to gain power for 29 years, the party does not want to see its tenure halved...

...Israel would find itself in September still ruled by Rabin's lame-duck Administration...

...Thus the final decision on whether AI and AIW will join Likud or remain in opposition will be made by the Sages on the basis of the divine guidance gleaned from the sacred literature...

...Another possibility is that Likud and Labor would agree to establish a government of national unity, as they did in 1967 when encircling Arab armies threatened to trangle Israel...

...They have created their own authority, the Council of the Torah Sages...

...The solution to that might be a compromise prime minister, Yadin or Dr...

...AI opposed their conscription, and while the party did not get its way completely, it won an acceptable compromise: Women who were drafted and objected to serving on religious grounds would be released...

...He has also stunned the kibbutz movement by announcing that tax laws would be rewritten to cancel privileges granted to it under Labor...

...But the DMC, which cut deeply into Labor in the Knesset balloting, is also making its debut in the Histadrut contest...

...Of the remaining available candidates, AI and AIW's five-seat total would do the trick but the DMC's 15 would provide a safer margin...

...Under existing rules, anyone able to poll 17,500 votes throughout the nation can win a seat...

...committee meeting to thunderous and sustained applause, was that it would never enter into a government led by Likud...

...He has been talking of selling private investors publicly-owned telephone and electric power services, as well as mining and industrial enterprises...

...In-terparty negotiations were disrupted until the Likud leader offered assurance that the Dayan idea was merely a proposal, and that no firm commitments would be made without the prior consultation of all coalition members...

...It was a patriotic move that placed national above personal, partisan interests and was calculated to enhance the stature of the coming government in the chancelleries of the world...

...Begin came a trifle closer to his goal when General Arid Sharon's tiny Shlomzion party m rrged with Likud, raising its total to 45 seats...

...But the number of nonreligious women who used the law to dodge the draft soon distressed the authorities...

...Likud and the DMC appeared well on their way to an agreement last month, until the Dayan bombshell derailed them...

...On foreign policy, though, Begin has softened his position considerably as a concession to the DMC and to Dayan...