THE OLD MAN'S VICTORY
Peretz, Don
Behind the Israeli Elections The Old Man's Victory by DON PERETZ I SRAEL'S NOVEMBER elections constituted a surprise for most Israeli politicians—for the victors as much as for those who...
...The remaining seats will be divided among eleven other parties, each of which captured at least one per cent of the vote...
...In Haifa the leader of the rioters was a 35-year-old former Casablanca police constable, David Ben Haroush...
...Not only these five "spe...
...Perhaps the election results were a surprise because only one new issue emerged during the campaign...
...The most startling election outcome was not the changes but the fact that the status quo had been strengthened, and that Israel will probably have another four years of the same political fare...
...But by November, 1959, most of them had disappeared from the forefront of public consciousness...
...This is the largest vote received by any party in the four national elections since Israel became a state...
...Not until last summer—several months before the official opening of the campaign—did a new issue spring into the limelight...
...The pressure on labor exchanges where the unemployed used to flock for part-time work has declined—although there are still more than 8,000 full-time unemployed out of a 500,000 work force...
...The only groups with which he categorically refuses to sit in coalition are the right wing, nationalist Herut and the Commu nists...
...Earlier in the year rationing ended, indicating termination of the austerity under which the country had lived with tightened belts for more than a decade...
...Behind the Israeli Elections The Old Man's Victory by DON PERETZ I SRAEL'S NOVEMBER elections constituted a surprise for most Israeli politicians—for the victors as much as for those who lost...
...Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's hand was made more powerful by the gains of his already dominant Mapai (moderate socialist) Party...
...He has served on the Institute of Mediterranean Affairs panel on the Palestine refugee problem...
...Rumors spread that the victim had been killed, and several hundred of the slum dwellers flocked to protest...
...Although the country is still importing nearly three times as much as it exports, the trade deficit was cut by more than 14 per cent during the past year, to say nothing of the improvement over the early days of independence when imports were about nine times those of exports...
...Ben Gurion would like to form a broad coalition including as many of the minor parties as possible...
...True, the country was having its difficulties over passage of Israeli cargo through the Suez Canal, but along the borders, where security could be greatly imperiled, there had been no major incidents for more than a year...
...Statistics alone do not tell the story...
...In Beersheba, at the northwestern tip of the Negev, rowdies had taken advantage of ruffled feelings to run amok...
...For firing on policemen and for sev eral other crimes he received a twoyear prison sentence...
...This was enough to make him a hero in the eyes of many of his compatriots and to dram atize his new political party, the North African Union of Immigrants...
...There was enough of a pattern to indicate that the incidents, if not planned, were certainly inspired by a common sentiment—a feeling among the North African Jews that they were being discriminated against by the Ashkenazim, Jews from middle and northern Europe and other Western nations...
...National security was no longer a paramount concern in the campaign...
...They suppressed it with swinging clubs and tear gas...
...Of these at least five were devoted to the cause of immigrants from "oriental" countries...
...Mapai increased its voting strength in the 120-member Knesset (parliament) from 40 to 47 by capturing more than 38.5 per cent of the total vote...
...DON PERETZ is the author of "Israel and the Palestine Arabs/' published by the Middle East Institute...
...When the police arrived, they were met with flying stones and soon had a bloody riot on their hands...
...Although Ben Haroush, probably because of his prison sentence, be came the best known of the "new generation" of North African "politi cal leaders" there were others less renowned...
...Not only were the riots repeated on July 31, but similar incidents, in which new immigrants (mostly from North Africa) attacked the police, erupted into violence in other parts of the country...
...Since "the Old Man," as he is affectionately called, has survived as Israel's most important single political factor during the first eleven years of parliamentary life under conditions more adverse than those which now face him, he no doubt will remain the most influential force in Israel during the next four years...
...The latter suffered a severe drubbing, losing half of their former six Knesset seats...
...This means that Israel will continue to be run by a Ben Gurion-led coalition of three or more parties with widely diversified platforms and objectives...
...By the time of party registration for the November race, a dozen new groups were formed...
...Israeli newspapers in recent months have been crowded with advertisements extolling such rarities as automobiles, tape recorders, washing machines, and refrigerators...
...It all began on the eve of July 9 when a drunkard resisting arrest in Haifa's Wadi Salib slum area was shot and wounded by the police...
...In previous elections there was a whole spate of issues to plague a candidate...
...In the north, at Migdal Ha-Emek, north African immigrants were protesting against "unfair" allocation of labor by the Jewish National Fund...
...Investigations indicated that the causes varied...
Vol. 24 • January 1960 • No. 1
