Almogi Expected to Join Cabinet; Will Strengthen Rabin’s Position

Yosef Almogi, the former Labor Minister who resigned from the government last year to become Mayor of Haifa, is expected to join Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s Cabinet shortly. Rabin is reported to have extended the invitation to Almogi at a private meeting yesterday. Almogi told reporters that nothing was “finalized” but close associates believe that he will accept a Cabinet seat.

Almogi would replace Information Minister Aharon Yariv whose resignation from the Cabinet, announced last week, became effective today. But he will not take over Yariv’s portfolio. Informed sources said that Almogi’s Cabinet duties would be tailored to enable him to devote most of his time to the business of the Haifa municipality–which he pledged to do when he ran for the mayoralty last year. He is expected to be named a minister-without-portfolio with special duties in the fields of urban planning and development.

Apart from those duties, his addition to the Cabinet would strengthen Premier Rabin’s position within the Labor Party as a whole. Almogi, 65, is a leader of the Labor Party’s Mapai wing and commands the support of the party’s powerful Haifa branch. His return to the government would bolster Mapai whose power has eroded of late in the Labor Party’s inner councils.

SEEK REVIVAL OF ‘HAVERENU’

Such Mapai leaders as Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz and Moshe Baram have suggested reviving the “Haverenu” (Our Comrades) group which played a significant role during the Premiership of the late David Ben Gurion. It consisted of top Mapai personalities in the government, Histadrut and the Jewish Agency who met informally but regularly to hammer out broad strategic policies on vital national issues before they came up for discussion at more formal forums.

If revived now, the group would probably include Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, Minister-Without-Portfolio Israel Galili, Defense Minister Shimon Peres and such ex-officio personalities as former Premier Golda Meir, former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and former Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Those leaders represent the Rafi and Achdut ha-Avoda wings of the Labor Party as well as Mapai.

Former Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, who probably would also be included in the group, has suggested that the more narrowly based Mapai leadership bloc be reconstituted as a political power center to counter the encroachment of the two other factions. But middle-road Laborites fear that a revival of narrow factionalism would not serve the party’s interests.