At the Herut Convention Shamir Suffers a Stinging Setback As One of His Staunch Supporters is Defeat

The power struggle that marked the 15th Herut convention here this week intensified Wednesday after the camp of Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of Shamir’s arch rival for the leadership of Herut, Ariel Sharon.

The outspoken hardliner, who is Minister of Commerce and Industry, decisively defeated Binyamin Zeev Begin, a staunch Shamir supporter, for the post of chairman of the key Mandates Committee. The 1,082-865 vote cast in Sharon’s favor in the pre-dawn balloting reflected the successful mobilization of the forces of Sharon and of Housing Minister David Levy, another strong aspirant for party leadership, who have joined in an alliance against Shamir and his close associate, Minister-Without-Portfolio Moshe Arens.

The vote also reflected an apparent grass-roots swing against the Herut old guard. Begin, a geologist new to politics, is the son of former Premier Menachem Begin, founder of Herut. He was the choice of the Shamir-Arens camp to face Sharon, in no small measure because of the Begin name which is revered in Herut circles.

DEFEAT OVERSHADOWS PREVIOUS VICTORY

His defeat overshadowed the important victory gained by the Shamir forces Monday when Moshe Katzav, Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, beat Eliahu Ben-Elissar, the choice of the Sharon-Levy alliance for the post of chairman of the convention Presidium. Katzav won by a vote of 940-900. His modest plurality paled before the 56-44 percent victory of Sharon over Begin.

The Mandates Committee is crucial to the outcome of the convention because it has the authority to add delegates to those already registered. Scores of would-be delegates have appealed for seats at the convention on a variety of technical grounds, and Sharon, as chairman, will have a decisive role in ruling on those appeals. The Mandates Committee also rules on the validity of votes cast.

Shamir, visibly furious over the outcome of the Wednesday morning vote, denounced his rivals as “a gang of criminals” as he strode out of the packed hall on the Tel Aviv fair-grounds. It was perhaps an impulsive remark that he let slip in the heat of anger. But it raised a question as to whether the Herut convention would close behind a facade of unity or as bitterly divided as its sessions so far have indicated the party to be.

The convention was scheduled to run from Sunday night to Wednesday night. But considering the disarray, it is not now expected to end until some time Friday morning. “We will get out of this circus. We will once again become a serious movement,” Shamir told reporters Wednesday night. He called Sharon’s victory “the result of groups trying to hijack our movement by force.”

The next key vote is for chairmanship of the Standing Committee in which David Levy will be pitted against Moshe Arens. The Standing Committee will decide the membership of Herut’s new Central Committee, the body that governs the party between conventions and selects its candidate for Premier and its Knesset list in the next elections.

Sharon mounted the podium Wednesday night to propose a slate of 90 members of the Mandate Committee, many of them identified as his or Levy’s supporters. Transport Minister Haim Corfu followed with a list of 70 candidates, drawn mainly from the Shamir-Arens camp. There was much shouting and milling about on the convention floor after Presidium chairman Katzav called a recess.

At a caucus of Shamir supporters Wednesday, the consensus was that the younger Begin lost the vote because Sharon succeeded “in turning (their contest) into a personal issue.” That was a reference to Sharon’s claim in a speech to the convention Tuesday night that there was a “stop Sharon” syndrome which originated in the Labor Party and was “adopted by certain circles in our own movement.”

BASIS FOR PRO-SHARON SHIFT

It was, indeed, clear that many uncommitted convention delegates who sided with the Shamir-Arens camp Monday, shifted their sympathy to Sharon after he claimed with some credibility that Begin’s main purpose was to “thwart” him.

Begin has made no secret of his conviction that Sharon must be prevented from rising to the pinnacle of the Herut movement. In this he is believed to reflect the views of his father, who sent a message to the convention opening urging the delegates to unite behind Shamir.

While most observers believe that devices will be found to end the convention with a modicum of good grace and an appearance of unity, political analysts see the week’s events as having wrought — or perhaps merely expressed — a massive ongoing change in the party once autocratically ruled by the charismatic Menachem Begin.

While Begin sits in his suburban Jerusalem home, a semi-recluse, his party is seen to be swept along by a grass-roots groundswell made up largely of Sephardic elements no longer content to take second place to the mainly Ashkenazic founding fathers of Herut.

This movement is led by David Levy rather than Sharon. It was Levy’s populist rhetoric that fired the rank-and-file delegates from the down-at-the heel urban fringes and development towns. They were not prepared to support a political unknown, albeit Menachem Begin’s son. “There are no princes in our movement,” was a slogan much heard in the convention hall.

Another battle cry, perhaps more significant, was “Yesterday a doctor (the younger Begin holds a doctorate in geology) and today a professor, “a reference to Arens who had been a professor of aeronautical engineering before entering politics. The slogan is anti-intellectual. Levy caught the mood of these delegates. Shamir did not.

Inevitably, the Levy-Sharon alliance of convenience will fall apart. Both men are immensely ambitious and have strong personalities. Each will soon make his bid for the leadership of Herut. But for the time being, they stand together to erode the power and authority of Shamir.

Shamir’s immediate status seems safe. He is protected by the rotation-of-power agreement with Labor Party leader Shimon Peres which underlies the Labor-Likud unity coalition. Under the agreement, Peres must relinquish the Premiership to Likud next October 13 — but only to Shamir.

Assuming the rotation takes place and Shamir serves out the final two years of the unity government’s mandate, his political future and the futures of others in his camp are gravely threatened as the course of the Herut convention has amply demonstrated.