Behind the Headlines Labor Looks for Way Back

A little more than a year after Likud was voted into power, relegating Labor to the opposition ranks for the first time since Israel was established, leaders of the various components of the Labor Alignment and worker-oriented groups assembled at Kibbutz Gavat Haviv last weekend to discuss the long road back.

Speakers at the symposium included Shimon Peres, chairman of the Labor Alignment; Yigal Allon, leader of Labor’s former Achdut Avoda faction; Yaacov Hazan of Mapam; Haim Barlev, who managed Labor’s unsuccessful election campaign last year, and even Meir Payil, leader of the small, left-wing Sheli faction which is not a member of the Labor Alignment.

The consensus was that the first step must be to restore voter confidence in Labor. Peres, who served as Defense Minister and, just prior to the elections, as acting Premier in the last government, called for more vigorous efforts to unify the Alignment. He said it would be sheer lunacy to dismember the Alignment, an allusion to some break-away elements in Mapam.

Peres said there must be closer ties between the Labor leadership and the rank-and-file. Party efforts should be directed towards youth, including religious youth in the development towns, toward workers committees and those sections of the public who have lost faith in Likud, he said.

PEACE NOW GROUP IS OPTION

Peres mentioned the growing Peace Now movement which has been urging the government to modify its peace terms. He said he met with leaders of the movement last week and they made a favorable impression. “We don’t forbid our members to take part in the Peace Now movement, nor do we demand this of them,” he said. Aharon Yadlin, the former Minister of Education, said the Peace Now movement was a positive force and Labor should not stay aloof from it.

Allon, the former Foreign Minister, spoke of the mistakes of the Likud-led government. But, he said, he hoped that Labor would not return to power simply because of Likud’s blunders but because of the crystalization of its own ideological and political identity.

Barlev, a former Chief of Staff and former Minister of Trade and Industry, said he was convinced that time favored the Labor Alignment. He said there was a diminution of personal rivalries within the party.

Barlev was recently elected by Labor to serve as an administrator of its organizational activities, a post equivalent to secretary general, but without the title, leaving political and ideological problems to Peres. He will be responsible for organizing the Labor Party’s convention to be held within 18 months. He said his main task was to open the party to the many disillusioned voters, to the members who have stayed away from party activities since the last elections and to all those nonpartisan elements who are natural supporters of the Labor ideology.

Payil, for his part, suggested the creation of two workers’ parties, one adhering to a more radical ideology embracing Sheli and Mapam and the other, a moderate social democratic faction based on the existing Labor Party.