The Cabinet approved yesterday the appointments of Minister-Without-Portfolio Victor Shemtov to be Minister of Health and MK Nathan Peled to be Minister of Immigrant Absorption. Both are members of the left-wing Mapam Party, for which the two Ministries had been held pending the party’s decision to join the coalition government. The ministries have been under the caretaker supervision of Haim Gvati (Health) and Shimon Peres (Immigrant Absorption). Mr. Peled assumes the ministership left vacant by the recent death of Mapam Minister-Without-Portfolio Israel Barzilai. Meanwhile, the Arab deputy chairman of the Knesset. Self Eddin Zouabi, said over the weekend he would refuse the Labor Party’s offer of the Deputy Ministership of Agriculture if Abdel Aziz Zouabi, a Mapam Arab, is given the Deputy Ministership of Health. The deputy chairman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the offer to Abdel Aziz Zouabi was “shameful” because “he has brought Communists into the Nazareth Town Council and has done other things which I don’t even want to talk about.” The health post candidate denied the charges to the JTA, explaining that he had merely agreed to accept Communist support in his successful bid for election to the Nazareth council.
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