Rabbi Haim Druckman, the ultra rightwing patron of the Gush Emunim, formally removed himself from the National Religious Party yesterday and set up his own Knesset faction called “Matzad” which expects to draw its support from the Orthodox settlers and yeshivas on the West Bank. His defection, which he announced some time ago, leaves the NRP with only five Knesset members deeply divided among themselves.
Matzad is an acronym for “Mahane Zionut Datit” which denotes a rightist religious movement. Druckman’s associates in the new party are Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neriah and Yosske Shapiro, the latter a former member of the Jewish Agency Executive. Neriah is the head of the Bnei Akiva yeshivas.
The NRP, meanwhile, riven by factional disputes, is struggling to remain a cohesive political party. Lengthy discussions between Interior Minister Yosef Burg, who heads its Lamifne faction, and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, leader of the Yaund Guard, narrowly averted a split over the upcoming party elections. The two ministers agreed that 55 percent of the NRP leadership would be elected by internal ballot and the remaining 45 percent coopted from among yeshiva and university personalities not previously involved in party affairs.
The Hammer faction considers it essential to bring in new faces if the NRP is to survive the next Knesset elections. The party suffered a devastating defeat in the 1981 elections when it was reduced from 10 to six Knesset mandates. Polls show that if elections were held now, it would suffer further losses.
Political pundits say the NRP’s problem is its lack of a definitive image within Premier Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition. Likud is more strongly nationalist than the NRP and the Aguda Israel is more absolutist in its orthodoxy, they point out.
A minority within the Young Guard, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Yehuda Ben-Meir, favors a split with the Burg group on grounds that the feuding with Lamifne is endless. Waiting in the wings to return as “savior” of the faltering NRP is Yitzhak Raphael who was ousted from the party some years ago and has since reconstituted his Likud Utemura faction.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
