Elections Campaign Starts in Israel; Egyptian Stand is Major Issue

While several members of the Cabinet, including Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, are still vacationing, resting in preparation for an election campaign expected to be rough and hard-hitting, the campaign for November’s general elections actually got under way at two meetings here last night.

The dominant Mapai Party held a rally here addressed by Foreign Minister Golda Meir and Abba Eban, former Ambassador to the United States. The left-wing Ahdut Avodah held a meeting here of its National Council and heard a fighting speech by Gen. Yigal Allon, retired Army hero of the 1948 War of Liberation. Election rallies were held throughout the country also by the General Zionists and by the Herut Party.

In his address, Gen. Allon declared that Israel is now “back in its pre-Sinai days, ” referring to the situation in 1956 when hostilities by Arab states forced Israel to undertake its march against the Egyptian armies in the Sinai Desert. He called for action in regard to freedom of shipping through the Suez Canal, declaring that, if the United Arab Republic insists on shutting the Canal to Israeli shipping, treating it as “a private waterway, ” Israel “must regard the Canal like any other Egyptian target. “

Premier Ben Gurion, who had gone to a hospital for a physical check-up in preparation for the campaign, was found in “satisfactory” condition. However, he decided on a fortnight’s rest before entering the campaign. Other members of the Cabinet on vacation are Finance Minister Levi Eshkol, of the Mapai Party; Minister of Justice Pinhas Rosen, of the Progressive Party; Zalman Aranne, Minister of Education and Culture, Mapai; and Minister of the Interior Israel Bar-Yehuda, of Ahdut Avodah.