Charlie Biton, who quit the Hadash Communist Party last year but kept his Knesset seat as an independent, formally joined the Labor Party this week, a move not universally popular with Laborites.
Party sources insisted the agreement he signed with Labor Secretary-General Micha Harish contains no promise of a place on the electoral list that would “guarantee” him a Knesset seat in after the next elections.
He joined like any rank-and-file supporter in the party’s current membership drive, the sources said.
Biton first offered his support to Labor Party leader Shimon Peres in March 1990, when Peres tried unsuccessfully to put together a coalition of left, center and religious parties.
But many of the party’s centrist and right-wing factions recoil at his far-left views. Biton advocates negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization and has himself had contacts with PLO representatives.
His most controversial role, however, dates from the early 1970s, when Biton emerged on the public scene as founder and leader of the Black Panthers, a sometimes raucous group representing slum-dwellers and other deprived social classes.
Laborites recall that the late Golda Meir, who was prime minister at the time, referred to Biton and the Panthers as “not nice people.”
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