Gahal, the parliamentary alignment of the Herut and Liberal parties which almost precipitated a Cabinet crisis over alleged remarks of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in a Newsweek interview, today faced a split in its own ranks.
Differences have developed between the leaders of the two factions over whether to remain in the national coalition Government. The issue was the subject of a party caucus yesterday, the fourth in 24 hours, which decided to refer it to a joint conference of Herut and Liberal leaders to be held in Tel Aviv tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Minister of Interior Moshe Shapiro, leader of the National Religious Party, another coalition partner, urged Gahal to remain in the Government. Menachem Beigin, militant leader of the right-wing, nationalistic Herut, was known to favor leaving the coalition which was set up as a Government of “national unity” on the eve of the June, 1967 Arab-Israel war. It was during that crisis that Mr. Shapiro and others demanded a broadening of the coalition to include Gahal and the then Rafi faction of Mapai whose leader, Gen. Moshe Dayan, received the portfolio of Minister of Defense.
Joseph Saphir, leader of the Liberal Party, apparently favors staying in the coalition. He and Mr. Beigin are Ministers Without Portfolio in the Eshkol Cabinet.
Both leaders met with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon yesterday and were persuaded to support the Government in a Knesset (Parliament) vote on a motion of no confidence introduced by the splinter Free Center faction. The motion stemmed from a remark attributed to Mr. Eshkol by Newsweek that Israel was not interested in retaining such heavily populated Arab centers on the West Bank as Nablus and Jenin, Mr. Eshkol insisted that the remark was not included in the transcript of his interview which Newsweek senior editor Arnaud de Borchgrave submitted for his approval prior to publication. The Gahal ministers accepted the Government’s explanation that Newsweek was guilty of a breach of trust. But there was no denial from any source that Mr. Eshkol made the statement attributed to him off the record. He has expressed such views in the past, especially at meetings of the Labor Party. But he has never been explicit and never mentioned place names, such as Nablus and Jenin, as being outside the boundaries that Israel considered necessary for its security, sources said.
The Gahal faction is opposed to Israel’s withdrawal from any of the occupied Arab territories. Mr. Beigin was believed to feel that it was time to withdraw from the national coalition and reconstitute itself an an opposition party. He was said to be confident that Herut could rally a large segment of the population under the banner of a “greater Israel” and win a substantial vote in next fall’s national elections.
The Government withstood the no-confidence vote yesterday by a vote of 74 to five, with seven abstentions.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
