Israel’s Labor Party, having selected its slate for the June 23 elections, is now trying to show the country that it is prepared to take over the task of governing.
Party leader. Yitzhak Rabin plans to announce next week his choices for Cabinet positions, should he become prime minister, He does not intend to introduce a shadow Cabinet at this time, but will name those he considers fit for ministerial posts, Labor sources said.
Rabin is expected to consult first with Shimon Peres and Yisrael Kessar, the Laborites he defeated in the contest for party leadership last month.
Peres won the No. 2 spot on Labor’s list in the party primary election Tuesday. Kessar was No. 8. But as secretary-general of the Histadrut labor federation, he wields considerable influence in the party.
While Labor may benefit from the image that it has a government in place, the early announcement of Cabinet selections could touch off an internal struggle which the party has been able to avoid until now, political analysts said.
The campaign is shaping up as a bitter one and will be fought on ideological grounds if Likud has its way.
A preview was offered Thursday by Knesset member Benny Begin, a Likud activist and son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
He charged in a radio interview that the Labor slate was made up of people prepared to hand over parts of “Eretz Yisrael” to the Arabs, to create a Palestinian state.
RABIN A ‘PRISONER’ OF DOVES?
Moshe Katsav, minister of transport in the outgoing Likud government, said the more centrist Rabin has become the “prisoner” of a covey of doves.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said he is not interested in “what happened in other parties.” He does not think the Labor list is a threat to Likud.
The Cinderella story of the Labor primaries was the unexpected rise of young Avraham Burg to the No. 3 spot on the party’s list, up from 21 in Labor’s outgoing Knesset delegation.
Burg deferred, however, to older party hands. He said Thursday that he did not expect to be admitted immediately into the leadership circles, nor did he think Rabin should have invited him for high-level consultations in place of Kessar.
Although Orthodox, Burg, son of veteran National Religious Party leader Yosef Burg, is a staunch liberal.
He raised a storm at the Labor Party convention in February by proposing a platform amendment that would have amounted to the separation of state and religion.
Observant members of the Labor Party threatened to defect and the leadership, headed then by Peres, squelched the move.
Although the older Burg, long retired from active politics, does not share many of his son’s views, he is proud of his swift rise.
“I don’t remember any previous case of such a dramatic rise to the top in the history of Israel,” he said in a telephone conference call from Frankfurt, Germany, where he is visiting.
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