Knesset Approves New Cabinet by Vote of 62-46 with 9 Abstentions–by David Landau

The Knesset approved Premier Golda Meir’s new Cabinet tonight by a vote of 62-46. Two prominent Labor Party members were among the nine MKs who abstained when the vote of confidence was taken after 10 hours of acrimonious debate. Both of them, Yitzhak Ben Aharon and Lyova Eliav, are outspoken doves. They had informed Party Secretary General Aharon Yadlin and Alignment chairman Moshe Baram by mail earlier that they could not support the new government because it represented to them no change from the outgoing one. Yehuda Ben Meir and Zevulun Hammer, members of the National Religious Party which is expected to join the coalition tomorrow, also abstained as did five members of the Aguda bloc. The Likud opposition which voted en-bloc against the government was joined in its assertion of no confidence by the Rakah Communists, Meir Payil’s Moked and Shulamit Aloni’s Civil Rights List. Three Labor-affiliated Arab members who were embittered over not receiving a Cabinet post nevertheless voted for the new government.

Premier Meir presented the Knesset with the names of 22 ministers-designate, one short of the full Cabinet. The final designee will be from the NRP which will be given a ministry without portfolio in addition to the three it held in the old government. In her opening statement to the Knesset this afternoon, Mrs. Meir disclosed that she had promised U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to send a top level representative to Washington with an Israeli disengagement plan for the Syrian front within two weeks after the establishment of her new government. The Premier noted that a state of emergency still exists on the Syrian front. “I hope that the war will not be renewed and that an opportunity will be given for the exertion of all possible political efforts with a view to reaching agreement for the separation of forces,” she said. “If, however, war is forced upon us. I have no doubt of the outcome,” she added.

Premier Meir contrasted the situation on the Syrian front with that on the Egyptian front where the disengagement process has been completed successfully. “I cannot assure you that the Syrian government has abandoned its preparations for an offensive,” she said. She said Israel maintained a high state of preparedness which, she acknowledged, imposed a burden on the reserves. On the Egyptian front, however, Mrs. Meir expressed satisfaction that the separation of forces was accomplished and that both sides scrupulously observed the terms of the disengagement accord. “We are all aware that Egypt is still a long way from Israel’s vision of peace, but it is of positive significance that even according to the Egyptian version, disengagement was the first step toward peace, even if the road is long,” she said.

She affirmed the basic intention of her new government is to pursue every avenue toward negotiations with the Arab states. It was this policy, she continued, that precluded a national government with Likud. She recalled that the principal party in Likud (Gahal) had walked out of her last unity coalition government in Aug. 1970 when the majority accepted a U.S. plan for a cease-fire with Egypt, ending the war of attrition. More recently, Likud opposed the Oct. 22 cease-fire ending the Yom Kippur War and opposed Israel’s agreement to join the Middle East peace conference in Geneva, Mrs. Meir noted.

“In this period the country needs a government whose policy is guided by the striving for peace, a government which has the capacity both to decide and to act in the international sphere,” she said. Mrs. Meir expressed hope that the nation had learned the lessons of the Yom Kippur War and would not “hasten back to the routine of yesterday.” She said “The capacity of Israeli society to learn what changes and improvements are required in methods of work, in our scale of priorities and in our way of life in general is one of the crucial tests we must face during this period.”

Mrs. Meir told the Knesset that she was adamant against forming a national unity government with Likud because Likud’s declared policies were totally “incompatible” with her own on negotiations with the Arab states and territorial concessions. But she vowed that in eventual peace negotiations with Jordan, her government would agree to no territorial withdrawals without first consulting its coalition partners and calling for new elections “if one of the coalition partners so demands.” That pledge was part of the agreement worked out with the NRP during the past few weeks of coalition bargaining. She also pledged a ministerial review of the Who is a Jew issue as it applies to the Law of Return. And she announced, in accordance with the compromise reached between the Labor Party and the NRP, that “the Minister of Interior stated that to the best of his knowledge, no non-Jew has been registered as a Jew (in the past four years) and the government will continue to act thus in the future.”

Mrs. Meir said that the ministerial committee set up to deal with the Who is a Jew issue will be charged with the task of reaching an agreed legal arrangement within one year. She made it clear, however, that the committee would consult with all trends in Judaism around the world. “I hope that good will and concern for the unity of the people will help us attain a solution,” she said. Mrs. Meir also announced that she would establish a “national security council” to advise the government as well as a Cabinet security committee. She said the latter would not include every Cabinet member as in the outgoing Cabinet where all members sat as a ministerial security committee whenever urgent security matters were taken up. She said there would also be a council on social affairs to advise the government in that sphere.