Likud opponents of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s peace initiative are determined to have a showdown when the party’s Central Committee convenes on Feb. 7.
So, apparently is Shamir.
Hard-liners Ariel Sharon, David Levy and Yitzhak Moda’i have rejected appeals by some of their own supporters in the Likud Knesset faction to postpone the meeting, lest the result be a split in the party.
The three dissident ministers said Sunday they would insist the meeting be held on schedule and that they would press for a series of votes on specific issues, hoping to dismantle Shamir’s plan piece by piece.
The prime minister declared Sunday that he would “insist firmly” on a blanket endorsement of the speech he plans to deliver on his conduct of Israel’s peace diplomacy.
Shamir said in an army radio interview that he sees the issue as one of confidence in himself personally, as leader of the government and the party.
He said he would resign immediately if his positions are not backed by his party.
“I don’t feel constrained,” said Shamir. “I shall act in the national interest and propose a resolution in keeping with the Israeli peace plan.”
He was referring to the constraints imposed on the plan by majority vote at the last meeting of Likud’s Central Committee in July 1989.
At that time, the Sharon-Levy-Moda’i bloc attached a series of conditions to Shamir’s plan for Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are to be followed by negotiations on limited self-rule and eventually on the final status of the territories.
Although the conditions clearly would not be acceptable to even the most moderate Palestinians, Shamir agreed to be bound by them.
His opponents now accuse the prime minister of effectively ignoring the constraints in the conduct of his peace diplomacy with the United States and Egypt.
PERES AND RABIN DIVIDED. TOO
The United States has proposed guidelines for an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to be hosted by Egypt in Cairo, the purpose of which would be to establish the rules for the elections.
Israel has accepted the guidelines in principle, though it seeks certain assurances.
Sharon, who is minister of industry and trade, is urging Likud to renounce the election plan, on the grounds that it would inevitably lead to creation of a Palestinian state.
Levi, who is minister of construction and housing, and Moda’i, who is minister of economics and planning, hold the same view.
The Labor Party, meanwhile, also seems to be tugging in two directions.
Its leader, Vice Premier Shimon Peres, appears ready to pull out of the coalition with Likud now and try to form a narrowly based, Labor-led government in partnership with the ultra-Orthodox and the left-wing parties.
But Labor’s No. 2 man, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, will not consider Labor’s secession from the government until after the Feb. 7 Likud conclave.
Nevertheless, the rival Laborites, each with his bloc of supporters in the party, do see eye to eye on the peace policy. They agree that two Palestinians deported from the territories could be members of the Palestinian delegation that has dialogue with Israel.
Rabin is understood to have made this position clear during his recent visit to Washington. Peres reportedly reiterated it at his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo last week.
Likud is fiercely opposed. Israeli correspondents who accompanied Peres to Cairo said he told Mubarak that Labor would withdraw from the government if Likud refuses to compromise over the composition of the Palestinian negotiating team.
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