Mapai and Mapam Leaders to Meet This Week on Inclusion of Latter in Present Government

Mapai and Mapam delegations which have been conducting separate negotiations on the eventual inclusion of Mapam in the present coalition government will hold a joint meeting Wednesday, it was reported today.

The week-end Palmach conference ended here last night after 20,000 veterans of the Palmach striking battalions participated in a series of rallies and parades. Despite an order issued on Friday by Brig. Yaacov Dori, Army Chief of Staff, Palmach veterans who are now serving in Israel’s armed forces took part in the rallies. All of these, however, were out of uniform.

Former Palmach commander of Itzhak Sadeh who recently resigned his commission in the Israel Army told the veterans that the “Palmach will continue to serve the fatherland as it did in the past. It is always ready to defend the fatherland should an emergency arise again, “he added.

(Brig. Dori was quoted in a New York Times dispatch as stating that he issued a ban on attendance on the part of members of the country’s armed forces who formerly served with the Palmach because he learned that the rallies would have a military character and that the veterans would march in military formations under the leadership of their former commanders. “This would have been a departure from the principle that there can be no separate armies in Israel.” Brig. Dori added. An Army spokesman later commented that “to our knowledge there were no soldiers at the rallies.”)

The trial of former Haganah commander lt. Col. Iser Beeri, who is charged with manslaughter in mistakenly ordering the execution of Meir Tebianski as a spy last year, opened here today. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty. Attorney-General Yaacov Shapiro was quoted as saying he was “very sorry to prosecute the accused, who acted in good faith, thinking he was performing his duty.”